Marco Rubio responded today to President Biden's comment that reopening states too early is "neanderthal thinking":
President Biden’s use of an old stereotype is hurtful to modern Europeans, Asians & Americans who inherit about 2% of their genes from Neanderthal ancestors. https://t.co/aXHJV5wLlr
He should apologize for his insensitive comments and seek training on unconscious bias.
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 4, 2021
Unless I've lost my sense of humor completely, I assume this is a joke. Why are so many people treating it otherwise?
Because humanity in Twitter-form is miserable?
(Yes, joke-attempt. Not sure who the audience is - nerdy conservatives? But quite obviously not meant for literal reading.)
Twitter.... indeed Twitter makes all things bad.
Really impossible to tell, isn't it?
I've been worrying that my funeral will be a dismal occasion for those I leave behind, so if I focus on being a massive prick to everyone they'll all be cheered up and prepared to move on and the world will be a better place.
Can this be the basis for a life philosophy?
Haha, that's one approach.
Can somebody please explain what is funny about this joke?
Conservatives are the real Neanderthals, where 'everyone thinks they're dumb and ugly but they're really smart and stylish,' which no one has actually thought for decades, except in that it's the only thing the average dope knows about the topic, that we are terrible people and here's another reason why, and thereby conservatives, naive and innocent, though falling into it yet again, can throw the nasty big man's words right back at him. Hilarious.
GEICO libel.
B/C it mocks liberal snowflakes uber sensitivity to insults to perceived identities.
Ok, sounds plausible. Not the kind of joke I'd make in the context of half a million excess deaths.
Fair enough. It's only moderately funny. And the context is indeed unfavorable...
If a lame joke is the old fashioned GOP reaction to a deadly pandemic, well, then, the old fashioned GOP wasn't that much better than the new Trump flavored one...
Big Tim Pawlenty citing the 2007 collapse of the I35W Bridge as evidence of the success of small government conservativism energy.
This would be true if we believed Marco Rubio were capable of sly irony.
An assumption based on observations not in evidence.
It’s Republican humor; it doesn’t have to be funny as long as it’s mocking and mean spirited.
Concur it is intended as a joke, with (100-𝜺)% probability, where 𝜺 ➝ 0, written by a staffer because Rubio is both dumb and humorless, and because of this and because of the seriousness of the situation -- it's, um, life and death? where death is bad? Marco? anyone in there? -- it alas isn't at all funny.
Interesting how explaining a joke makes it not funny and also that explaining that something is not a joke is also not funny. Is there a parallel with entropy? Discuss.
I'm just waking up here in China. Yes it's a joke. And a pretty good one.
meh
😉
But I'm not going to worry about it...
I think it's intended tongue-in-cheek, but it ain't funny if you have to analyze to decide if it's a joke.
So, El Senor Sed, riding the wave of sharing Sean Hannity's diagnosis of El Tio Pepe as demented, is trying to cancel said Pepe as a response to the removal of simian African caricatures in Dr. Seuss's oeuvre.
Really serious Sedatorial work -- I mean, Senatorial work -- there.
La Sed Es Real.
The little boy walking home from school and thinking about fanciful lies to tell his dad about what he saw on the way in the “cancelled” Dr. Seuss book “And To Think That I Saw it On Mulberry Street.”was named “Marco”.
Coincidence?
There are no coincidences.
Because it's both incredibly mean-spirited and also not funny. It's basically distilled assholism, which should not be applauded.
It's a joke to those with a sense of humor and chastising Biden to those without. Win win.
This would be true if we believed Marco Rubio were capable of sly irony.
An assumption based on observations not in evidence.
Because they think it gives them a chance to pwn the libs.
It's a joke that's making fun of liberal/progressive sensibilities on race. So I guess some conservatives think it's funny because they know it's the most emotional of topics to liberals/progressives.
To me, it's just not funny. And I don't think it is clever enough that others should find it offensive. It's a random, goofball comment not worthy of further thought.
Social Nationalism doesn't care. Tag out progressives so "we" can call conservatives everything that in the book.
There ya go. Stop the comment thread. This is the correct answer.
He's mocking the very idea that anyone could ever say something offensive thus proving once again that Rubio is an a$$.
“ Unless I've lost my sense of humor completely, I assume this is a joke. Why are so many people treating it otherwise?”
Prob cause it’s a joke that treats all the legit complaints about bias as jokes. Doesn’t bother me. But yeah he’s an idiot.
Little Marco make a joke. How wonderfully droll.
I really miss having a "Like" button to upcheck a comment. I'd certainly use it here.
Thanks. It’s a tough choice between the basic WordPress commenting system (which Kevin’s kept at its most basic) and Coral, which was driven by an arbitrary algorithm with a hair trigger. But there’s lots of better options in between.
Same Facts used the Intense Debate system which was pretty good and integrated well with WordPress. I think Disqus is good, too.
The only joke that Rubio ever told that hit its mark was calling Donald Trump “little hands”. It was funny because it really bothered Trump and bothers him to this day. It doesn’t matter how much Rubio sucks up to Trump, Trump will always hate him.
In fairness to Rubio, Trump seems to hate everyone to some degree except for Ivanka.
He prolly even hates her a little for choosing Jared over him.
Plus, that time she eyebanged* Justin Trudeau.
*Ivanka Trump's Ocular Patdown
It's like when conservatives complain "You can't criticize Candace Owens, she's black. I thought you liberals were against discrimination against blacks".
"You can't criticize Kellyanne McEnany, she's a woman. I thought you liberals were in favor of feminism." Etc.
People doubt that it's a joke because:
a) it's not funny
b) Marco Rubio is not known to have a sense of humor.
And the purpose is to "own the libs" by pointing out how ridiculous it is when they object to calling people n****** etc.
In this Ohio craft beer pub, racial equity is David Beckham having cornrows, Christian Pulisic never doesn't stick to sports, & a fag is still just a Lucky Strike.
True Conservatives. What would Neanderthals Do? Now [i]that's[/i] original intent, reaching back 40,000 years! Got to respect them for consistency.
Of course, these mentions were just jokes, you know, like the little mixup on 1/6. Nobody can take a joke these days, sad.
It's OK material. But not as good as the time he drank water.
You make me miss the "Like" button more and more.
Man is thought to be 70% water, but Marco knows he is the 99%.
He would have died without that sip.
My brain had to remember that.
At first I thought you'd made some oblique reference to his friend, the ventriloquist.
Well, I was going to say that we (us libz) think it's funny because we can laugh at ourselves. This parodies our current lib hypersensitivity to any minority being dissed; we also know there are no pureblood Neandertals who might be offended.
But then I read the responses, and have concluded that I've overestimated "our" self-awareness. I thought it was funny ... and doubted that Rubio could have come up with it. My guess it was on some late night comedy program and caught his fancy, for whatever reason.
It's actually a pretty good joke. Credit where credit is due.
The trouble is we don't know where the credit is due.
I absolutely, 100.0%, with no possibility of a type 2 error, reject that credit is due to Rubio. In his entire career, and likely in his entire life, he has never shown the slightest possibility that he came up with that as a joke.
So that means somebody else made it up, and Rubio liked it and repeated it. Now, the next possibility that I absolutely reject is that he understood it was a joke when he heard it. What is surely true is that somebody like Dave Letterman, assuming a non-zero intelligence level in his audience, told the joke, and Rubio, when he heard it, thought to himself, "Yeah, that's right! What do you say to that, you Libs?" So Rubio repeated it, not as a joke, but rather thinking it was a good way to put Libs in their place.
Senators clearly shouldn't be on twitter. But that's probably good advice for all of us.
It's a bad joke that attacks liberal talking points. It wouldn't surprise me if it had gotten negative reviews on twitter.
Well actually...
It's a *good* joke that attacks *woke* talking points.
Speaking of life's comedy, anyone catch the opening salvo in the East Coast/West Coast blog war between Doug Balloon & Kevin Drum?
Can't wait for the NYTimesPitchbot to unleash its "Who shot ya?", followed by Jabberwocking's "Hit 'em up".
You could ask Jame Fallows, who has commented-upon/touted his Neanderthal ancestry.
Or you could ask the researchers who keep coming-up with evidence that Neanderthals were not as, well, neanderthal, as we commonly make them out to be.
Sigh, make that James Fallows.
Never thought I would look back with any fondness on Mother Jones' instructions to her attack dog Coral to have a mere five minute edit window...
At least coral gave us five minutes to edit.
If "Why do you keep hitting yourself?" is supposed to be a joke, well then I guess this bit of drollery was also supposed to be a joke.
Marco Rubio sends a Hurts Donut to West Wing.
correct me if i'm wrong but didn't the neandethrals die out from failure to adapt? second point why are the repugs so proud of being part of said beings?
I confess it didn't occur to me that Marco Rubio was joking around.
That may be because I have lost my sense of humor. It might be because my wife and I are somewhat elderly and therefore considered high risk. It could be that half a million deaths just don't crack me up the way they do some of my conservative friends.
OR, now check me out on this, I had simply forgotten that Marco is hilarious.
What do you think?