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The Voice of Right-Wing Comedy (Parody Genius from the Rush Limbaugh Show)
The Claremont Institute ^ | June 20, 2005 | Alec Mouhibian

Posted on 06/25/2005 3:27:37 AM PDT by Liberty Wins

Although he can croon through watered down doo-wop tunes easily enough, former president Bill Clinton also displays a surprising capacity for grit when he delivers a soul-grinding rendition of "Heard it Through The Grapevine" ("Read It In the Headlines"). He even throws a greasy bone to his delta roots with a hearty "Whitewater Blues." And that's just in the first collection of political humorist Paul Shanklin's parodies, a key staple—and one of the wittiest weapons—of the Rush Limbaugh Show since 1993.

Shanklin scored the job when he phoned Limbaugh's producer as Bill Clinton and said, "I don't feel Rush and I are as close as we used to be. Can you work things out between me and Rush? I don't think we're really that far apart on the issues." Since then, he has written and produced over 800 political song parodies, skits, and spoof commercials, which have been compiled into eight albums.

As an impressionist, Shanklin's specialty has always been the wayward ex-president, whose voice he can not only imitate but take to falsetto. The unique ability to sing with a politician's voice allowed Shanklin to become a symbolically accurate documenter of Clinton's eight-year song and dance—through such lyrically-altered classic tunes as "Wakin' Up Is Hard To Do," "In The Polls," and "Hey Paula":

Hey hey Paula,

It's kinda scary to be two.

If you swear it's true

Then I'll say you're loose….

Dispersed between these and many other songs in Shanklin's first album, Bill Clinton: The Early Years, are clips in which we hear Clinton denying any responsibility for Rwanda, never met her in his life, and placing a call to Jimmy Carter to ask him to build a secluded forest cabin, "just a one room with a Jacuzzi, that would be nice." One of the dryer bits involves our vice president: "Hi. I'm Forrest, Forrest Gore. You know, it's funny how things work out sometimes. I wasn't always vice president. A few years back, I was in the Senate. And then, for no particular reason, Bill Clinton asked me to run with him."

After listening to this album, you are left to wonder only two things: how did Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones" ever skip Shanklin's attention? And why didn't the real Clinton hire him to ghost-read his memoir for the audio book?

Reviewing Paul Shanklin definitely falls in the Bikini Contest Judge category of irresistible gigs. His comedic and vocal range stretch far beyond Clinton (indeed, he began his radio career by doing Ross Perot), as finely displayed on his last three albums: Vice Vice Squad (2000), The Usual Suspects (2002), and Mama Told Me Not To Run (2004). The juiciest offering in the former is a "C-Spam" interview of Edmund Morris:

C-Spam: In your book, Stretch, we find some surprising revelations about the life and work of Ronald Reagan, such as his being abducted by aliens at age 11, that he spoke Japanese as a first language, and sold crack for the first three years of his administration—

EM: No no, those are merely literary techniques to engage the reader and help reveal the enigma that was Ronald Reagan.

C-Spam: So Dopey, Sneezy and the Sheriff of Nottingham were not actual cabinet members?

EM: No no, of course not. The fairy godmother banished them from the kingdom in chapter 5.

The Usual Suspects includes a variety of such delights, covering just about every figure-head of '90s liberalia. A skit called "Scare Wars: Attack of the Clowns" features cameos from them all, including Jesse Jackson: "Luke, am I your father?" Programming is interrupted by a commercial from Osama bin Laden: "Experience the magic of 70 Virgins laundry detergent and you will believe in it, too…or else."

We are then treated to a truly hilarious Jimmy Carter Christmas Memory (inspiration for which was provided by Florence King, according to the liner notes). Anything that begins with the Nobel Laureate saying, in his typical hesitant tones—"Many people have wonderful memories of Christmas. But I think about dietary fiber and painful bowel movements"—can only go great places, and it does. Still, Shanklin's greatest feat is a refreshingly effective lampooning of President Bush's speech problems:

Maybe sometimes it seems I'm so carefree

With a verb or noun that's hard to hide.

And sometimes it seems with all I have to do I hurry

Then your bound to hear me say that I am the bride.

I'm just a soul whose inventions are good,

Oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstand.

Every one of Bush's public announcements should by now be prefaced with a warning: "The following is subject to excessively trite mimicry." That Shanklin was able to spoof it in a funny way, when so many have tried and whole television series have been dedicated to the task, is final proof of the triumph of conservative political humor in the last fifteen years.

I had expected Shanklin's older Clintonian stuff to sound hackneyed. Some of it did. Much more if it, however, struck a poignant nostalgic chord. The early '90s, after all, saw the establishment of an alternative media through which the political Right came to dominate edgy humor and commentary. Epitomized by the talk radio revolution—of which Shanklin, paradoxically, is an unsung hero—and the more recent advent of Fox News, this movement also included the likes of the aforementioned Florence King's National Review essays, P.J. O'Rourke's wildly successful political books, Christopher Buckley's novels, and the rise of Mark Steyn. The triumph transpired in both intellectual and popular realms.

My own Generation X-Box (a.k.a. the Millenials)—whose supposed conservatism has been the topic of much banter lately—grew up on this stuff. The voices of talk radio were often the first to tickle our sense of outrage, leading us to the literature that would refine it into a political consciousness. The first time I heard a Limbaugh parody was in the backseat of my dad's car, on my way to kindergarten.

Yet here's what gets me. How come until now I'd never heard of Paul Shanklin, but had heard of Air America's Randi Rhodes? As the mainstream media were busy writing hopeful profiles of Al Franken, whose idea of political comedy is to remind everyone of how funny he is, one realized that the rise of conservative talk radio had been treated like a cancer. Aside from the diagnosis and an occasional lament, the talk radio revolution wasn't televised, until of course it grew to the point of an immutable presence. Now it's referred to as if it were just another day in the week all along. Talk about it enough, and you can create something that never existed (see "Red Scare, The")—but it doesn't work the other way around.

Bill Clinton's famous "Who is Rush Limbaugh?" line could be considered the epitaph for the Democratic Party. The same liberal myopia that once ignored the growth of talk radio is now motivating a lazy explanation of the phenomenon. The general assumption is that the alternative media was a response to conservatives feeling marginalized. True as this is, it only tells half the story. Conservatism may have been marginalized by the establishment media, but it was in its influential prime when talk radio took off in the early '90s, riding high off Reagan's triumph and the Soviet Union's demise. In the 1992 presidential election, nearly 60% of the vote went to conservative candidates. The rest went to the most conservative Democrat in decades, and the fervor with which Clinton was incessantly attacked proves beyond all else that the success of conservative media is primarily driven by a rigorous ideological force, rather than mere market demand.

Hopeful analysts predicting an upsurge in partisan liberal media are ignoring the power of integrated ideas. They might compare Howard Dean to Barry Goldwater, but extremism in defense of bike-paths is no virtue—and it's no commitment to principle, either. After all, what does Dean actually believe in? Angry rhetoric and invective don't compel unless backed by a clear and consistent philosophical base; a base which liberalism has been notoriously lacking for a long time. Liberal politicians are clinging to the lame tenets of statism while accepting the successes of free enterprise, admitting in the process that the two are entirely unrelated.

Whereas conservative self-deprecation is directed at the hypocrisies of the self, liberal self-deprecation is usually directed at the hypocrisies of liberalism. This is revealing. In the former, the ideas (one of which is the limitations of man) are still sacred and even validated; in the latter, they are undermined. And though the excesses of the current Republican leadership have provided valuable fodder for the successful Daily Show with Jon Stewart, even that show is driven by an overall ironic skepticism, not ideology-based comedy.

So it's not surprising that Shanklin's in full form in his most recent work, collected in Mama Told Me Not To Run, despite the fact that Republicans are holding all three branches of government. Among the highlights in this one is an injection of comic relief into the omni-annoying gay marriage debate:

Do you, Frank, take Maggie to be your lawfully wedded wife?

I do.

And do you, Maggie, take Frank to be your lawfully wedded husband?

Woof!

And not to be left out, Senator Robert Byrd informs us that he wants "nothing but the best for you and your dirty laundry. Don't let subhuman contamination darken your linens! Get Mighty White…the detergent that not only cleans, it sanitizes your personal history of racial hostility."

Yes, it seems while dour liberals continue to build their administrative state into a Tower of Babel, Paul Shanklin and his fellow rightward wits will continue to lampoon the political culture, leaving conservatives and libertarians with the best—if not always last—laugh.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Political Humor/Cartoons
KEYWORDS: parodies; rightwinghumor; rushlimbaugh
For those who have always wondered who is the creative genius behind those wonderfully funny parodies on Rush's show.
1 posted on 06/25/2005 3:27:42 AM PDT by Liberty Wins
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To: Liberty Wins

2 posted on 06/25/2005 3:31:16 AM PDT by rhema
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To: Liberty Wins
And his latest CD offering:


3 posted on 06/25/2005 3:34:40 AM PDT by rhema
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To: rhema
For those of us in the Memphis, Tennessee area we gladly share our home town guy. Paul is on our local radio station a lot and the reason that Clinton could not latch onto him is, that he is a real conservative. When he and Michael Ramirez the LA Times cartoonist are on together it is really a hoot.
4 posted on 06/25/2005 3:59:09 AM PDT by Coldwater Creek ('We voted like we prayed")
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To: Liberty Wins

This is too funny.

I'm going to buy that CD! Thanks for the info. 8^)


5 posted on 06/25/2005 4:20:19 AM PDT by bill1952 ("All that we do is done with an eye towards something else.")
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To: Liberty Wins

I always enjoyed the Christmas Carol "Walkin' 'round in Womens Underwear"


6 posted on 06/25/2005 4:27:13 AM PDT by Hot Tabasco (I've never been able to figure out why we need toenails....)
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To: Liberty Wins
Conservative humor works because conservatives don't take everything so seriously. Liberals never seem to be able to stand back and laugh at life's absurdities. That's why humor from the Right passes them by. They've never met it.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
7 posted on 06/25/2005 4:38:16 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: Liberty Wins
I particularly like Shanklin's take on Hillary in "The Little First Lady with Megalomania":

Eva Peron with a bad hairdo,
She's the terror of Pennsylvania Avenue.

8 posted on 06/25/2005 4:38:48 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
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To: goldstategop

The Philander was always a favorite.

In a Yugo. best ever

9 posted on 06/25/2005 4:58:30 AM PDT by pandemoniumreigns
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To: goldstategop

That, and the fact that libs are truly whacko funny---so far out they can't be taken seriously, sort of like Farrakhan's numerology.


10 posted on 06/25/2005 5:29:56 AM PDT by LS (CNN is the Amtrak of news)
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To: pandemoniumreigns
In a Yugo. best ever

Abolutely! "...and they drove with pride..."

11 posted on 06/25/2005 5:33:47 AM PDT by jimfree (Freep and ye shall find.)
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Comment #12 Removed by Moderator

To: pandemoniumreigns
Werewolves in Congress. I cannot hear the original without substituting Paul Shanklin's words. If he was a liberal, he would be the toast of Hollywood and a certain regular guest pundit on all MSM channels.
13 posted on 06/25/2005 6:10:04 AM PDT by small voice in the wilderness (Quick, act casual. If they sense scorn and ridicule, they'll flee..)
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To: Liberty Wins

Shanklin IS a genius! His parodies have always been halarious and a welcome change to all the outrageous political crap going on in WDC.


14 posted on 06/25/2005 6:16:09 AM PDT by Dawgreg (Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.)
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To: Liberty Wins

Besides the laughs for us, these parodies are a great source of mockery of the liberals. I'll bet they get steaming mad when they hear them.


15 posted on 06/25/2005 6:36:33 AM PDT by GunsareOK
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To: Liberty Wins

"In a Yugo"

"While those small wheels turn"


16 posted on 06/25/2005 6:41:13 AM PDT by Rightly Biased (<><)
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To: Liberty Wins

Rush never (seldom?) gave anyone credit for this as far as I know.

Since he didn't announce the parodies as from someone else I always thought Rush himself did them.


17 posted on 06/25/2005 6:49:51 AM PDT by wildbill
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To: rhema

bump for later


18 posted on 06/25/2005 6:58:18 AM PDT by albee (A paranoid schizophrenic is somebody who just found out what is going on.)
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To: wildbill; Liberty Wins
Rush never (seldom?) gave anyone credit for this as far as I know.

Rush has acknowledged Shanklin many times on his show. You just missed it, unfortunately. I've met Paul a couple of times myself; he's a really nice guy.

19 posted on 06/25/2005 8:05:41 AM PDT by tarheelswamprat (This tagline space for rent - cheap!)
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To: tarheelswamprat

Rush's website also links to Shanklin's, so you can go to Shanklin's and get CDs of all the parodies.


20 posted on 06/25/2005 9:29:52 AM PDT by libstripper
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