low culture

Situated at the tail end of one of the most recent missives on the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington’s new(ish) website with a political bent (and a penchant for really nailing, several times a week, the various inculcations of “Judith Miller Sucks” that fans of responsible journalism and transparent government have come to demand), was this incredibly depressing statement:

“The Secret Presidential IMs” will now be a regular feature on HuffPo. Check here each Tuesday for a new installment.

Tragic, this news…for this post’s author, one Danielle Crittenden, is one of the most painfully untalented, uninspired writers currently occupying space online. And “The Secret Presidential IMs”, this “feature” of which she speaks? In computer parlance, we’d call this a “bug”…one which seems to recur on Arianna’s site whenever anyone of her stable of writers attempts to post something that one may conceivably interpret as “funny”.
“Ahhhh,” you’re saying to yourself right now, “the so-called humor content available on the site can’t be that uninspired, that unfunny, and that insipidly unoriginal…can it?” (Because that’s how you speak to yourself, isn’t it? You faux-academic wonk.) And then you read these sampled lines below, and you weep with tears of great solemnity, sadly mulling over the Death of Laughter, and her playdate, Originality.

SumNobel4u2: yo prez
Kickass43: ?
SumNobel4u2: bono
SumNobel4u2: yr nu best bud
Kickass43: sonny?!
Kickass43: i thot u wer ded!!!!
SumNobel4u2: BONO
SumNobel4u2: as in rok star
SumNobel4u2: not as in “& cher”
Kickass43: o

“O,” indeed. It’s not as though Crittenden is cribbing from Arianna’s own friend Bill Maher with her oh-so-fresh “Bono/Sonny Bono” take, right? Except, well, she is. And it’s not as though the overarching framework, the “mock conversation” device, has already exhausted itself…”O,” nevermind.
Time for some “hack”ing, then. Through some intrepid computer geekery, we got ahold of a recent IM conversation that was recently held between Arianna’s Guffaw Gang: Danielle Crittenden and her partner in inept, unoriginal joke assembly, Bill Diamond — or, as he’s perhaps better known, the original Funnee Foto Guy. (Greg Gutfeld, the British Maxim editor, and another purported funneeman who sometimes posts on the site, is mostly exempted from this elite list because he’s proven semi-capable of working the blogroom for an occasional laugh here and there, at least when he’s not himself relying heavily on the Onion‘s template.)

frumkinsgal: i’m thinking of doing another presidential im post
BillDiamondsare4eva: ok, and then help me with a caption?
BillDiamondsare4eva: i found a funnee foto of bush in front of a statue
BillDiamondsare4eva: its funnee
frumkinsgal: haha ok
frumkinsgal: so david suggested this to me
frumkinsgal: harriet miers is pretty frumpy right and unqualified?
frumkinsgal: it would be funny to make fun of that and have her im with bush
BillDiamondsare4eva: maybe you can make it like she doesn’t know how to use a computer even though she’s a secretary
BillDiamondsare4eva: thatd be wickedly funny
BillDiamondsare4eva: she can keep messing up and saying “i dont know how to use this keyboard, its not an old typewriter, im so old!” haha!
frumkinsgal: haha ur great
BillDiamondsare4eva: haha
frumkinsgal: hahahah
BillDiamondsare4eva: hahahahahaa
frumkinsgal: hahaahah
BillDiamondsare4eva: hahaa
frumkinsgal: hahhahahaa
BillDiamondsare4eva: hahahahaa
frumkinsgal: hahahahhahah
BillDiamondsare4eva: haha
frumkinsgal: hahaahaha
BillDiamondsare4eva: haha
frumkinsgal: haha
BillDiamondsare4eva: haha
BillDiamondsare4eva: i wish i could come up with better captions to my funnee fotos though
BillDiamondsare4eva: the commenters seem to hate me and think i’m not funny
frumkinsgal: me too
frumkinsgal: it took me this long to realize that long im transcripts won’t be read by impatient people
frumkinsgal: particularly if theyre unfunny
frumkinsgal: you know why i’m going to make it a weekly feature?
frumkinsgal: i hate myself
frumkinsgal: did i ever tell you i wanted to kill myself after i got my husband fired
frumkinsgal: i felt so “evil”
BillDiamondsare4eva: i dont understand
BillDiamondsare4eva: i’d say thats really meta if i understood the concept
BillDiamondsare4eva: but i’m too busy looking at yahoonews photos for funnee fotos
frumkinsgal: i would kill myself if it werent for humor
frumkinsgal: humor keeps me going
frumkinsgal went idle

ANSWER, FOR PEOPLE WHO’VE NEVER BEEN TO THE L.E.S.:
Bearded men in ballcaps = National Leaguers feigning their being up to the task of winning the 2005 World Series.
Bearded man in black and white = anonymous Silverlake-type dweller who probably feigns liking Elliott Smith and Paul Auster. Also, he seems happy, unlike the soon-to-be-eliminated Houston Astros.
RELATED: Time for a shave: Astros rookie shares thoughts on Game 2 loss

You’ll laugh as Chris Ware “takes out the trash”!

You’ll roar when Elmore Leonard’s tough guys hash over the Holocaust!

You’ll roll in the aisles when Allison Silverman confronts the ugly face of anti-Semitism!

The Times Magazine Funny Pages — Does the fun ever start?!?
Previously: As Seen on the New York Times Magazine’s “Funny Pages”