Bestiality. Sticking a finger up your dog’s ass while camping. Jacking off. The size of his penis. His ugly face that always looks like he’s mid-allergy attack. Drunken titty stories on airplanes.
And that is just skimming the surface of District of Comedy’s roast of Democratic strategist and pundit James Carville held at the once dignified Kennedy Center Thursday night. The roast master was none other than Full House daddy figure Bob Saget, whose psyche is seriously marinating in some sick sick sick shit. In other words, he did a great job.
But Washington may never recover.
To be sure, this was not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which is tame and tired compared to whoever unleashed this torrent of disgust on the city this week. By the end of it, there was this tortured feeling of ‘THAT WAS FUN BUT GET ME OUT OF HERE’ kind of discomfort. But then again, when is the next Washington roast? And is Saget available?
“I couldn’t help but think, this is what white folks do?” asked MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton, who was the last roaster to the microphone to finish off this night of raunch and the only black man on stage. “We marched [mahhh-chd] so we could do this?”
Glancing over at Carville, he said, “When you look like him, it’s best to stay inside as much as possible.”
Sharpton and the other roasters endured a lot of crap throughout the evening. And by a lot, I mean it was a tsunami of insults that would not stop no matter how ugly things got. At various points throughout the night, Carville’s wife, Mary Matalin — who wore a gorgeous, above the knee sparkly gold and black cocktail dress, gave Saget the finger to his face and went over to the bar to get much needed alcohol for herself and Carville.
Roasters included CNN’s S.E. Cupp and Paul Begala, Fox News and The Daily Caller‘s Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson, Matalin, comedians Jeff Ross, Jim Norton and Hari Kondabolu, a comedian dog named “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog” and WaPo‘s Tony Kornheiser. NBC’s Luke Russert‘s name was on the program among those scheduled to roast, but he was too much of a p—y to attend (whatever the real reason for his absence, this is the real reason).
Spotted in the crowd: Lots of well-heeled Kennedy Center opera attendees as well as NYT Jonathan Martin, his wife, former NBC “Meet the Press” Executive Producer Betsy Fischer and Washington Examiner‘s Eddie Scarry.
Carville, 71, strode up on stage to a huge, roaring standing ovation as he approached a brown leather armchair he’d sit in all night to listen to roasters berate him within an inch of his life, or his penis, whichever came first. He wore a blue and white seersucker suit over a deep blue shirt paired with a bright watermelon-hued tie, black and white striped socks and bone-colored bucks.
Before the show began, the older woman sitting next to me with a mid-cheek bob of white blonde hair, bright red lipstick and a tight-fitting red dress, expressed skepticism about how the evening would go.
“Alright, here we go,” she said, her tone drenched in doubt. “This had better be good. You never know, it’s all extemporaneous. I mean, he’s not well-known like Barbra Streisand.”
Turns out seniors can handle swearing and filth.
The woman was HOWLING with laughter at every bend of what could easily have been a complete disaster.
David Rubinstein, who chairs the board of the Kennedy Center, came out for a few remarks. More like a warning.
“Now is everyone ready for an evening of fun?” he asked. “Is everyone ready to hear some words that they’ve never heard here before?”
Before turning the mic over to Saget, he said, “I hope it’s reasonably clean. If it’s reasonably clean we’ll host another.”
If by “reasonable” he meant dick jokes and and a husband and wife fucking in front of their children, then sure, there will be another roast.
“If there are any kids here get them the fuck out,” Saget began.
Some other introductory remarks:
“I’ve been circumcised 9 times. Enjoy the calamari.”
“Some of you look great. Some of you look like shit.”
In conclusion: “Let’s begin this clusterfuck.”
Begala probably kept his thoughts the cleanest of all the roasters.
“I love to see a Republican wrestle with someone other than Dennis Hastert,” he said, referring to the GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump.
“She’s a devout Republican, he’s a reptile.”
“James thinks a selfie is what he does at home when Mary is out of town.”
Comedian Jim Norton, however, did not worry about who he offended.
“You look like a cricket joined a barbershop quartet. …those are great glasses if you are going to strangle a prostitute,” he told Carville, who was bent over laughing and wiping his tear-stained eyes throughout much of the evening.
Maybe the meanest thing said all night was this: “They both have one thing in common, they like fucking ugly people,” he said of Carville and his wife, Mary.
The roasting didn’t just involve Carville. Many roasters also stuck it to one another.
“Al’s dentures are so big and white that next week he’s protesting against them,” Norton said of Sharpton, who endured a blast of jokes about how sickly skinny he has become.
One roaster insisted that he went to his doctor and asked for the “Al Roker.”
S.E. Cupp was no less kind to Carville.
Then again, she took her share of slut jokes, as well as boob, ass, porn and fucking remarks. At one point Saget told her that he would hit on her if her husband, John Goodwin, wasn’t such a “cock block.” Before she spoke, he told the audience, “Calm down, don’t get out your dollar bills just yet.”
Carville had the most cutting remark for Cupp. He called her the “sexy librarian who wants to defund libraries.”
Cupp, who admitted that she’s a full B-cup and suggested that Carville and Saget were both looking at her ass, told Carville “he looks like something that should be floating in a jar of formaldehyde.”
Comedian Jeff Ross asked Carville, “Why do you always look like you’re having an allergic reaction?”
Next up was WaPo’s Kornheiser. Saget said his surname was “German for please shove corn in my asshole.”
Even Saget seemed to get how outlandish this was for Washington.
After countless jokes about the Carville and Matalin’s questionable parenting — with the couple’s two daughters in the audience — he said of Carville, “He’s a good man, he’s a smart man, so you’re probably wondering why the fuck he allowed this to happen.”
Appropos of nothing, Saget said when Carville goes camping he likes to stick his finger up the dog’s ass.
Carlson’s speech blew by so fast that it was hard to get any of it down on paper. It involved Carville on his eighth bourbon telling a plane full of people on a red-eye from San Francisco to Dulles about the best sex he’s ever had — which involved shaking titties and sex in a convenient store parking lot.
Carlson endured more roasting than any of the other roasters on stage. For instance, Triumph (the puppet dog) went on wayyy too long with the butt of his jokes aimed straight for Carlson. At one point a roaster said Carlson’s bow-tie had turned to a regular tie and is now, with Donald Trump running as the presumptive Republican nominee, a noose. Another remarked that in the age of transgenders, Carlson had checked everyone in the men’s room before the show to make sure they actually had a penis — the roaster said he didn’t understand why a taste test was necessary. (If memory serves, Triumph claimed Carlson had him in his mouth for an hour.)
Cameo appearances were delivered on a screen from FNC’s Karl Rove and former President Bill Clinton.
It was Clinton’s remarks that brought Carville to the brink of tears.
Clinton joked minorly and went on to say what a great man and friend Carville had been to him.
Carville slumped in his chair covering his eyes. This time he wasn’t crying with laughter but from the sincerity and love of the moment.