Certainly this is a joke, but you’ll have a pretty hard time of it—proving copying, proving originality—joke concepts aren’t protectable, your expression of the idea will have very very narrow protection, and and even if he copied it word-for-word, you’ll have trouble with the scenes à faire doctrine.
Samantha Bee ended her show last week with her and Al Franken trading insulting names for Ted Cruz. It was quite hilarious.
Trump is not an example of the Peter Principle. For him to be an example, he’d have to be no higher than a used-car salesman.
I would disagree. Being anywhere above your level is Peter Principled.
So he’s like the UltraPrimeExtraPlus version of this.
I interpret it as “you were good at your previous job, and so you got promoted into a job that you weren’t good at any more”. Trump fails the first step.
“Now with more Peter!”
I’m not a big Lindsey Graham fan, but I agree that he can be pretty funny. This was the one I was going to mention.
I’ll try to get Franken’s book, so it can sit on my nightstand while I wonder where all my time for reading has gone. 
I ordered the book but don’t have it yet, but I’m really looking forward to it now.
Laurence J. Peter came up with the Peter Principle back in 1968, so if anyone’s going to sue it’s him or his estate.
That wasn’t meant to be a joke.
I remember when the Dead were musical guests on SNL back around 1979 or 1980. There was a backstage scene where Franken told Jerry Garcia how great he was, then picked up his guitar and dropped it with a jangling crash, and Phil Lesh called him an “asshole.”
It was fucking hilarious, every Deadhead’s personal nightmare about the worst thing that could happen if you ever got to meet them backstage.
One especially admirable thing Sen. Franken did during his first term was to refuse all invitations to appear on TV news programs to talk about anything other than his state. Even at the Democratic National Convention, he wasn’t going to be separated from the Minnesota group. If his fellow Senators and Representatives adopted that policy, US politics would be improved immeasurably.
Why? They’re national legislators. They makes laws for everyone. Why should they be limited like that?
Franken had a specific reason to set limits on his public actions in order to persuade the people who voted for them that he was serious about being a senator and that it wasn’t just part of his entertainment career. That doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone.
They are supposed to represent their states. I found it admirable, your mileage may vary.
Oh, man. If only Ted Cruz would limit his public statements to cattle-raising and taco sauce production.
I have no problem with Franken’s strategic decision, but there’s nothing admirable about it in a general sense.
They’re supposed to run the country. In fact, they do run the whole country. I should hope they are answerable to all of us.
They’re selected from the states. It would be reprehensible if they put their individual states’ interests before the interest of the nation, should they be in conflict.
I’m not even sure he’d be in the phylum Chordata.
I’m not sure you could find one example of Franken putting our state before the nation.
I don’t think he was claiming you could.
I definitely wasn’t. I said so twice I think.
I’m objecting to the idea that it’s admirable in general for members of the national legislature to limit all public comments to matters directly relating to a single state, no matter which state that happens to be.
What he did was smart and disciplined and effective. And it was admirable because it was smart and disciplined and effective, not because it has any virtue in its own substance
He’s surprisingly hilarious and frank here:
