Bad moon rising

Yesterday we noted Al Franken’s unfunny 90-minute monologue at a fundraiser for John Kerry in the Twin Citites. Today Deborah Orin reports on the hugely successful fundraiser for Kerry in New York, with Kerry and Edwards in attendance: “Jerky jokester Whoopi in dirty diss at Dubya.”
Kerry appears to love the kind of hilarity that Franken and friends are dishing out:

Whoopi Goldberg delivered an X-rated rant full of sexual innuendoes against President Bush last night at a Radio City gala that raised $7.5 million for the newly minted Democratic ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards.
Waving a bottle of wine, she fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush’s name in a riff about female genitalia, and boasted that she’d refused to let Team Kerry clear her material.
“I Xeroxed my behind and I folded it up in an envelope and I sent it back with a big kiss mark on because we’re Democrats – we’re not afraid to laugh,” she said.
She addressed fresh-faced vice-presidential candidate Edwards as “Kid,” and “young Mr. Edwards” and cracked, “He looks like he is about 18. I’m going to card his ass tomorrow.”
Other celebs also competed to bash Bush. Singer John Mellencamp sang a specially written song that called the president “just another cheap thug” and ridiculed him as the “Texas bambino.”
Kerry could be seen laughing uproariously during part of Goldberg’s tirade – and neither he nor Edwards voiced a single objection to its tone when they spoke to the crowd. They hailed the fund-raiser as a great event.
Edwards said it was “a great honor” to be there and insisted, “This campaign will be a celebration of real American values.”
Kerry thanked all the performers for “an extraordinary evening,” hailed the “great producers” – Harvey Weinstein of Miramax and Jann Wenner – and said “every performer tonight…conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country.”

The New York Times runs a bowdlerized story on the fundraiser. Though it lacks the details of Orin’s story, it has more on the Kerry campaign’s public relations after the event: “Kerry celebrity fundraiser is a huge bash.” The Times story reports:

After the concert, Mr. Kerry’s press secretary, David Wade, said, “Obviously John Kerry and John Edwards do not agree with everything that was said tonight,” adding: “Performers have a right to speak their minds even when we don’t agree with everything they say. That’s the freedom John Kerry put his life on the line to defend.”
But unlike one of Mr. Kerry’s vanquished primary rivals, Howard Dean, who denounced racial humor and profanity at one of his own fundraisers in New York, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry hardly veered from their script when they mounted the stage at the end of the extravaganza, looking more subdued than they had all week.
“This campaign will be a celebration of real American values” Mr. Edwards promised, saying that voters “deserve a president who knows the difference between what is right and what is wrong.”
Mr. Kerry, inviting his and Mr. Edwards’s adult children onstage for a sing-along of “This Land Is Your Land,” told the crowd that “every single performer” on the bill had “conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country.”
Campaign aides said the performers would not allow broadcast journalists to record the concert.

Below is a photo of Kerry onstage with John Fogerty at the conclusion of the event. As Fogerty once sang: “I see the bad moon rising…I hear the voice of rage and ruin.”
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