King Kramer, you didn't just go there.

How do I tell my four year old (that's, "foe" year old)?

Greg wuz her homie.

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OK, King. As funny as it was, you had to believe that you'd hear, at least, some noise about this parody (uh, that's "noizee" fo sho).

Like I said, it was a funny, albeit baiting, recast. I love your writing, but this seemed a bit, dunno, low for you.

Good luck with dat, Cosmo.

Is this humor aimed at Boomers, Gen X or Gen Z?

Talk about off the mark. Parody's one thing; stupid is quite another. Mr. Kaufman, meet Mr. Richards. Have fun on Oprah's couch.

I really hope that folks realize that this is bogus--the "Wiggas" described in this article are a parody of "The Wiggles". Some of the details of the article have elements of truth--they are huge stars in Australia and have toured around the world. They are one of our kids'favorite sources for silly and fun songs.

Greg did quit the band today, because of a lingering illness that won't allow him to stand and perform.

That was offensively stupid, or stupidly offensive. I can't really make up my mind which.

Maybe Kaufman can open for Mike Richards on his next stand-up tour?

Your resume should read as follows

Strengths: Performing mind-numbing and ultimately meaningless analysis of baseball statistics.

Weaknesses: Writing comedic satire

If we need someone to pick the wrong team in a football pool, we'll call you. When we want parody, we'll read The Onion.

The odd thing is that he could have written something like this (with a few alterations) at any time during the last five years or so, if he thought the Wiggles were so ripe for parody -- which they are, even if they are much-loved by my three-year-old. But Kaufman chooses to unleash his comic genius on the news that one of the Wiggles has a debilitating disease. This is atrocious comic timing at best. I won't speculate about what kind of person Kaufman is, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he doesn't find disease funny, he just isn't funny enough to know what isn't funny.

Hilarious, well-written, and insightful. A+++++ would read again!

...

Oh well, at least it's not another whine about the BCS...

Boy, Mr. kaufman, you can be clever sometimes in your sports column but this just wasn't funny. It also betrays what must be your personal anxiety about hip hop culture.

There's a game tonight King, where are your NFL picks? You could have had Buster flip for all of them in the time it took to write this.

I was wondering why I hadn't seen anything by Herbert Kornfeld in The Onion lately. Salon lured him away.

Looking closely, he does bear some resemblance to King:

http://www.theonion.com/content/columnists/view/kornfeld

War Room is funnier than this. So is Broad Sheet.

Leave the wit to Garrison Keillor. Thanks.

King,

As a parent, a fan of yours, and someone who has spent too many hours in a car with "Do The Monkey" coming through the stereo, I have to say that this is beneath you.

Yes, The Wiggles are easy to make fun of. Their brand of kid-pop can be less than appealing to adults and to children as they get older, but Greg Page is leaving the career he loves because he is suffering from a disease. Did you make fun of any of the athletes who have had to leave their profession because of a disease? When Andres Galarraga had to leave the game, was it a time for levity?

King, I look forward to reading your column, but this is a cynicism that I will have to remember going forward.

"Every daily columnist feels like phoning it in once in a while" - King Kaufman in an ad asking me to pay for a salon.com subscription

Why does every single sportscaster in modern sportscastery feel the need to be a comedian? I couldn't be any more sick of stupid banter and lame puns flying around on shows like Sportsdesk- annoying, self-aware segues, and inane personal commentary that is only superficially about the sport, and more directly about the character or persona of the sportscaster. Like how a Barbara Walters interview is as much about the interviewee as it is about Babs.

Except most sportscasters are hardly fledgling Barbara Walterses.

Today's Kaufman article, unless I have failed to understand something, is a new, lower, level. This doesn't even have anything to do with sports, as far as I can tell. And it is not funny. Perhaps to the selection of readers who have better knowledge of the latest trends capturing the pre-schooler market (read: parents of pre-schoolers) it is perfectly clear what's going on here, but this inside joke seems a little too inside. A little too low and inside, to be specific.

See? That lame joke had something vaguely to do with sports.

I'm sure in all the world of sports there must be something sporty and interesting to write about. Maybe all the modern sports writers and journalists and television personalitieshad aspirations to comedy, or maybe they are just a bunch of thick headed frat boys who really aren't aware of how lame their jokes are. The point is, leave the humour to humourists. There is no harm working it into the writing, but it seems a little silly to sacrifice the "sports" part of the "sports section" so greatly for a little self-indulgent game of dress-up.

oh of course this isn't a sports article. It's a "satire."

Well, of course. How could I have made that mistake?

...

wtf is going on at salon?

dude. lame.

"The four men, who are white, affect the personas and speech of black American hip-hop stars."

The Purple One is Chinese and his skin isn't very white, King.

How am I going to make small talk with the other sports fans in the office without your normal column?

My advice would be to stick with the sports - this was a good effort but in the end should have been nixed by the editorial staff :)