While ranting against the substandard level of entertainment so pervasive these days, a number of Rinderpest.com readers offered names of comedians they felt were deserving of respect and laughs. I grew weary of the "well what about so and so?" interaction, and to save time, decided to compile a list of rebuttals to each suggestion. That list is as follows:

Robin Williams
He must be funny, right? He's talking so fast, oh the hilarity! Someone please show me the difference between Williams and any other cokehead who says every word that comes into his brain. Now that he's off the blow, he's just doing an imitation of himself on coke, which somehow manages to be less funny than the real thing. By sheer quantity of words coming out of his mouth, eventually (it is rumored) he is statistically bound to say something funny. Monkeys are furiously attempting to type up Hamlet first.

Martin Short
Funny more often than Robin Williams, but that's kind of like being the world's tallest midget. He's one of those people who thinks he's "zany," and therefore must be zany at all times. Forced zan-ity is just sad, folks. Sad.

George Carlin
I read "Silly Putty and Napalm", and it couldn't have been any less funny if it were covered in pictures of dead babies. Compared to his old stuff, he might as well be the personification of The Simpsons, Season 10.

Drew Carrey
It wasn't enough that he be unfunny on his own, but he had to go and ruin one of my favorite television shows, "Who's Line is It Anyway," with his self-serving "improv," which mostly just consists of Carrey grinning like a fool while Ryan Stiles tries to mime "What happened to my talent?"

Woody Allen
He should be tried for crimes against humanity for forcing poor, unsuspecting actors to play HIM over and over and over again, and then having the balls to also be in the movie so we can see just what a bad imitation the lead actor is doing. Reference: Anything Else starring Jason Biggs.

John Cleese
Hm, name rings a bell, let's see, where do I know him from . . . oh yeah, The Adventures of Pluto Nash! Right, and he does all that voice work for instant classics like The Swan Princess and George of the Jungle 1 AND 2!

Or maybe his Monty Python days? Of course, it's impossible for a person to criticize the classic "Holy Grail," since if I did thousands of humorless geeks would descend upon me like bespeckled locusts, screaming their impotent quotes which have been so repeated as to have lost whatever shred of funny they originally possessed, which honestly wasn't that much. It's the movie for overweight roleplaying high school rejects to watch in the darkness of their parents' basements, memorizing lines in the hope that by merely endlessly repeating what others find funny, they may be considered funny themselves. Sorry, but while "Holy Grail" may have been a watchably funny movie, the mindless parrots that it has spawned takes away from any good it may have contributed to the universe.

Andy Kaufman
Right on par with "modern artists" who eat a lot of corn before taking a dump on a pedestal and calling it "found art." By Kaufman's standards, the greatest comedian of our time is a pale blue sweater vest in the back of my aunt's closet, because it's not funny at all , and if you don't get that then you just don't understand the sweater vest's unique worldview.

Ellen Degeneres
Was funny before she decided that a sitcom would be made funnier if it was all about how freaking gay she is. Then she decided to go all Rosie on the world with a family friendly, happy midday talk show. If she got any blander, she would actually become the color "beige."

Kathy Griffin
So funny that her best work was on Hollywood Squares until she was upstaged by Bruce Villanch. Wait, I take it back. Suddenly Susan was her best show, and like, oh my god, did you know that she has breasts?

Colin Quinn
I'm actually convinced that Colin Quinn is a robot created by other stand-up comics to make them look better by comparison.

Lewis Black
If I wanted to laugh while someone rants incoherently with spittle-filled rage, I'd double dose my grandpa on his medication again.

Jeff Foxworthy
You might be a redneck if you SOLD YOUR SOUL TO SATAN HIMSELF in order to somehow keep a comedy career moving for over ten years based on one uncreative joke. The continued existence of Jeff Foxworthy is enough reason to have the headquarters of Comedy Central firebombed immediately.

The Amazing Johnathan
If you wanted to see someone doing a poor imitation of classic Penn & Teller, you should go see Penn & Teller.

Bill Cosby
Used to be funny. So what happened? He caught a disease where he was compelled to wear the ugliest sweaters known to man with absolutley zero irony. Then he introduced us to the whitest family ever seen on television. What a trailblazer!

Dave Chapelle
See crimes of Cleese, above. Has encouraged white frat boys everywhere to quote long and boring passages and giggle furiously, only instead of adopting a bad British accent like the fat roleplaying nerds, they adopt an even worse "black" accent. These people should be shot on sight, and Chapelle should be arrested.

Dennis Miller
Monday Night Football. Seriously, what kind of idea was that? The man prides himself on making painfully obvious jokes that he considers high-brow, so of course he would be immediately embraced by the football-watching community. He's possibly the ONLY comedian to ever get replaced on a show by John Madden. BOOM! Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. Oh wait, no, that's a fact. Nevermind.

Jay Leno
Seriously, this is too easy. Okay, I suppose someone out there might actually like him, so I won't skip him.

Of course, most criticism of him comes from the simple fact that there's just no way he could live up to the reputation of his Tonight Show predecessor. I speak, of course, of Joan Rivers. He looks and sounds like a freakishly overgrown baby-man, which I suppose is how he gets most of his laughs, by wiggling his little baby-man arms and squeeling with his baby-man voice, because his "jokes" are only "jokes" in name only. I imagine he must walk around with a portable version of the "applause" sign to make sure he gets the same response at parties that he gets on stage.

David Letterman
Once considered subversively funny, now he marinates in a bitter sauce of hatred against Leno. Got his job primarily through a mix-up with the producers who thought they were hiring Alfred E. Newman. Punchline fall flat? Just throw a pencil at the camera. How delightfully ZANY!

Craig Kilborn
Please. Let's see what would happen if we set up a camera at a frat party and named one of the pledges "host." I keep expecting him to yell "Chug!" at the end of a joke. If it weren't for his hair, he'd be doing color commentary at junior varsity girl's basketball games, until he gets fired for making crass mysogynistic jokes about the captain's developing breasts.

Conan O'Brian
Considered a pioneer in the late show format for hosting a show featuring a band, a monologue, fawning celebrity interviews, hastily written unfunny sketches, and a desk. Oh, but sometimes he does a silly dance.

Tim Brook-Taylor, Grame Garden, Willie Rushton, and Barry Cryer
I'm not going to waste my time critisizing a bunch of poor sods languishing in obscurity (or already dead and forgotten) for the benefit of their five remaining fans.

Margaret Cho
Ah, America's favorite fag hag. Because Debra Messing is too thin and good-looking. She's so annoying that even the chunky, sexless politically correct college freshmen who make up her core fan base have abandoned her. She seems to think that just because she got a modicum of attention for making someone chuckle once, anybody gives a flying crap what she has to say about politics. There should be a name for this disease, but I'm not sure whether she deserves to get the honor, since I think Janaene Garafolo went there first.

Carson Daly
Oh, my. Carson Daly. Where to even begin? From those wonderful folks who gave us Pauly Shore and Downtown Julie Brown comes this peice of cardboard holding a microphone. What network brainiac thought that his popularity amongst the coveted 10-15 year old girl demographic would translate into late night talk show success? I imagine it was the same guy who put Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football. Whoever he is, he should be stopped before he starts making chicken-flavored ice cream or a parachuting school for babies. Wait, I'm getting sidetracked. To tie it all together, I'll just say that Carson Daly is the sort of person who wants to be Craig Kilborn and spends his days quoting Dave Chappelle in a bad attempt at ebonics.

Billy Connolly
Billy Connolly couldn't funny his way out of a wet paper bag. He looks like a French poodle that got sucked up by a vacuum cleaner and then pulled back out of the dust bag. His snarky little nuggets of Scoootish wisdom sound like the sorts of things that 14 year old histrionic girls come up with to put in the yearbook thinking they're clever and original. The last time I saw him on a talk show, I actually saw an audience member DIE from the lack of funny. He was promoting his standout role in White Oleander, possibly his greatest role ever. He greatly increased the watchability of this movie by dying violently in the first act.

Dana Carvey
Dana Carvey did about three funny things in his entire life, but sadly none were actually captured on film. His entire career has been spent mugging for the camera and grasping desperately to any idea that received positive reinforcement in the past, like a border collie that keeps fetching the stuffed bunny in the hopes that he'll get just one more enthusiastic pat on the head. There should be an island somewhere that we can send SNL members before they have a chance to escape from their allotted one hour a week on our televisions and spread all over other timeslots and movie theaters.

Jerry Seinfeld
What's the DEAL with comedians who just aren't funny? At all? I'll give this to Seinfeld � he (or some network executive) was smart enough to surround himself on his show with people who could actually act. I just feel sorry for the poor schmucks who shell out money to see his stand-up expecting to see Larry David. Also, Jerry, no, I don't think it's terribly brave of you to hit the stand-up circuit even though you already have billions of dollars. If you were a plumber who had won the lottery and then went back to sticking your hands into clogged toilet bowls because you just really love it, we'd rightfully say you were a fruitcake.

Chris Rock
Chris Rock, a comedic actor of such depth and range that he is completely unable to take on a role who's character bio doesn't include the term "sass-talking."

"Mr. Rock, we have a great part for you, it's a touching drama starring Sir Ian McKellan as a dying artist. You'd be his gardner."

"And does this gardner, as they say, talk sass?"

"Oh, of course!"

Jimmy Kimmel
This man got to be famous by looking funny standing next to Ben Stein on a Comedy Central gameshow. BEN STEIN! When he left that show, they replaced him with a chipmunk and ratings soared.

Adam Carola
Does this man still have a career? I'd rather not believe that to be true, so I'll just move on . . .

. . . as soon as I mention that, he got famous by insulting 16 year old cum dumpsters with the clap. How hard is that? I just did it, and you don't see me getting my own television show, much less TWO.

Bobcat Goldthwait
No complaints. I can't think of a better comic to complement Steve Guttenberg in Police Academy 3. Those are two great tastes that taste great together.

Sam Kinison and Bill Hicks
I'll take on these two together, since they share one very important trait -- that of dying before people had a chance to see what hacks they were.

Kinison? Kinison hails from the school of comedy based on the same principle used by countless elementary school choir members: if you can't sing well, sing loudly. Paramedics at the scene of his death were unable to administer proper first aid, since they mistook his flailing and tortured screams for an impromptu roadside show.

Hicks, who took on such difficult and fast-moving targets as Vanilla Ice and corporate America, had one funny gag in his life, and that was spending a lifetime railing against nonsmokers and then dying of cancer.

If these guys were still alive today, they'd be standing in line with Jay Mohr and Joe Rogan waiting for their slices of network pie.

Thanks, I'm glad I was able to get all that out.