The value of humor

[yguy]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

That doesn't really make sense but ok.

Try reading it when you're not stoned.

[wei yau]

All this talk about humor and politics and no one has mentioned this gem?

[Adam]

No one mentioned it because no one's seen it.

This, of course, is the fault of a vast left wing conspiracy on the part of the squeaky voiced teens who work at movie theaters. Those scamps have been selling viewers tickets to the wrong movies!

[Adam]

Originally Posted by yguy

I laughed for 5 minutes straight, whereas liberals were not the least bit amused.

On the contrary, I think the joke itself is hilarious. I thought the same thing about Bush's little sketch where he looked for WMDs under his couch.

"Liberals" didn't object to these jokes because they weren't funny. They objected because they were in appropriate for the POTUS. It's difficult to engage in meaningful diplomacy with a nation while you're making jokes (or singing songs...) about bombing them. It's difficult to convince the civilians of an occupied nation that you have their best interests at heart when you're making light of the poor assumptions that led you to occupy them in the first place.

Had anyone else told those same jokes about the President, they would have been funny. When the President tells them, they're inappropriate.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by Adam

No one mentioned it because no one's seen it.

This, of course, is the fault of a vast left wing conspiracy on the part of the squeaky voiced teens who work at movie theaters. Those scamps have been selling viewers tickets to the wrong movies!

[yguy]

Originally Posted by Adam

It's difficult to engage in meaningful diplomacy with a nation while you're making jokes (or singing songs...) about bombing them.

And yet somehow the Berlin Wall came down. No way in Hell would that have happened had Carter or Mondale been President, but presumably they'd have been constantly oozing with "propriety".

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by yguy

Try reading it when you're not stoned.

I'll try to carve out some time next week after the Party meeting.

[Farren]

Originally Posted by yguy

Yes, I'm aware of the conceit, dearly held by liberals, that conservatives have no sense of humor. What you guys don't understand is that humor is necessarily linked to truth, wherefore if the beliefs you have an emotional investment in are lies, you will find humor in things that aren't funny and vice versa. That's how Sandra Bernhard felt justified in including a declaration that Sarah Palin would be gang raped by black guys if she ever set foot in NYC. And that's why when Reagan, speaking into what he thought was a dead mike, said

I'm pleased to announce that I've just signed legislation making the Soviet Union illegal. Bombing will begin in 5 minutes.

I laughed for 5 minutes straight, whereas liberals were not the least bit amused.

It doesn't do that. It just demonstrates that he doesn't consider a copy of the book sacred. Whenever it is suggested, for instance, that ID should be given equal status with evolution in education, atheists can usually be counted on to display plenty of religious fervor.

yguy, I don't think you understood me at all. I didn't say conservatives don't have a sense of humour. I said they hold more things sacred and therefore have less things to parody, mock, satirise or whatever.

A leftist atheist can target just about anything in any fashion they please, but for social conservatives some things are off limits and some must be stepped around carefully.

Actually... that's not true. I think a lot of leftists do have things they'll generally steer clear of. But my contention is that they've got more material to work with. I mean, most of the social conservatives I know have far less latitude in what they think are permissible words and permissible subjects. It kind of goes with the territory, doesn't it?

Libertarians, who are thought of as right-of-center economically, may have a lot of latitude in the humor department, but I think social conservatives are generally quite constrained.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by yguy

And yet somehow the Berlin Wall came down. No way in Hell would that have happened had Carter or Mondale been President, but presumably they'd have been constantly oozing with "propriety".

Yah, I just pointed out that you're at least partially incorrect about "liberals" not thinking such jokes are funny. We can argue about whether or not a second Carter Presidency would have magically resolved all the weaknesses and contradictions of Soviet Communism and allowed the Kremlin to rule the world in another thread.

[Kael]

Originally Posted by yguy

What you guys don't understand is that humor is necessarily linked to truth, wherefore if the beliefs you have...

Wherefore means 'for that cause or reason', or archaically 'why'. Therefore is more appropriate for this sentence, since you're making an 'if/then' statement.

Whenever it is suggested, for instance, that ID should be given equal status with evolution in education, atheists can usually be counted on to display plenty of religious fervor.

The problem, with most people, is not that they hold evolutionary theory in hallowed esteem, but rather the simple fact that ID has no scientific merit. Certainly nothing that would give it 'equal status' with evolution in a science class. It is akin to the belief that the earth is the center of the universe. It makes intuitive sense, but is not supported by observational data. Since science is all about observational data...

[yguy]

Originally Posted by Farren

...my contention is that they've got more material to work with...

Actually I didn't miss that point, but just wanted to go in a different direction.

But since you've reiterated, lets compare comedy to music. Certainly Schoenberg had more to work with than Bach, but I doubt many who have heard both would rate the first over the second. Or look at Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly, who were closely matched in technical virtuosity; but Coltrane towards the end of his career became increasingly cacophonous. His "Ascension" album was, despite the formidable talent assembled therein, essentially 40 minutes of banging, howling and screeching, sufferable for any length of time only by the mentally ill. Adderly could have done something like it, but it would have added neither to his reputation nor to the musical realm.

I suppose there are people who listen to the Schoenbergs, the Ives's, the Ornette Colemans and the Cecil Taylors; but for all the abundance of "material they had to work with", they've somehow been pretty much forgotten.

So if the parallel has any merit at all, I think it demonstrates that something more fundamental than mere numerical advantage has to be at play in the predominance of liberal comedians.

[yguy]

Originally Posted by Adam

Yah, I just pointed out that you're at least partially incorrect about "liberals" not thinking such jokes are funny.

I doubt that. For one thing, I remember some of press reactions to Reagan's joke. For another, while you claimed you thought it was funny, you also said it was improper; so it's not clear to me whether you were laughing with Reagan or at him.

[yguy]

Originally Posted by Kael

ID has no scientific merit.

It has far more than does evolution as applied to Homo Sapiens, for reasons I've stated previously many a time, and which I won't go into here.

[wei yau]

McCain and Obama speaking at Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner.

I've only listened to McCain so far and he was very funny. If only the debates were this interesting.

It's about 25 minutes long.

[ChuckF]

Was just about to poast that. McCain was much funnier than Obama.

[Dragar]

Just watched them; both were nice speeches. McCain impressed me a lot with his (the respect for Obama seemed genuine and heartfelt; he's not normally so charismatic I find), but I liked Obama's too.

[wei yau]

Time to switch dance partners?

[Adam]

Originally Posted by yguy

I doubt that. For one thing, I remember some of press reactions to Reagan's joke. For another, while you claimed you thought it was funny, you also said it was improper; so it's not clear to me whether you were laughing with Reagan or at him.

Neither. We're back to the absurdity thing. The idea that war is politics by other means, taking to its logical, and absurd, conclusion, means that we could legislate nations out of existence. With bombs. It's funny. It's just not an appropriate comment for the POTUS to make.

[Alex]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that scoffers always have the best jokes. Recent satirical takes on maverickism in the presidential campaign have brought glee into many of our lives. On this forum there are posters who can entertain with a superior line of invective. But to question why liberal scoffers dominate the laughs industry in America (and Europe) isn't a frivolous exercise. Here's a few conjectures.

First, who are the "liberal scoffers"? Apart from the obvious candidates such as comedians working on TV and radio, there are professional iconoclasts in journals and newspapers who write amusing columns that caricature "conservative" attitudes and opinions, there are cartoonists who do the same thing, internet bloggers who specialise in irony, and so on.

Where did the liberal commentariat and their associate licensed jesters get their liberal attitudes? And why do their jokes resonate so widely among the general public? Well, people adopt liberal attitudes and habits of thought for a great variety of reasons. What I want to conjecture is that the aggregate of those reasons has resulted in liberalism becoming the intellectual currency of our time and the default world-view in Western societies. Some educated people pick up their liberal values from their mentors and peer groups at college or university. Many people no doubt work them out for themselves. But even among people who have no opinions of their own, liberal notions are poured like lubricant into machinery. Oilers and greasers in the mass media are working on this task.

The targets of liberal wit are of course the opinions and dispositions that can be characterized as opposing goodwill turned doctrinaire. Only ignorant jerks and reactionary buffoons would do that. Their old-fashioned impostures are laughable. In other words, those who reject current social mores or resist political trends are guilty of folly, and they deserve to be chastised with ridicule.

Generally, the liberal perspective on politics, morals, etc., is much harder to lampoon than the conservative alternative. Fashionable cynicism is never suspended.

My final conjecture: What might be called liberal satire is a cultural phenomenon: it's a comedy congenial to the spirit of the times. There's probably a student of mockery out there who is working on a Ph.D thesis that will explain the whole thing..........

[yguy]

Originally Posted by Adam

Neither. We're back to the absurdity thing. The idea that war is politics by other means, taking to its logical, and absurd, conclusion, means that we could legislate nations out of existence. With bombs. It's funny.

There's more to it than that. Reagan knew perfectly well how liberals thought of him. He was simultaneously making fun of them for implying he was a warmonger and letting anyone of good will know the absurdity of thinking he was.

So essentially, your getting the joke is rather akin to thinking Fogarty's version of Grapevine is as good as Marvin's.

It's just not an appropriate comment for the POTUS to make.

If you were a martial arts instructor who challenged his student to attack him for instructional purposes, and he ended up putting you on your back, you'd say he did it wrong.

[Seven of Nine]

[quote=Watser?;606848]

Originally Posted by Seven of Nine

um, er, Watser?. I was just wondering: is there any particular reason for your charactorizing leeks as being especially humorless? For instance, did some leek fail to laugh at a joke you told?

Leeks never laugh at any of my jokes nor tell any funny jokes of their own.

I must respectfully beg to differ, Watser?! I've been fortunate enough to have been closely associated with two who were especially adept at my favorite form of humor, the droll conversational remark and I know of one leek, in particular, who frequently laughs at your jokes.

Also I like the word leek.

As do I! It has a long and venerable history, going all the way back to Old English.

Also I like pictures of leeks.

Me, too! According to folk tradition, Richard the Lionheart had a depiction of one on his shield.

Originally Posted by Seven of Nine

um, and how much do you ordinarily pay someone to make you laugh?

Well, yguy asked why we pay people to make us laugh. I have on occasion paid money however to go to a show by some comedian or bought cds or dvds by comedians

As someone who owns a treasured selection of books by humorists and would gladly buy more, the answer to that question seems obvious to me: I feel happy when amused and happiness is of definite value to me, especially since some forms of it are in short supply and can't be purchased at all.
I used to buy the local sunday paper, an extravagence on my part, just to read Dave Berry's weekly humor column, and I wish I owned my own copy of his novel, Big Trouble.
I also place particular value on having a canine companion of a particular breed inclined to exhibit a certain zaniness of behavior which I find particularly amusing.

So, what if a leek actually managed to make you laugh? What would that be worth to you (if anything)?

[Adam]

Ah, I see, Reagan was trolling. Good to know.

So, we've full circle, back to my original post. The part you found funny wasn't the absurdity of legislating a nation out of existence, it was HAHA POKE TEH LIBRULS WITH A STIK! That was what I was saying in my original post. You don't see much explicitly rightist humor because when rightwingers try to do humor they tend to just take shots at liberals and call that funny, rather than finding the absurdities in the world around them. There's occasionally some overlap, as in the Reagan example, and they end up with something with a broader appeal, but they have less success than they might if their first priority was finding the absurd rather than poking liberals with a stick.

[Watser?]

I would pay an as yet undefined amount of money to see a leek laughing at a joke.

As for a leek making me laugh, here's exhibit A:

http://dojo.fi/~rancid/loituma__.swf

and B:

Loituma - Prei @ PiczoGame.net

[yguy]

Originally Posted by Adam

The part you found funny wasn't the absurdity of legislating a nation out of existence,

No, I said there was more to it than that. The absurdity by itself has an appeal to a sterile, intellectual sort of humor, but it wouldn't have gotten me laughing for minutes on end.

it was HAHA POKE TEH LIBRULS WITH A STIK! That was what I was saying in my original post. You don't see much explicitly rightist humor because when rightwingers try to do humor they tend to just take shots at liberals and call that funny, rather than finding the absurdities in the world around them.

What you are understandably forgetting is that there is nothing more absurd than modern liberalism, which is why Limbaugh has become an institution; and naturally, he is not deemed to be anything but mean spirited by those whose absurdities are to them sacrosanct.

That said, there is a point where absurdities become atrocities. Extramarital sex can be the basis of a sitcom because in the shallow minds at whom it is directed, the consequences are out of sight and out of mind; but there's nothing funny about divorce, STD's, abortion and the like.

[Kael]

Originally Posted by Seven of Nine

As someone who owns a treasured selection of books by humorists and would gladly buy more, the answer to that question seems obvious to me: I feel happy when amused and happiness is of definite value to me, especially since some forms of it are in short supply and can't be purchased at all.

But... but... Money CAN'T buy happiness! At all! My world (of platitudes) is closing in around me...

Originally Posted by yguy

No, I said there was more to it than that. The absurdity by itself has an appeal to a sterile, intellectual sort of humor, but it wouldn't have gotten me laughing for minutes on end.

Intellectual, of course, but calling it sterile just says to me that you don't like 'high-brow' humor. That doesn't make it any less funny. For example: Read this strip. The most likely reason for not laughing is not getting the reference, thus it can be called intellectual. How does the label 'sterile' apply, save as an indication of your distaste for such?