Althouse: "If you ever laughed at anything or anyone on this list, you are a racist...."

May 15, 2007

"If you ever laughed at anything or anyone on this list, you are a racist...."

How to get along in these post-Imus times.

13 comments:

Mark Daniels said...: Merely mocking people shouldn't be a fire-able offense. But denigrating people's humanity with racial stereotypes or joining in when others fantasize rape should be. There's nothing funny about such crap...nothing.

Mark Daniels; 5/15/07, 7:26 AM
The Drill SGT said...: Mark said...But denigrating people's humanity with racial stereotypes

Is that all victims or just the correct victims.

Meaning, is it possible to be in California and make a racist joke about Asians getting into Cal, or white German Sargeants, or are racial slurs only considered racial slurs when applied to people of color?; 5/15/07, 8:11 AM
Richard Dolan said...: "There's nothing funny about such crap...nothing." Yes, of course. But there's nothing serious about it either. It's the difference between make-believe and the real thing. As a nation, we've gone through periods of real racism producing direct (and very harmful) consequences for all. But this article is poking fun at something quite different -- unfunny blather of the Imus sort that has as its only real-world consequence (for everyone except Imus) a big show of feel-good righteousness. I suppose that there's nothing harmful in a little indignation at such stuff. But it can quickly morph into something that is not nearly so harmless -- Prof. Kaplan's experience that got a lot of play here comes to mind, to pick just one example.

When make-believe racism of this sort becomes the focus of attention, it's just further proof that the State of the Union is strong (to borrow a line we've all heard before, from both sides of the aisle).; 5/15/07, 9:09 AM
Mark Daniels said...: DS:
Racial slurs are racial slurs. Period. People are free to use them. But others are free to repudiate them and employers are free to can so-called "entertainers" who use slurs instead of actually being creative.

Mark; 5/15/07, 9:40 AM
MadisonMan said...: For the record, I never thought F. Guido Sarducci was funny, and I always groaned when he showed up on SNL. Ditto Chico Escuela.; 5/15/07, 9:58 AM
paul a'barge said...: I never thought F. Guido Sarducci was funny

Well. There you go. I thought he was the bomb. Man, I practically peed in my pants every Saturday Night Live, and I can still watch reruns for the 10th time and weep from laughter.

Look. I'm convinced that a good joke is a life extender. You laugh, you live longer. And I think that's just cosmic justice, because if folks without a sense of humor, like Mark Daniels and all the sanctimonious Liberals out there drop dead at an early age of heart congestion, guess what I'm going to be doing at their funerals?

Stand up. Laughing.; 5/15/07, 10:41 AM
MadisonMan said...: Maybe I don't know enough people in real life like Guido Sarducci to make it funny. He just seemed like a guy talking with a bad Italian Accent to me -- what's funny about that?

I think the funniest bits on TV are when the other performers start to laugh. Christina Applegate and David Spade did that in the 1st Matt Foley skit. Hilarious! Ditto with Harvey Korman all the time on the CBS.; 5/15/07, 11:20 AM
Christy said...: Wonder if All in the Family would have lasted beyond 1 episode if it were to air for the first time in 2007?; 5/15/07, 11:58 AM
An Edjamikated Redneck said...: I read an article one time about how all humor is a glance at someone else's troubles.

Everything I find funny fits into this category, from the joke emails and pictures that show up in my inbox to the books I read.

I still find Mark Twain to be one of our greatest humorists, and some of the funniest bits I've ever read were in Roughing It, Innocents Abroad and Life on the Mississippi. All of the best parts were looks at the trouble he was in, and how he got there.

None of it was dirty, or a put down on anyone else. Even in Huck Finn there weren't any racist slurs.

Why is it so many modern comics need to "push the envelope"? is it because they can be funny inside moral parameters?; 5/15/07, 12:02 PM
Kirby Olson said...: In the Soviet Union the top theorist of social Realism was Andrei Zhdanov.

He hated comedy because it implied at least two identities for each character and his simple theory could only allow for one identity: prole or bouge.

And the main crowd he hated were the humorists. They all went to the Gulag.

Which may have shortened the lifespan of these humorists.

WARNING: time in the Gulag may affect your health.

So you have to weigh that against giving up your sense of humor. Which may also shorten your life.

Stop, you're killing me. Stop!

The technical term for a person with no sense of humor is an AGELAST.

However, in spite of the name, they do die young. Statistics prove that communists... who have no sense of humor (show me one who does)... die...in Youngstown, or if not, not.; 5/15/07, 12:14 PM
Cedarford said...: The emerging problem is people are beginning to realize that people that play the victimization card to gain power of censorship have indeed begun to have gotten that serious power they have sought over other people's lives and the thoughts that may be permissably uttered from their mouths or in their writings.

Note that in Europe, the organized forces of victimhood, PC, and multiculti have succeeded in establishing "hate speech" laws that are being aggressively used. Even for jokes.
A UK girl in 9th grade was arrested, jailed for two days and fingerprinted for making a "vile ethnic joke" about classmates in veil being so ugly they had to wear veils. Her teachers believed it violated the hate speech codes and had her arrested.

When laws don't work to stifle "seriously offending humor" death threats, as in the Prophet cartoons, do quite nicely. 95% of newspapers were afraid to reprint them and elected to only write about "both sides" being morally equivalent in blame-sharing.

Here in the USA - when organized victimization groups begin to have firing power over other Americans and unelected race-baiters power to select and judge what other Americans can say or think - it becomes a serious threat to all of our liberties. If our democratic system cannot fix it, then the likely outcome is the rise of vehement opposition groups dedicated to the marginalization and personal destruction of the victimization groups and unelected "leaders", which are now mostly on the Leftist side. It happened in Weimer Germany. Fascism arose as a self-defense response to the Left's demonization of major sectors and individuals in society. That did not end well.; 5/15/07, 12:23 PM
Laura Reynolds said...: I'm with you MM about FGS.

I thought "The Gods Must Be Crazy" was funny. Speedy Gonzales too.

Now the Frito Bandito was a bit racist.; 5/15/07, 12:40 PM
paul a'barge said...: ...Guido Sarducci to make it funny. He just seemed like a guy talking with a bad Italian Accent to me ...

Precisely. Except that layered on top of that was the character, an Italian priest, who was very un-priesetly ...

It's fine if you didn't laugh at Guido. You're probably more discerning than I am ... I prefer to laugh at even the most feeble attempts at humor, unless (of course) it's Liberal snark.

Trying to explain funny is like trying to untie the Gordian Knot.; 5/15/07, 2:52 PM