"A shameless punchline thief, he doesn’t discriminate between dad jokes or insult humor. On Twitter, he’s Beavis and Butt-Head, chuckling at everything.... His stated reason for buying Twitter is to expand free speech, a cause he took up in part because it suspended the account of a conservative parody site, the Babylon Bee, after a post. Days after taking over Twitter, he tweeted: 'Comedy is legal again.' Then people started making fun of him and you’ll never believe what happened next. Elon Musk, comedy savior, transformed into the joke police.... The reason he’s found himself cast in this public drama as the humorless square, the Comstockian scold, is that while labeling something parody might be bad for comedy, it can be essential for credibility.... While he’s not especially good at comedy, Musk is a wonderful comic character: The boss who thinks he’s funny but isn’t. He’s Michael Scott from 'The Office,' whose terrible jokes everyone must if not laugh at, at least put up with.... Musk doesn’t need to own his haters in a tweet. They already work for him for free."
From "Hey, Elon Musk, Comedy Doesn’t Want to Be Legal/He’s Twitter’s chief jokester, but as his free-speech impulses conflict with his push to label parodies, he shows a misunderstanding of how humor works" by Jason Zinoman, the NYT comedy critic.
Zinoman packs a lot into that column. It was hard to excerpt! As a reader, I felt flattered to be assumed to know what "Comstockian" means. If anyone needs to brush up on the story of Anthony Comstock, here's his Wikipedia article. Excerpt:
Anthony Comstock (March 7, 1844 – September 21, 1915) was an anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector, and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), who was dedicated to upholding Christian morality....
Motivated by first-hand experience with what he saw as a constant barrage of debauchery among fellow Union soldiers during the Civil War, when he gained power it was not long before Comstock aroused intense loathing from early civil liberties groups.... Comstock, the self-styled "weeder in God's garden", arrested D. M. Bennett for publishing "An Open Letter to Jesus Christ" and later had the editor charged for mailing a free-love pamphlet....
Through his various campaigns, he destroyed 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing "objectionable" books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures.... According to one obituary, Comstock left behind a large collection of pictures, prints, and other literature that he had seized during his career, "which is said to contain a sufficient amount of real pornographic material."
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Comstockian and Progressive are the same thing.
Moralistic fascists forcing you to do what they want for your own good.
And now you have the moralists on both sides teaming up against the majority of people that want to be left alone.
Whether you are part of the GOPe or the Progressive moralist movement it doesn't matter. You are on the same team in the end.
For a few days there, it seemed every other tweet was criticizing Musk for not allowing people to criticize him on twitter. That was funny. Now we're back to fighting over COVID.
I would like Musk to have less to say (how is he not too busy for this crap?), but I'm not arrogant enough to think that Musk needs to know or care what I think. Which distinguishes me from every other person on my feed.
Days after taking over Twitter, he tweeted: 'Comedy is legal again.' Then people started making fun of him and you’ll never believe what happened next. Elon Musk, comedy savior, transformed into the joke police
This would have to be censored, as disinformation.
Musk said parody accounts would have to be declared up front, or be censored. It is impossible for the left to advance their agenda, and tell the truth at the same time.
Interesting analysis but... Musk's behavior on Twitter is not changed much from his previous tweeting before buying the site. Witness his "Senator Karen" comment from almost a year ago. Or his needling Bezos. Classic Musk. And no, Michael Scott was an idiot, which was the basis for much of the humor. Musk is not a clueless dolt managing cleverer people and the leftist media attempts to alinsky him (isolate, focus the hate, mock and misbehave) are stupid and ultimately counterproductive.
My strong belief is that this is of a piece with the continuing efforts to avoid reckoning with the facts of Twitter: there were in fact upwards of 50% "bots" posing as real people (as distinguished from the newsfeed/weather type bots allowed on Twitter) and the bloated wine-soaked working-from-home staff did need trimming, which even the old owners acknowledged. Anyone criticizing this move specifically should be obligated to explain why the any of the "50%" laid off staff would have avoided being one of the 25% of the staff scheduled to be laid off under the prior admin.
Electric car Musk=Good.
Twitter Musk= bad.
That's all you need to know. It works well for Democrats.
Knowledge of Comstock had a bit of revival back when the video game Bioshock Infinite came out about 10 years ago.
Breitbart was right on when he said "politics is downstream of culture." There's a transmission belt of ideas from video games and comic books into the mainstream. Terribly distorted history unfortuately, bereft of any context. Howard Zinn is laughing in his own hell.
Zinoman packs a lot into that column.
The excerpted bits reveal a lot of dishonesty relative to the tiny amount of text Althouse copied. He writes "push to label parodies" but what Musk actually did was stop people from violating the TOS that specifically forbids blue-checks from psoting under a name other than the one verified. He wanted that kind of behavior clearly labeled "parody" in order to comply because the act is otherwise not allowed, and so Zinoman clearly doesn't understand how humor works. Or maybe he's the kind of idiot that thinks it's funny to yell "Fire" in a theatre. Like Michael Scott would.
Then people started making fun of him and you’ll never believe what happened next. Elon Musk, comedy savior, transformed into the joke police
This is 100% false.
If you watched Weird Al Yankovic imitate Michael Jackson in the 1980s you knew it was parody. You could see it. He obviously wasn't Michael Jackson.
But on Twitter, as demonstrated by Kathy Griffin, you can't. Name, current profile photo, coming from a verified account was fraud, and was against Twitters original terms. That wasn't "making fun" of Musk, that was fraudulently representing yourself AS Elon Musk.
This could happen to anyone, and protection from this type of fraud on social media is important. A lot of damage can be done in your name, very quickly.
Now the Musk haters care??? Give us a break.
It's fun to watch a guy with fuck you money fuck with people who deserved to be fucked with. And yes. It's funny. They have yet to outwit him.
The last laugh will be when Musk makes Twitter larger, profitable, and open for everyone, not just left wing elitists who took marching orders from the CIA and Democrat Party.
Through his various campaigns, he destroyed 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing "objectionable" books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures.... According to one obituary, Comstock left behind a large collection of pictures, prints, and other literature that he had seized during his career, "which is said to contain a sufficient amount of real pornographic material."
So. Basically you're common leftist scold. Got it.
Jimmy Carr tells a great joke." We all agree that the holocaust was terrible. That killing six million Jews was a nightmare. But like all bad things there's a bright side. Thousands of gypsies were murdered too."
To be fairrrrr. He deliberately pushes limits.
I’ll admit Musk responses are confusing, but I’ll assert again the banned accounts were not about comedy as much as using his name and likeness to make statements appearing to come from Musk without making clear they were not him. If Babylon Bee used the NYTimes Masthead and appearance then wrote stories as if they were the NYTimes, I’d expect to NYTimes to sue. If they did via the NYTimes website, then I’d expect the NYTimes to block the content.
However, it is not surprising that the NYTimes would use Musk’s celebrity to write stories about him and sell content. If they did the same with as much fervor for stuff like Ghislaine Maxwell’s client list or FTX’s donation beneficiaries, then the NYTimes might have a larger customer base.
Latest freak out is "Musk is starving Twitter employees" because he cancelled free meals in the Twitter cafeterias. Boo-hoo.
Musk's response to the criticism was light but factual. Nobody was showing up at the offices anyway, and the average meal cost Twitter more than $400 per plate. Talk about a liberal Ivory Tower. That's worse than and American University when it comes to wasting money and avoiding cost controls.
Liberals like pissing away money, and humor, especially when it's not their own.
I’m so glad that the minions of the Ministry of Truth are on the march against miscreants like Musk. Badthink is doubleplus ungood.
I, for one, look forward to ignoring the newly purchased Twitter just as hard as I ignored the old version. That said, let 1000 fake accounts per day blossom. That's entertainment!
I, for one, look forward to ignoring the newly purchased Twitter just as hard as I ignored the old version.
All of these concern trolls had no problem when the Right was being censored and banned. Fuck'em.
Musk is now fighting with Senator Ed Markey. Media figures are tweeting that Musk was picking a fight with Markey. Actually, Markey started it, blustering and throwing his weight around, but Elon had the better comebacks.
Dishonest article.
Musk banned impersonation. Identity theft in which the tweeter purports to be someone else. That's not parody, unless specifically tagged as such.
The NYT has a 'comedy critic'? Now THAT's funny!
As if Dems understand humor.
What’s funny about Musk’s jokes isn’t their content. It’s the reaction they get from the Left.
Musk’s jokes madden the madding crowd.
Has his interest in electric cars "come and gone." WTF?
Musk is a wonderful comic character: The boss who thinks he’s funny but isn’t. He’s Michael Scott from 'The Office,' whose terrible jokes everyone must if not laugh at, at least put up with....
Sounds like President Brandon. Heh, heh.
Comstock is the subject of a recent biography, The Man Who Hated Women, new feminist twist, dontcha know.
Thoroughly incoherent article. Comedy might conflict with credibility, so the only decent thing to do is let comedy win every time. Or something.
How about dealing with the conflict honestly, and trying to figure out which one should win when?
He tries to make it seem like Musk is reacting to his hurt feelings about the parody account. He does not consider the possibility that Musk was taught something by the incident about how important credibility can be.
Musk is the new Trump. Willfully misunderstand him to score points, ridicule the strawman you've made of him, and destroy any good intentions he may have had by undermining his credibility.
As a reader, I felt flattered to be assumed to know what "Comstockian" means.
Really? You didn't either just look it up if you needed to, or think that the writer is a pretentious ass?
That's how they getcha... They throw in a shibboleth; some readers will know it without looking it up and will feel good about themselves, some will secretly look it up and have to contend with that little frisson of shame at having done so, but will feel good about being in the Kool Kids' Klub, and some will just look it up without emotional baggage because it's an obscure reference and find that it's also a non-sequitur in this case based on available evidence.
It sounds as if this writer would like Musk to be a Comstockian figure, but so far the only thing Musk has said as far as I'm aware is that if you're "doing parody," you can't attempt to attach your "comedy" to someone else's actual identity. This restriction doesn't end parody; it's an attempt to counter fake news - this kind would be disinformation, I think, if I'm remembering the categories correctly - since the only reason to "parody" someone under that person's actual identity is to make others believe that that person actually said the thing you are pretending he said. How else could it reasonably be interpreted?
It's analogous to the election garbage. The "comedian" claims to be doing "parody" but performs it in such a way that the reasonable person would identify it as a real quote from the real person being supposedly parodied. But question that the person is actually doing comedy and you're, what, a comedy denier, I guess.
The column was packed with claims about Musk that exist only in Zinoman's head. It's Trump derangement all over again and it's weird. Is he deliberately lying or does he really believe his own BS?
I can't tell anymore.
Bet I am not the only one who reads a few sentences of a post and immediately imagines NYT or Wapo, and then scrolls down to validate my assumption.
Musk should buy NYT next fire the kids and hire Tucker and Gutfield types, now that would be funny.
There is nothing funnier than a comedy critic from the NYTs. Comedy needs experts who can fact check the comedy.
Jason Zinoman reminds me of Ellsworth Toohey from Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead".
Toohey was a socialist architecture critic who never built anything in his life.
I'd imagine the conversation between Musk and Zinoman would be the same as the brief interaction between Howard Rourke and Ellsworth Toohey in the book.
Zinoman: "Mr. Musk, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."
Musk: "But I don't think of you.”
TDS is being replaced by MDS.
It's the new thing.
If this idiot Zinoman actually believes Musk "thinks he's funny BUT ISN'T", he's revealing himself as someone whose opinions on everything can safely be ignored going forward. Musk's tweets are hilarious. Just because they go over the heads of lame lickspittle scolds like Zinoman doesn't change this fact.
That's not funny and we're not serious... It' because he's African-American, right?
The first rule of progressive liberal club is take a knee, beg, donate.
D.D. Driver: "Has his interest in electric cars "come and gone." WTF?"
Hard to imagine a more disconnected and irrelevant question than that throwaway.
But day is still young, let's see what else it brings.
FullMoon said...
Bet I am not the only one who reads a few sentences of a post and immediately imagines NYT or Wapo, and then scrolls down to validate my assumption.
Musk should buy NYT next fire the kids and hire Tucker and Gutfeld types, now that would be funny.
11/14/22, 1:10 PM
THIS^^^
NYT is dark sarcasm delivered as SPAM.
The NY Times comedy critic, Jason Zinoman: "Comedy is subjective" ... but Elon Musk isn't funny.
Zinoman also alleges that Elon is "a shameless punchline thief" yet as evidence he cites to one entry within a twitter thread in which Elon appears to by repeating a trope with the realization and purpose of it being a trope, with no evidence of a claim to original authorship (and where no specific authorship is apparently known).
Zinoman makes a similar error in his observation that Elon, with ill-meaning, spread "cruel disinformation about the assaulted husband of Nancy Pelosi." As Ann Althouse noted, a more accurate (and funnier) perspective is that Elon was posting a baseless accusation in response to a baseless accusation from Hillary Clinton.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-most-delightfully-layered.html
It seems Zinoman is a joke and an audience that does not get the joke.
@Althouse, still letting the Times get you whipped up about Musk? I see that Jeff Bezos is planning to lay off 10,000 Amazon employees (presumably right after Christmas). But you're only concerned about the 3700 that Musk plans to lay off because ...
Musk now suspects that Twitter may have "ghost employees" who only exist as entries in the corporate employee database and have not done any work for the company since March 2020. But he's eeeeeeevil because the Times says so, right?
It’s not the Musk tweets that are funny. It’s the fearless replies.
MA Lib Senator Ed Markey tweeted a copy of a letter DEMANDING answers because a WA PO reporter was able to purchase an account imitating Senator Markley. Asking how this happened on the original common man blue check rollout (which will now be re-rolled out)…
Musk replied to the hypocritical censoring Senator with, “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody?” then “And why does your PP have a mask!?”
Markey has since threatened Musk saying “fix your companies or Congress will”. Lib heads are exploding with “how DARE you show such disrespect!”
It’s fun to see a guy with some balls, and some backing, take on a corrupt pro-censorship Senator from insane MA.
Comedy requires some bravery and a lack of fear. Chapelle possesses the same. It also requires a bit of self-awareness.
The Ellsworth Tooheys of the left posses none of these.
Musk is not the boss who thinks he's funny but isn't.
He's quite funny. And sharper than most people he spars with.
The Wa Poo reporter approached Sen. Markey about setting up a fake account and Markey agreed. Fake news about a fake account written by a fake reporter using a fake Senator most famous for driving a soft-serve ice cream truck. A perfect storm.
Musk (like Trump) is a very rich man who is not part of the leftist hive mind.
He must be destroyed before he kills democracy.
D.D. Driver: "Has his interest in electric cars "come and gone." WTF?"
Hard to imagine a more disconnected and irrelevant question than that throwaway.
The New Narrative is that Musk is unserious. He is a hypocrite and a troublemaker. He is flighty and his interests just "come and go." He may be a troublemaker (and everyone on Earth is a hypocrite about something), but he is passionate, serious, and fucking stubborn about the things he cares about (electric cars, space travel, free speech, etc.) To state that his interest in these things "comes and goes" is a provable lie.
The Ukraine thing is a case of no good deed going unpunished. He gave Ukraine FREE telecom at a critical moment. That doesn't mean it's his responsibility to subsidize the Ukraine war in perpetuity. Give me a break.
Jamie said...It sounds as if this writer would like Musk to be a Comstockian figure, but so far the only thing Musk has said as far as I'm aware is that if you're "doing parody," you can't attempt to attach your "comedy" to someone else's actual identity. This restriction doesn't end parody; it's an attempt to counter fake news - this kind would be disinformation, I think, if I'm remembering the categories correctly
NAILED IT.
This was predictable from the NYT, wasn't it? It's a comforting outlet, telling people what they want to be true.
Perhaps this was so obvious as to not merit mention, but does anyone other than me notice the similarity to Comstock laws and the modern "wokeness" movement?
"The Comstock Act of 1873 made it illegal to send “obscene, lewd or lascivious,” “immoral,” or “indecent” publications through the mail. The law also made it a misdemeanor for anyone to sell, give away, or possess an obscene book, pamphlet, picture, drawing, or advertisement."
The wokeness movement of 2020s made it inadvisable (costly, possibly illegal) to send "racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or other messages and publications through the internet and other public media platforms (such as cable TV)."
D.D.Driver: "The Ukraine thing is a case of no good deed going unpunished. He gave Ukraine FREE telecom at a critical moment. That doesn't mean it's his responsibility to subsidize the Ukraine war in perpetuity. Give me a break."
What in the h*** are you blathering about?
D.D.Driver: "The Ukraine thing is a case of no good deed going unpunished. He gave Ukraine FREE telecom at a critical moment. That doesn't mean it's his responsibility to subsidize the Ukraine war in perpetuity. Give me a break."
What in the h*** are you blathering about?
Musk announced a week or so ago that he couldn't continue to provide free Starlink to Ukraine forever, and suggested that the US or Ukranian government start paying for it. He was imediately attacked by the Left and backed down.
What Kate said . . . .
Gilbert Pinfold said...
..Senator most famous for driving a soft-serve ice cream truck.
I asked a while back, if Anyone could show a single democrat politician that EVER had a job outside of government. I guess Eddie's Icecream Truck would be it. Seriously, can ANYONE (any one at all) show me a democrat that had a real job outside of politics?
[please don't count me Tom Harkin, or JFK, or LBJ or Woodrow Wilson; i mean a current democrat. And; NO, i do NOT being a lawyer or law professor (like Liz Warren) as being a real job]
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