A Spectre is haunting comedy...

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I agree with you, Mark. My real issue with most comedy out there is that it's just not very funny, precisely because there are few, if any, boundaries left. Maybe, in an oddball way, the finger-pointers are serving the long-term cause of comedy by putting the boundaries back. As Michael Flanders, of the old comic singing duo, Flanders and Swann, once quipped: "The purpose of satire is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusions, and cosy half-truths. And our job, as I see it, is to put it back again." 

I think odious PC tongue-clucking, in general, is related to the broader phenomenon of crowd-shaming:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0

Personally, I refuse any calls to pile on to any online shaming campaigns of public figures, in their various guises: "You won't believe what [blank] said." or "Demand that [blank] be fired for his [blank] statement," etc. I decry laws and policies, never people. If a public figure brags about how great the KKK is, it's my right to feel revulsion. But I support free speech, even if it's Limbaugh or O'Reilly or Palin or McCain or any of the Bushes doing the speaking.  Maybe it's because in the 18 years I worked in the construction industry, during which I was called honey, baby, bitch, cunt, dyke, Jewess, Jewish cunt, etc., I learned to either ignore the slurs or respond with dignity. When I was sexually harassed or threatened with rape or even murder, the system was so out of whack that the focus was on saving MY job, not getting the other person fired. And, you know what? I was still able to discern that there was a broad range of intent and intelligence, even among the slur
 -makers.

Are there exceptions to what I'm saying? Of course there are. That's the cool thing about humans - we're nuanced, self-contradictory, and constantly evolving. No point in defining any of us by a few random statements.

Laura

-----Original Message-----

From: Monte Davis 

Sent: Jul 6, 2015 10:12 AM

To: Mark Thibodeau 

Cc: pynchon -l 

Subject: Re: A Spectre is haunting comedy...



I have some broader and more ambivalent misgivings about how the progressive version of "more outraged than thou" has accelerated with social media... but very little ambivalence when it comes to comedy, which has been a "firewalled" space to say *anything* in a lot of cultures for a long, long time before the First Amendment. See court jesters, satyr plays, carnivals & Lords of Misrule, giggly scandalous children's rhymes, etc etc. IMHO that has been and remains a good thing: if there's anywhere the Voltairean "...but I will defend to the death your right to say it" should be absolute, it's comedy. 
To put it another way: my own preference when I vehemently object to expressions of racism, sexism, etc. is to prioritize targets with actual legal/political power...
Followed at quite a distance by random celebrities NOT in the sphere of comedy/ satire...
Followed by the random racist/sexist/etc bozos in my face who attempts to sweeten his venom ingenuously with "Hey, just kidding! You [bien-pensant advocacy label here] are so humorless!"
Followed, at the very very bottom of the priority list, by those who explicitly fly the cultural flags/tags of comic/satiric performance. Too many of my own cherished progressive tenets started out and/or gained momentum there. 
On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 2:46 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
I wrote this for my blog a couple days ago. 
I realize it may rankle some here in terms of its implications, but I would really appreciate feedback from a group of people whom I am pretty much certain are, for the most part, a lot smarter than I am. 
So, by all means... critique away!

Here's the link:
http://dailydirtdiaspora.blogspot.ca/2015/07/thats-not-funny-manufactured-crisis-of.html

Thanks in advance for your help!
Mark T. aka Jerky LeBoeuf
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l