A Spectre is haunting comedy...

[David Morris]

Comedy is Irrevrance.  It is designed to offend, startle, tickle, provoke.
It should never be predictable. It is sometimes also very wise...

The "Other" in comedy is often ourselves, fat & stupid like Homer Simpson.
That Identity factor of Comedy is a deeper relevance in us than an offense
against this "Other" character. Our own experience, identified feeling,
is why we laugh. Comedy is an offense against ones's own self, ones's
Shadow.

David
I think the difference between the US and the Euro is obvious:  one is a
country, the other is a currency.  Currency, like Corporations, aren't
people. A Country is made of people.

The EU was never a sincere Union.  It was a bankers deal, pure and simple.

On Monday, July 6, 2015, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have what I think is a basically ACLU attitude towards free speech,
> you can't be selective, you gotta protect all of it if you want to
> maintain it.  I wouldn't sign on, most recently, a "fire Donald Trump"
> (who by all rights should have "fired" himself the moment he declared
> his candidacy, who under the Fairness Doctrine [1949 - 2011,
> requiescat in pace] would have basically required NBC to give ALL the
> candidates their own "reality" [sic] shows [or so it goes in some
> parallel universe]) petition 'cos I'd just as soon have idiots
> identify themselves clearly (and, in this case, @ least, repeatedly,
> not to mention loudly) as such.  And, lo and behold, a couple/three
> days later, either out of some sort of corporate conscience, or (more
> likely) threats (explicit, implied and/or anticipated) of pulled
> sponsorships, did ihe deed "itself" (sic)..
>
> On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 12:14 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com <javascript:;>>
> wrote:
> > 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
> <javascript:;>> 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
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20150706/4f2f0a0f/attachment.html>