A Spectre is haunting comedy...

[David Casseres]

My only q

On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 8:27 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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> 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>
>> 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/20150707/129219d6/attachment.html>