Stop Me Before I Vote Again

I can recall being very amused when Dick Cheney shot his lawyer and then forced him to apologize. That was funny! The joke told itself. I'm terribly disappointed that all Joe Biden will ever manage is an endless, tedious parade of giddy psychotic episodes.

Dick is my idea of a modern vice-president. You know exactly what you're getting with him. He's right up front. Joe, a psycho in the worst way, would be better off refereeing shuffle board tournaments on hijacked cruise ships. You just know he'd be goading people into provoking the terrorists. Good fun for all... unless you're there on the ship.

It would have been better if Leon had been left to live out his time and expire under expert supervision at some sanitary institution designed for that purpose in New Jersey.

Given the state of New Jersey and the state of elder care warehousing, I'm not so sure. They'd medicate him silly and subject him to a thousand pointless, cruel indignities.

Haven't we all worked in settings where jokes like this are the common coin of daily life?

Yes, of course we have, but most of us don't regard the enjoyment of them as some indication of left purity.

I have always thought the 'anxiety' defense for these kinds of jokes was bullshit. The main impulse as you make clear is rebellion against mandatory sentimentality for approved victims. Fair enough. But the thing is, Leon Klinghoffer didn't mandate your feeling sorry for him and it's possible to resist mandatory grieving without making light of the atrocity itself, which is coarsening.

I mean if you are going to free your mind of cant, perhaps you should disabuse yourself of the notion that a callous attitude toward violence - particularly violence aimed at ordinary working people - is taboo and risky, let alone 'left.' Call that being a hall monitor, but I am no less a hall monitor than you when you say anyone who finds your joke disagreeable is really a liberal with 'sputtering Marxist afterburners.'

In the context in which you apparently made the joke, it also runs the risk of being regarded as anti-semitic and your demonstration here, that one "can't go too far with this stuff" with it's reference to a particularly annoying 'demographic' doesn't help matters much on that score on top of being really labored, not funny, and self-regardingly naughty, like middle-brow John Waters.

Al's delight in the incident with Cheney and his lawyer is in another class entirely, since the class in question is the ruling class. Injured or dead oligarch = funny. Injured or dead worker = not funny.

Much of the left is humorless. Much of the left is hypersensitive and insists on flying to the most PC possible take on things, at least when that's easy. Much of the left is more liberal than Marxist.

Granted.

So, what's SMBIVA's chief got to say about things out there in Dimboland?

Perhaps on the chutzpah of this rank reality-churn on behalf of President Driller?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBOltHzbfF0

The right blames environmentalists for the BP blowout; the soi-disant "left" blames -- of course -- Bush and Palin.

This, despite Obama being to the right of GWB on oil politics:

http://www.deathbycar.info/2010/05/barack-georgie/

I thought I'd never be assigned an essay topic again, once I bailed out of graduate school.

I might decline this assignment, just to preserve my free-agency. But even so, I agree with MD, and thanks for the links.

Rachel Maddow. Golly. Is she still on the air? How last-January.

PS -- I gotta wonder where she got that jacket. Picked up from the floor after a couple of appletinis and a night of passion with Anderson Cooper?

as raw chums back in the dying light days
of the high 60's
father S was the picture of steely comportment

as he has sharpened over the years
instead of mellowed
he's become exceedingly cantankerous
how that mythic list of his contains itself
when he goes off the reservation on a raid
is beyond me

i would have thought by now after
so many of these "cries of 'snake' "
the thunderous anathemas
out of dowager empress dougwood hen
could be heard on jupiter

Comrade Henwood is in the clear on this one, OP. A different gang of lawless email resolutes.

more lists ?? not just el rejectos
and senior Dooog's

these lists pop out
like rabbits from a silk hat

just how many red lists are you on
there
comrade smiff ???

Twenty? Thirty? Who's counting?

To confirm MJS's theory: In 1986 I became friends with someone who happened to live in Klinghoffer's building. He said everyone in the building hated Klinghoffer's guts and was sure he had driven the kidnappers insane until they finally threw him to the briny. Cut to 2009: One of my employers, it turns out, lives in the same building. I mention what my friend said 23 years ago, and he laughs and says it's still a legend in the building what a nudge Klinghoffer was.

Maddow is sooo subtle. Obama drew, as usual, a bright line in the sand air. The Republicans advocate a policy that Obama actually follows, while Obama fiddles through the first n weeks of arguably the worst man made disaster in history, but because THEY advocate a policy, HE is covered politically.
Maddow agrees with that hoary slogan: Words speak louder than actions.

Put this thread in a time-capsule and call it "The Best of SMBIVA." Between Rachel Maddow and Dough Henwood we have the two poles of the known world. And with Al, MD, OP and MJ we have nothing less than Saturday Morning Live!!

" 'Haven't we all worked in settings where jokes like this are the common coin of daily life?'

Yes, of course we have, but most of us don't regard the enjoyment of them as some indication of left purity"

i'm having trouble understanding that comment lede fragment by lt gerard

http://www.unchance.net/Fugitive/janssen-morse.jpg

"it's possible to resist mandatory grieving without making light of the atrocity itself.."

i think it's beyond mere " coarsening"
and is in fact evidence of coarseness itself
not to rebel
" against mandatory sentimentality for approved victims"

"a callous attitude toward violence " ???
laughing at a joke based on a violent act ??

is it only the heights of little nell
that can bring out the oscar wilde
in you inspector ??

i might regret the death of an ass hole
because fuck ..its death baby
the final exit
but the impulse
behind the violence
the acting out of the fantasy push
needs to be conjured with
in more depth
and with more unrepressed identification

love thine enemies applies here...both ways

if indeed your identification for a moment
is with
the hijackers here
not just this aged
wheel chair bound
zionic "red chief"

a joke exists in a parallel universe no ?
like all fiction
and a joke is fiction in it's soul
the content of a joke of course
is from reality
reconstructed reality
but a joke itself remains a fiction
and the laugh at it's daring and transgressive darkness
as involuntary as an ouch
and is by no means
a signal of approbation of the "content"
back in reality
how often must one say
even if miles from a cone headed PC er
"well i shouldn't laugh but.."

just like most use's of the word
"fuck" are "learned" indeed but cries
none the less --albeit with a spicey history--
not speech

to permit the joke to pass un censored
because it makes you laugh ???
well that's easier because the laugh itself
is evidence of deeper sympatico
with the jockster

but to not censor
--including even an unvoiced internal censor--
when you think
"that isn't even fuckin funny "
now that requires
hard earnest dedicated "work"
work father S somewhere
nicely called

-- i think in the context of a merit pwog
getting her head to where homer simpson's at --

a tough domestic ethnologic field asignment

"..Klinghoffer didn't mandate your feeling sorry for him "
utter category error
the joke opportunistically grabs a chunk of reality to manipulate in the fabrication of it's gag
all reference in analysis
to the real events is misplaced
and in this case
it would offensively sanctimonious
if it itself didn't trigger a laugh too

speaking of inintentional laughs

" particularly violence aimed at ordinary working people"

why privilege the wagery
you pink pilgrim you ???

"I am no less a hall monitor than you"

i 'm sure you meant to write "no more" not "no less
but again what a laugh ..pal
you sure ain't less of a hall monitor
hardy har har har (back slap !)

"middle-brow John Waters"

don't you mean second rate john waters

--can't say low rent john waters
u know how lives there ...woikahs!! ---

now the bit at the tail
approving of the dick joke

"Al's delight in the incident with Cheney
and his lawyer is in another class entirely, since the class in question is the ruling class. Injured or dead oligarch = funny. Injured or dead worker = not funny"

violence in joke form against the class enemy
is ok and not "coarsening "
well well

the joke is here deployed against a class enemy
whereas the joke that is exhibit A here isn't ??

der clinger is a zionic golem in the joke world eh ??
the real cling who cares its a joke

but if he is in reality a zionic golem
then deploying jokes against him is not pure jokesterism its agit prop

btw
sucking up to st Al
gets you nowhere lt G

super Al
is just father S in bib overalls http://www.leehopkins.net/images/country-hick.jpg

I always thought it was easier simply to roll someone overboard than to lay down your guns and lift him over the railing. And, yes, it's easy to imagine old Leon going into Key Largo mode: "If I were only 30 years younger...."

Q: What did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbit?

A: Excuse me, are you going to eat that?

"Posted by Anon | June 5, 2010 2:31 PM"

This just has to be Smith, a gun shy Smith, but still Smith.

I have been trying to google up some jokes about those Mary Knoll sisters who were raped and murdered in El Salvador in 1980. Can anyone help? I'm coming up dry.

"Posted by Anon | June 5, 2010 2:31 PM"

This just has to be Smith, a gun shy Smith, but still Smith.

Posted by Boink | June 5, 2010 2:50 PM

Lunch:

I have been trying to google up some jokes about those Mary Knoll sisters who were raped and murdered in El Salvador in 1980. Can anyone help? I'm coming up dry.

Maryknoll is one word, btw.

I laughed at the Klinghoffer joke.

But, I think the assumption behind your thinking is flawed. You're basically trying to encourage all of us wimpy liberals to discover our inner Rush Limbaughs. You seem to believe that being an inhuman asshole will lead to political power.

Bzzzt. Wrong.

It's the same flawed thinking that a lot of "nice guys" have. They think the assholes get the girls because they're assholes. Nope. Lots of assholes don't get the girls. The good looking assholes get the girls just like the good looking non-assholes. The butt ugly assholes don't.

The right isn't powerful in this country because they're heartless assholes. They're powerful because they've got big money and corporate America behind them.

And on that note I'll leave but stress that I did honestly try to think of a Maryknoll rape and murder joke but couldn't, which is odd because I've always hated the Catholic church.

Hist, I disagree. MJS made an observation. There's no admonition in it, nor any effort to dewussify straying lefties.

The rest of your comment is spot on, but you've got the wrong target. Liberals have made an industry of wingnut emulation, and have done so based on the belief that the power of the right is sustained by grass roots assholery. True to liberal form, they imitate the right wing followers, attempt a middle brow version of the same corporate performance art and compete with each other to cede any and all democratic power. Then they bemoan their own fecklessness.

Liberals have made an industry of wingnut emulation, and have done so based on the belief that the power of the right is sustained by grass roots assholery.

But more in the sense that they allow the right to define what "acceptable" discourse is than in encouraging their "base" to act like raging assholes.

For lack of a better term, liberals like to show the right that they can act like "responsible gatekeepers".

Agree completely with that.

I get a mild case of hysterics when they carry on about right wing authoritarian followers. It would be less distressing if they weren't groveling and fawning while they held forth.

Lots of assholes don't get the girls. The good looking assholes get the girls just like the good looking non-assholes. The butt ugly assholes don't.

In any case we seem to have strayed into a somewhat different realm of discourse. A very interesting one, to be sure.

You do me an injustice with respect to Rush Limbaugh. Very few people in fact have an inner Rush Limbaugh, or so one hopes, anyway. Rush Limbaugh is a diseased personality, but the people I've known over the years who enjoyed naughty impermissible humor mostly seemed like pretty good human beings.

To the extent that I have any advice for the moralistic Left, it's this: Stop trying to make people better. They're already good enough, even if you don't share their taste in jokes.

Liberals, to their credit, tend to make fun of the rich and powerful. Wingnuts love to laugh at people who can't hit back.

Unfortunately, liberals seem to have declared the most powerful man in the world off limits for mockery.

Does anybody watch old "All in the Family" reruns?

There's one episode where a black repairman guy comes to fix their refrigerator. Archie makes some racist remark, and naturally gets into a conflict with him.

Mike Stivik remembers the black guy as a cowering little Uncle Tom whom Archie bullies.

Archie remembers him as a big Black Panther with a switchblade.

Absolutely nothing seems to have changed.

I'm intrigued by the turn in discourse. It's a personal thing. I very much like the idea that people are already good enough; quite capable of building and maintaining an appealing social system. Not perfect, God knows, but something life-embracing and interesting. The corporate millenarians and their playmates, the responsible gatekeepers of the corporate palace, are grindingly dull. They have their set piece squabbles and shameful abasements and that's it: undeviating and spiritually deadening to the bitter end.

The corporate millenarians and their playmates, the responsible gatekeepers of the corporate palace, are grindingly dull.

I recently got through a book on the history of the early Republic called "What God Hath Wrought" by a man named Daniel Walker Howe.

I'm amazed at how much more interesting politics was in the early 1800s.

John Randolph, an aristocratic Virginian who served in Congress for decades, insulted Henry Clay by comparing him to a character in a Henry Fielding novel.

Clay challenged him to a dual, and they actually fought the dual. Clay was a lousy shot, Randolph knew it, allowed Clay two tries, then fired into the air. They shook hands and went home.

Try to imagine that happening today.

I just so wanted John Kerry to challenge one of the Swiftboaters to pistols at 20 paces in 2004.

I just so wanted John Kerry to challenge one of the Swiftboaters to pistols at 20 paces in 2004.

I'm actually serious about the idea that dualing wasn't particularly barbaric compared to what we have today.

Clay and Randolph stood up like men and risked dying for their honor. It was a personal thing between them. They didn't make the American people suffer through it.

George Bush and John Kerry, on the other hand, not only made us all suffer through weeks and weeks and bloody weeks of media bullshit about their miliary service, they did it through surrogates.

Joe Wilson: You Lie

Barack Obama: Have your seconds contact Axelrod. I demand satisfaction.

Much more civilized. As far as Glenn Beck's insulting his daughter, Beck, of course, isn't on Obama's social level so no dualing there. Obama would have to ignore Beck or have some of his lackies thrash him.

Horsewhipped on the very steps of his club! Who could Obama delegate? One of the economists, I'm thinking. Larry Summers has the look; cruel and a bit piggy.

Amazing that 25 years after the fact the PC police are still kicking in doors in search of Klinghoffer jokesters. My favorite:

How do you make a Klinghoffer?
Two shots and a splash.

Egads, the horror!

Sane people have always enjoyed black humor. What about the dead baby jokes we told in junior high?

What's more disgusting than a garbage can full of dead babies?
A live one at the bottom trying to gnaw his way out

I don't see what makes Klinghoffer jokes off limits. Then again, I do. I suspect that's the reason there are so many of them.

not to spoil the levity
but dualing was ass holery
honor ???

as aweful as pc ..not worse ...
but just as aweful

as far as settling anything...it didn't

Why Suh, yo're attackin' a fine ole Southron institution, Suh! Ah demand satisfaction!

but dualing was ass holery

But it was assholery limited to two people and their seconds.

Try to imagine if the John Randolph/Henry Clay spat took place today.

John Randolph, an "Old Republican" isults Clay, a Whig, by comparing him to the villain in "Tom Jones."

The Whig blogs go apeshit. A Whig political commenter, let's call her Rachel Maddow, goes on the air and does a "hard hitting" expose of some kind of "extremism" in Randolph's past.

A Whig blog, let's call it "The Daily Kos," erupts with diaries crowing about how Maddow "smacked down Randolph's partisans."

The next day, an Old Republican blog allied with Randolph finds that Clay had once refused the first dance to a plain woman back in Kentucky. All of the Old Republican blogs follow suit and the Old Republican media joins in, playing and replaying the charges that "Henry Clay is not a gentleman."

It goes on for weeks. And, in the end, Clay and Randolph kiss, make up, and laugh at all of us.