Does anyone remember laughter?
In the 1990s, I was that nerdiest of nerds: a Usenet sci-fi television geek. I argued over the merits of various shows. I wrote fan fiction. I hung around chat boards and chat rooms. Some Usenetters became online buddies; others started out as adversaries and became buddies; one or two stayed adversaries. Those people in the first and second categories were and are cool folks; as for the few in the third, well, screw them. They don't know what they missed.
Originally, I was one of those posters who became a little, uh, too emotionally involved in Usenet. It happens to everyone, and looking back, I suspect I did get too vehement or strident or even, on occasion, misguided. Eventually, I just outgrew that and tried to remind myself to have some perspective. (Of course, I ventured onto a couple of political Usenet groups as well...and THAT, in retrospect, was asking for trouble. Ah well. I was a newbie then.)
Over in SF fandom, there was a handful of unpleasant, annoying, sociopathic trolls who stuck around Usenet and the bulletin boards like zits that just wouldn't go away. Nobody liked these people. They didn't say anything good about anybody. They insulted the creators of TV series and net-stalked Usenet posters. In short, they were the sort of people William Shatner was speaking of when he cried, "Get...a...life!"
Everyone was outraged by these trolls. Me, I found them to be unintentionally hilarious in their mean-spirited zeal. They were snotty. They had delusions of grandeur. They were very, very easy to mock. And someone had to mock them. So I did. I wrote joke posts and song parodies about them. And I discovered that on Usenet, humor could be very, very effective when an argument got too heated. If there was a flame war, I'd reply with a non sequitur. If a thread argument got too heated, I'd make a silly aside. This was quite easy because a lot of the arguments were based on nonsense; therefore, nonsense was the proper response. The fact that the trolls generally had no humor made things much easier.
I'm reminded of those trolls (who, hopefully, did eventually find real lives) when I look at today's batch of humorless right wingers. Yeah, I know someone's going to bring up P.J. O'Rourke. Where is he these days? In the Witness Protection Program? He's been AWOL for years. And he's about it as far as effective right-wing humorists go. Faux News' attempt to clone Stewart/Colbert is a bomb. To be fair, the network hired Dennis Miller, whose previous TV gig was also a ratings flop. But a Faux gig is like a consolation prize these days. In terms of exposure and name recognition, Miller doesn't come close to Al Franken.
The conventional wisdom these days is that today's conservatives aren't funny. For one thing, humor requires a kernel of truth to it. That's one strike against the current right-wing punditocracy. Moreover, today's right-wing "humorists" tend to rely on straw men and easily take offense when they're the subjects of mockery. In short, they don't really have a sense of humor.
Take Mallard Fillmore, for example. In addition to the aforementioned straw men, the strip's creator, Bruce Tinsley, is quite thin-skinned. You'd think that a comic strip writer would be able to handle being made fun of. Maybe Tinsley could've had Mallard tell the reader, "You know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."
It's not just Tinsley and Mallard who can't take a joke. To be funny, you have to be willing to ruffle feathers (pun intended). Pundits like Horowitz and Malkin whine when liberals throw pies. And despite all efforts to paint Coulter as a prankster, a performance artist, or a satirist, it's clear that her blatherings are not a joke. Plus, I remember how she spat and snarled when some wacky students tried to throw pies at her. People who become upset over cartoons and pies can't really handle funny, it seems.
So in facing the nonsensical right-wingers, the people who believe things that aren't true, who stick their fingers in their ears and go "lalalalalaaaaa," who make up lies and then believe those lies, there's something one needs to remember. When you think about it, some of these people are, believe it or not, unintentionally hilarious.
Bill Maher once wrote that our religious wackos are funny, compared to the ones in the Taliban, and he's got a point. And that point applies to the non-religious wackos as well.
Yeah, they've done a lot of damage. Yeah, a lot of them are bigoted and downright evil. Yeah, they believe all kinds of scary things. Should you take them seriously in this respect? Sure! But should you take their beliefs seriously? Uh, probably not. These are people who believe cartoon penguins promote homosexuality. They compare George W. Bush to Theodore Roosevelt. They work as porn actors. Like Usenet trolls, they preen and fancy themselves as special. They stomp their feet and complain when anyone disagrees with them. And they're ideal subjects of satire and mockery, because they're both serious and wrongheaded. (Nonetheless, I'm sure the wingers spell better than your average Usenet troll.)
America today is like a fun, wide-open Usenet newsgroup that has been overrun and monopolized by the trolls. And this time, there's no killfile to weed them out. Faced with the trolls of American discourse and politics, wit and laughter are what we need. Real humor--effective humor--is based on sense, and as such, is the best way to respond to nonsense.
Originally, I was one of those posters who became a little, uh, too emotionally involved in Usenet. It happens to everyone, and looking back, I suspect I did get too vehement or strident or even, on occasion, misguided. Eventually, I just outgrew that and tried to remind myself to have some perspective. (Of course, I ventured onto a couple of political Usenet groups as well...and THAT, in retrospect, was asking for trouble. Ah well. I was a newbie then.)
Over in SF fandom, there was a handful of unpleasant, annoying, sociopathic trolls who stuck around Usenet and the bulletin boards like zits that just wouldn't go away. Nobody liked these people. They didn't say anything good about anybody. They insulted the creators of TV series and net-stalked Usenet posters. In short, they were the sort of people William Shatner was speaking of when he cried, "Get...a...life!"
Everyone was outraged by these trolls. Me, I found them to be unintentionally hilarious in their mean-spirited zeal. They were snotty. They had delusions of grandeur. They were very, very easy to mock. And someone had to mock them. So I did. I wrote joke posts and song parodies about them. And I discovered that on Usenet, humor could be very, very effective when an argument got too heated. If there was a flame war, I'd reply with a non sequitur. If a thread argument got too heated, I'd make a silly aside. This was quite easy because a lot of the arguments were based on nonsense; therefore, nonsense was the proper response. The fact that the trolls generally had no humor made things much easier.
I'm reminded of those trolls (who, hopefully, did eventually find real lives) when I look at today's batch of humorless right wingers. Yeah, I know someone's going to bring up P.J. O'Rourke. Where is he these days? In the Witness Protection Program? He's been AWOL for years. And he's about it as far as effective right-wing humorists go. Faux News' attempt to clone Stewart/Colbert is a bomb. To be fair, the network hired Dennis Miller, whose previous TV gig was also a ratings flop. But a Faux gig is like a consolation prize these days. In terms of exposure and name recognition, Miller doesn't come close to Al Franken.
The conventional wisdom these days is that today's conservatives aren't funny. For one thing, humor requires a kernel of truth to it. That's one strike against the current right-wing punditocracy. Moreover, today's right-wing "humorists" tend to rely on straw men and easily take offense when they're the subjects of mockery. In short, they don't really have a sense of humor.
Take Mallard Fillmore, for example. In addition to the aforementioned straw men, the strip's creator, Bruce Tinsley, is quite thin-skinned. You'd think that a comic strip writer would be able to handle being made fun of. Maybe Tinsley could've had Mallard tell the reader, "You know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."
It's not just Tinsley and Mallard who can't take a joke. To be funny, you have to be willing to ruffle feathers (pun intended). Pundits like Horowitz and Malkin whine when liberals throw pies. And despite all efforts to paint Coulter as a prankster, a performance artist, or a satirist, it's clear that her blatherings are not a joke. Plus, I remember how she spat and snarled when some wacky students tried to throw pies at her. People who become upset over cartoons and pies can't really handle funny, it seems.
So in facing the nonsensical right-wingers, the people who believe things that aren't true, who stick their fingers in their ears and go "lalalalalaaaaa," who make up lies and then believe those lies, there's something one needs to remember. When you think about it, some of these people are, believe it or not, unintentionally hilarious.
Bill Maher once wrote that our religious wackos are funny, compared to the ones in the Taliban, and he's got a point. And that point applies to the non-religious wackos as well.
Yeah, they've done a lot of damage. Yeah, a lot of them are bigoted and downright evil. Yeah, they believe all kinds of scary things. Should you take them seriously in this respect? Sure! But should you take their beliefs seriously? Uh, probably not. These are people who believe cartoon penguins promote homosexuality. They compare George W. Bush to Theodore Roosevelt. They work as porn actors. Like Usenet trolls, they preen and fancy themselves as special. They stomp their feet and complain when anyone disagrees with them. And they're ideal subjects of satire and mockery, because they're both serious and wrongheaded. (Nonetheless, I'm sure the wingers spell better than your average Usenet troll.)
America today is like a fun, wide-open Usenet newsgroup that has been overrun and monopolized by the trolls. And this time, there's no killfile to weed them out. Faced with the trolls of American discourse and politics, wit and laughter are what we need. Real humor--effective humor--is based on sense, and as such, is the best way to respond to nonsense.
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