Andrew Ferguson: "A Republic Too Fractured To Be Funny"
I'm not sure what to think about this, but I thought it was kinda interesting.
I do remember, back just prior to the real breakout of paleo-PC, when I still unquestionably thought of myself as some kind of liberal, thinking that liberals really weren't funny anymore, and not knowing what that meant, but fretting that it might be significant.
Ferguson doesn't say it, but basically everybody he's talking about is on the left. And I rarely find such folk funny anymore. Iconoclasm is funny, and conservatives are the iconoclasts now, not liberals...unless you count the almost-literal iconoclasm of destroying statues.
Not that I can think of any funny, famous conservatives, actually. Certainly not Dennis Miller. Because pointlessly referencing Pliny the Elder isn't enough to make you funny. Or smart. But conservatives did win the meme wars. And, as is frequently noted on the right, the left can't meme. It really, really can't. The left is basically the new Moral Majority. And Jerry Falwells simply aren't funny. Colbert's shtick has never been funny--not in general, anyway. Though I don't know what else to say about it. John Stewart was, IMO, pretty great...but he was doing his thing before PC rose from the dead and began to ravage the land.
Nobody's out there trying to suppress leftist humor, such as it is; it's stuff from right of the left that's being suppressed--on the Moral Majoritarian grounds that it's "offensive." Which is the paleo-PCs' favorite term of disapprobation. ('Problematic' is, of course, the updated and even less-specific translation into neo-PC. Which I've only recently recognized can be abbreviated 'NPC'. Which term drives the NPCs into paroxysms of anger...as do so many things... Actually: "offensive" isn't bad enough for the NPCs. They like to pretend that such stuff is dangerous.)
Plus, the right--or, rather, the anti-left--has 4chan. So.
Also, there's the left's politicization of everything. So everything is a matter of "social justice." So nothing politically incorrect can be funny. And nothing politically correct is funny. So that about covers it...
Even Monty Python is now in hot water for at least two things: (a) being a bunch of white guys, and (b) thinking that men dressed as women is funny. As you know, both of these things are terrible. Dangerous and terrible. And not social justice in any way. Ergo literally Hitler.
Also, Ferguson is wrong to say that Trump isn't funny. He absolutely has his moments, but the left is so humorless that it can't/won't acknowledge it. OTOH, Ferguson has what seems to me like a damn interesting point when he says that Trump never seems to laugh. Is that true? Because is seems true. And it would seem to be weirdly significant to me...but I have no idea why.
I'm soooo sick of the left's annoying "punching up" / "punching down" locution. But I feel like that fits in here in some way I can't figure out.
Also, I think I have the flu, which sucks and is not funny--not to me, anyway. Who gets the freaking flu in late April? But I'm going to use that as an excuse to not even try to end this screed.
tl;dr: I really don't like the left, and think they are all bad things, including not funny.
I do remember, back just prior to the real breakout of paleo-PC, when I still unquestionably thought of myself as some kind of liberal, thinking that liberals really weren't funny anymore, and not knowing what that meant, but fretting that it might be significant.
Ferguson doesn't say it, but basically everybody he's talking about is on the left. And I rarely find such folk funny anymore. Iconoclasm is funny, and conservatives are the iconoclasts now, not liberals...unless you count the almost-literal iconoclasm of destroying statues.
Not that I can think of any funny, famous conservatives, actually. Certainly not Dennis Miller. Because pointlessly referencing Pliny the Elder isn't enough to make you funny. Or smart. But conservatives did win the meme wars. And, as is frequently noted on the right, the left can't meme. It really, really can't. The left is basically the new Moral Majority. And Jerry Falwells simply aren't funny. Colbert's shtick has never been funny--not in general, anyway. Though I don't know what else to say about it. John Stewart was, IMO, pretty great...but he was doing his thing before PC rose from the dead and began to ravage the land.
Nobody's out there trying to suppress leftist humor, such as it is; it's stuff from right of the left that's being suppressed--on the Moral Majoritarian grounds that it's "offensive." Which is the paleo-PCs' favorite term of disapprobation. ('Problematic' is, of course, the updated and even less-specific translation into neo-PC. Which I've only recently recognized can be abbreviated 'NPC'. Which term drives the NPCs into paroxysms of anger...as do so many things... Actually: "offensive" isn't bad enough for the NPCs. They like to pretend that such stuff is dangerous.)
Plus, the right--or, rather, the anti-left--has 4chan. So.
Also, there's the left's politicization of everything. So everything is a matter of "social justice." So nothing politically incorrect can be funny. And nothing politically correct is funny. So that about covers it...
Even Monty Python is now in hot water for at least two things: (a) being a bunch of white guys, and (b) thinking that men dressed as women is funny. As you know, both of these things are terrible. Dangerous and terrible. And not social justice in any way. Ergo literally Hitler.
Also, Ferguson is wrong to say that Trump isn't funny. He absolutely has his moments, but the left is so humorless that it can't/won't acknowledge it. OTOH, Ferguson has what seems to me like a damn interesting point when he says that Trump never seems to laugh. Is that true? Because is seems true. And it would seem to be weirdly significant to me...but I have no idea why.
I'm soooo sick of the left's annoying "punching up" / "punching down" locution. But I feel like that fits in here in some way I can't figure out.
Also, I think I have the flu, which sucks and is not funny--not to me, anyway. Who gets the freaking flu in late April? But I'm going to use that as an excuse to not even try to end this screed.
tl;dr: I really don't like the left, and think they are all bad things, including not funny.
posted by Winston Smith at
1:42 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home