Some time year ago (with many fits and starts and personal failures en route) I began to steer away from “serious” commentary. The world had enough overwrought hand-wringing. I thought it was good for the soul (in particular my soul) to let most of it go. After all, I have the example of a duck to live up to. To do less would bring dishonor to the world’s freest duck.
I discovered, as have wise people before me, that humor is a powerful force for balance and a superlative bullshit detector. If a joke is intentionally mean spirited, it’s not really a joke. More importantly, those who cannot laugh at themselves are dangerous and untrustworthy. Don’t put your trust in anyone or any group of people who take themselves too seriously.
Which brings me to CNN. What a bunch of uptight nitwits! Monday I linked to this representation of them:
This came from PVPOnline… check ’em out. They’re awesome!
I complained that they’d had nine months to calm down and accept a reality that didn’t comport with their desires. Like a toddler who wants a cookie and cannot get one; they’d failed.
Because saying more was pointless I went back to rambling about homemade plywood toys. I assumed CNN would gradually mellow and it would all die down. Instead, humorless fools that they are, CNN doubled down and became the living embodiment of the Streisand effect.
I’m delighted. It’s not merely the guilty pleasure of Schadenfreude but because they created a mountain of jokes and most of them are amusing. The world needs to laugh… CNN meant to bully but it gave us laughs instead. There’s a lesson in that.
I won’t add to the rants. I’ll just link to a perfect five minute analysis [which is presented by a talking cat]. Here are a few quotes:
“they’re [CNN] trying to attack the character of someone who goes by the name HansAssholeSolo, did you expect he would be the fucking king of England inviting you to high tea?”
At 3:20 the talking cat (who better to insult the over-serious than a virtual puppet?) creates the greatest insult since Groundskeeper Willie tweaked the French (5 second video):
“…you [CNN] have declared war on a large group of people with weaponized autism and nothing brings out their fucking autistic wizard powers better than one of their own gets attacked… you fucked with the wrong part of the internet CNN. These are the same people who found a flagpole in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere … the same people who found the location of an ISIS training camp from a pile of dirt and the shadow of an abandoned building. … when you collectively piss them all off at once they unify into this colossal Power Ranger machine to take down anything in its path.”
That’s glorious rant right there! Feel free to click below and bask in the awesomeness of laughing as the Streisand effect goes global:
It is glorious to behold #CNNBlackmail fail.
“If a joke is intentionally mean spirited, it’s not really a joke. More importantly, those who cannot laugh at themselves are dangerous and untrustworthy. ”
After 30 plus years in the garage business I frequently echo the truism, ‘Men say mean things about each other that the don’t mean, women say nice things about each other that they don’t mean’.
One of they guys I have worked with over 25 of those years is Polish, he has some of the best Pollock jokes, but if someone has a new one he always says, ‘Tell it slow so I’ll get it’s. The point being, as you said it’s not mean spirited, it’s just in good fun and not being overly serious about yourself.
On the CNN ruckus, Rush Limbaugh has often said that real humor always has an element of truth. The truth is CNN has been playing Russian Roulette with a high capacity magazine semiautomatic lately. I had never heard the term Schadenfreude, but that pretty well sums up what it’s like to watch the CNN Russian Roulette play out. Couldn’t happen to nicer people.
I love me some good Pollock jokes. Jackson was a mean drunk & a shitty painter, & I ridicule his memory whenever possible.