Friends … Romans … countrymen ... fellow liberals ... upholders of true Christian values, upholders of true American values, upholsterers of any values whatsoever, level-headed followers of just the right kind of Jewish Muslim, and Buddhist values, even zealots of true Christian, Muslim, and Jewish values ... Antiwar activists, antiwar pacifists, even occasionally-pro-war-under-certain-circumstances pacifists. Realistic gun control advocates, unrealistic-but-sincere-gun control advocates. You who have been water-boarded, you who feel like you are being waterboarded right now, anyone who’s been to boarding school, swimmers, surfers, and bathers, Jeff Spicoli, Lloyd Bridges, Jacques Cousteau ... Those advancing a slightly off topic – or even on topic –agenda. Rational, thinking beings everywhere ---
LEND ME YOUR EARS. I come to defend Sarah Palin, not to praise her.
And if you’re taking the ears part literally, stop right here and proceed no further, you’re hopeless. It’s a rhetorical device, a familiar literary allusion, inserted to grab your attention – which is part of this here thesis – see how I worked that in.
In any case, also certainly not to take another shot at
burying her. Not so soon after that tempest at a teapartier over her NRA rally
“blasphemy” clearly went nowhere in less than a week. You remember, the surge of projectile religious indignation over that clearly over-rehearsed metaphor:
“If I was in charge, they would know waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”
Surely you haven’t already let go of that crowd pleaser of a profanation that temporarily rocked the nation. The avalanche of tsunamic outrage over the
sacrilege -- equating inexcusable torture with one of the most sacred rituals of Christianity.
Metaphorically speaking (
that would be speaking about as well as in metaphors), if I were you, I’d get more exasperated over my own immediately preceding, over-mixed example. Allowing, of course, for the contention such verbal transgressions are generally waved off, if still on point and executed knowingly. Either way, as we kids used to protest from the back seat of the Buick, “She started it.”
Well time’s up, I’ve given the whole thing two weeks to trend heavier -- yes, metaphorically invoking the food on the floor five second rule. The intended come to Jesus moment did appear to St. Peter out rather rapidly, despite some well-intentioned mini-crusades against that Alaskan she-devil. (Yes, I know, there we go again; but we’re throwing in as many of these religious examples as we can, if only to demonstrate they’re only words -- especially if you can appreciate the premise, and more significantly, don’t already pre-despise the premisizer.)
But it’s been gnawing at me. No not that. The fact that I’ve waited so long as to have missed the boat on an opportunity to break out my own Sam Kinison, not over the offense, but over the over-reaction to it.
Alright, you’ve got me. Truth be told, the hiatus wasn’t entirely based on an objective desire to see how this sucker played out. There are really only two reasons I’ve taken this long to chime in (hey, cut it out, some people see religious references in everything, including tree trunks and grilled cheese sandwiches).
The larger and more embarrassing excuse is this rare syndrome I’ve been experiencing recently -- a state of “precrastination,” which is essentially Procrastination 2.0, one level up in degree of difficulty.
Unlike your garden variety, this involves a certain level of planning -- an unwillingness to leave a future procrastination opportunity strictly to chance, thereby maximizing its true utility.
Here’s how it works. Once you’ve identified a particularly effective procrastination behavior, you just don’t waste in on the spur of the moment. You save it, nay, nurse it – OK, even hoard several, until such time as they are truly needed.
In this instance, I have fallen behind in commitments to file certain cumbersome documents, complete a formidable home renovation, and arrange logistics for a New England trip -- all at the moment, relaxing in limbo. Only the addition of commitment #3, two days ago, achieved the convergence of all three, justifying fullout procrastination mode.
As you see here, the tactic of choice involved mentally ordering the whole megillah of outraged reactions (to be ecumenically metaphorical), that have already taken their toll in crowding out truly functional thinking for the past two weeks. Then somehow crafting these into this Daily Kos submission. The fact that this diary is no longer warranted, or even appropriate, is just icing on the wafer. Precrastination at its quintessence. And guess what, you’re enablers.
However, the
ultimate roadblock -- you want to come a little closer, I’m not sure everybody should hear this? -- is that I pretty much just didn’t give a crap to begin with – at least possibly until these personal
“insights” started piling up into something of a cross to bear. (
What? Now you’re keeping score on these?)
So I’m going to request a small favor. I’m asking you not to believe you’re lying eyes. You’ve seen it a million times, commentary threads going unnecessarily postal, because everything can seem more strident when it appears in print -- anything properly nuanced reading like a financial management abstract. Especially when you keep piling it on, like I’m about to.
Remember please keep reminding yourself -- I REALLY DO NOT CARE THIS MUCH. I just don’t have any place else handy to put this drivel and hate the waste.
If resurrecting this dead horse is, at its core, little more than a lame attempt to show off, to demonstrate a certain analytical sophistication -- or at least compulsion -- a shout out from an otherwise relatively inconsequential existence, to bond with this community of thinkers -- well, honestly, isn’t that at least a small reason why we all diarize? Hey, don’t be embarrassed; it’s a hell of a lot better than brandishing an unconcealed revolver to demonstrate you’re somebody. There, now I’d think I’ve pretty much covered on all bases.
Yes, even if you do immediately recognize the following as opportunistically calling attention to the degree of opportunism within the uproar. A shot at an indirect shot at a bunch of gun nuts through a cheap shot at a favorite target, who just happened to show up for the speaker’s fee. (Yeesh . . . an almost perfectly executed firearm metaphor quadrofecta. I think I just hurt myself; this “metaphorphosis” is getting way out of hand, and it may be too late to turn back.)
Bottom line in the irony department: way, way,way,way,way too much overkill for a critique of -- what -- overkill? Palindroning on and on and on and on. Well, just think of it as a painful demonstration for both reader and teller of how much stuff this whole episode has clogged up my head with. If this were a 1950's Sam Arkoff exploitation film, it might be entitled, "None Dare Call it Karma," only to demonstrate in the process that's precisely what some damned fool just did.
And yet, there still may be some value in reviewing the entire episode with the dispassion of hindsight.
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, you never used to make it this hard. Some of us just didn’t know how to react. With outrage, opportunism, or both? I’m gonna go here with neither – but only because I like to pick my fights. Not even arguing the correct usage of was or were in that predictive conditional sentence of yours. Oh, wait, that was a hint of gratuitous opportunism again, wasn’t it?
Much as it pains me, I’ve got to dissent from the sometimes gleeful, and I’d have to say somewhat sanctimonious, opportunistic, and exploitative disgust and indignation over your NRA “performance." Perhaps that would be exemplified by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture having immediately fired off, I guess what we could consider, epistles to both yourself and the National Rifle Association, demanding an apology for equating torture with baptism, “the worst of what is possible when political conflicts are expressed in theological terms.”
Really, the worst? That’s setting the bar kind of low, isn’t it? How about pseudo-religious justifications for war, slavery or even separate but equal? Sure this was a fortuitous moment to seize some enhanced visibility for the organization and your more encompassing human rights mission. I’d hate to harsh that back to mellow, but is it possible a reader’s witnessing this level of apoplexy over the trivial not only squanders the fit of pique, but trivializes those real concerns over torture?
Was it productive to have given the
Hannitys of the world that opportunity to yank out that old Reagan,
“well, there they go again”
To single this example out as perhaps emblematic of the
unseriousness of other issues?
“Let’s see, they’re against global warming, war, income disparity, the right to life, the free market, a balanced budget, the second amendment . . . and a joke?
Incidentally, what would be a national religious campaign for torture? The Spanish Inquisition?
According to its website, within four days, another advocacy group, Faithful America, identified as the “largest and fastest growing online community of Christians putting faith into action for social justice,” says it garnered 45,000 signatures on a petition. Forty-five-THOUSAND. For something like this, I’d consider those practically American Idol numbers:
“This is what we've come to in America: A former candidate for vice-president can equate torture and Holy Baptism, and one of the nation's most powerful political lobbies erupts into cheers and applause. As usual, Palin's remarks are already making international headlines, once again portraying Christianity as a religion of hatred and violence. But this time, let's show just how many Christians are appalled by Palin's twisted misrepresentation of our faith." [italics mine]
… Sarah Palin is blasphemously twisting our faith into a weapon of hatred and violence. No media outlet should cover her remarks without reporting on how sincere Christians of all theological and political persuasions are appalled."
Look, I’ve supported other Faithful America efforts, like challenging the religious right’s usurpation of the Christian moral high ground. And
Boo-Yaa to pushing Family Research Council president
Tony Perkins off MSNBC guest lists and back to that creepy
Bates Motel where he belongs.
Admittedly opportunities like this don’t grow on trees. Also not vastly different from the petitions I’ve signed, that have been equally transparent efforts to get me on mailing lists or to forward small earmarked contributions to MoveOn . . . ActBlue . . . DailyKos . . . Greenpeace . . . or NextGen -- via Paypal. Perhaps even some advocacy groups who also advocate employing an actual space between the words in their name. (Netroots Nations, you get a pass, because your portmanteau comes “before the break” as we like to say around here.)
For the record, my favorite portmanteau, one that would seem to work counter to the organization’s intent, is the spliced collective name of British Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government of Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties – ConDem. To me that sounds either like the group denouncing itself, or advocating the dismantling of just about any proactive initiative. Probably celebrated with a junket to Christchurch, New Zealand?
But really, a
petition? Over a
joke? As if all of the woman’s prior assertions and transgressions made sense?
Not even a very good joke, a pathetic applause generator in the presence of gun-nut zealots. A joke she may even have swiped from one of Charlton Heston’s cold, dead hands at a previous conclave. (Probably his right hand, and certainly not either one of that wag Mitch McConnell’s gun toting mitts – that would be too easy.)
TANGENT ALERT !!!
Not that anyone asked, but I hope you don’t think the late Mr. Heston had come up with the “"I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" refrain all by his ownself? That could be a misconception among those of us not armed to the teeth.
In fact, brandishing that colonial era long rifle, all the man needed proclaim was the closing prepositional phrase, “from my cold, dead hands." The Full Monty had already long been familiar and mantra’d by the assembled membership via the NRA’s bumper stickers, T-shirts, and presumably a whole lot of other macho ballistic-oriented swag.
Furthermore, an individual who, in dotage, may have forgotten he is not actually Moses, should be aware of the much earlier “genesis” of said rallying cry in the Washington State based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms with the somewhat less catchy, “I will give up my gun when they peel my cold dead fingers from around it.” So while we have to hand it to Mr. Heston for the jump in popularization, it would not be appropriate to give him the finger. [Click "finger" and watch the damned video already!]
Anti-gun violence activist
Rabbi Menachem Creditor, in the Huffington Post --
Sarah Palin’s Heresy:
When Sarah Palin commented at last week’s [NRA] convention, she did worse than offend, worse than degrade human beings, worse than stir up a group of weapon-advocates She did so in the Name of God. The fact that the NRA would allow someone to promote fundamentalism at their convention is a violation of their civic responsibility and a threat to human rights on a national scale.
Most faith traditions incorporate water's restorative power [illustrated by examples comparable to baptism]. How dare the NRA tolerate . . . worse, amplify -- hatred garbed in religious symbolism. The NRA claim that it is committed to "responsible gun ownership" is proven false, unless they repudiate Palin's remarks.
I say Rabbi, mazeltov, when you’ve got Wayne LaPierre in your sights, why not load up with the scattershot? (
For the record, also thrown into the tzimmes were Ted Nugent, the Talmud, and the observation torture doesn’t work – which I’ve always suspected to be a suspiciously convenient non sequitur. It would certainly be quite effective on me, but I’m no martyr.)
Again Rabbi, a high profile opportunity to introduce a smorgasbord of your other more consequential seculo-religious beefs with the gun lobby; but condemning a woman to infamy, over a joke?
Sarah’s “sin” was part of a proud tradition on both sides of demonizing, or at least ridiculing, the opposition for effect. Employing colorful hyperbole to tap a hot button, establish a sense of community, and, with luck, energize the crowd. An exploitation of the widely held impression that if you can be funny, you must also be smart? Hell, I’ve been getting away with that ruse since the Harding administration.
You’ve heard that politics is show business for ugly people. Well, with all the good hair, bone structure and undoubtedly other “augmentation” in this TV age, I’m not sure that old saw still cuts.
I prefer my own take, “A lot of ‘em only got into politics when they realized Vaudeville was dead.”
The primary difference between Saucy Sarah’s political circus and Michael Palin’s Monty Python flying one is Michael’s performance art is generally witty in that slapstick way of theirs, and Sarah’s is frequently half that. When it’s on our own side, we worship the bazinga.
“Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth” -- a present to Ann Richards from Lily Tomlin’s writer and partner Jane Wagner. And while I’ve got you, this Texan feels mighty obliged to inform y’all that “Lipstick on a pig” line, eight years ago, was lifted straight out of Ann Richards' earlier Congressional testimony:
“The Defense Department may not like to call it a subsidy, but you can put lipstick on a hog, call it Monique, and it’s still a pig.”
I once had the honor of accompanying our late Governor on a west coast excursion, and I even doubt the above version was an original contribution of Richards' own virtuoso, phrase-turning speechwriter
Suzanne Coleman. Sure sounds a little
“that dog won’t hunt-ish” to not have risen out of the vernacular. In my mind that’s the only thing saving Palin from prosecution for theft of a punchline.
“Here’s a man who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” -- Former Texas agricultural commissioner Jim Hightower on George W.
“A guy who wears cowboy boots over argyle socks.” -- California Congressman and political guru Tony Coelho on Bush the elder’s claim to favorite son status in at least three or four states.
If our pols could only lose that
“ain’t I Dorothy Parker” affectation, there might be a second career at Chuckles Comedy Club in Corpus. Ms. Palin’s delivery, with its signature initial
higher octave notification of something allegedly profound to come, is
sooooooo . . . patronizingly . . . paced, I expected some NRA member to rise and inquire, “What am I, three?” (
Of course all the while knowing that’s a full two years too young to be trusted with a conceal and carry firearms license.)
Palin’s analogy wasn’t even about waterboarding or baptism. It was a rather patronizing attempt to conflate wimpy torture opponents and the antiwar crowd with the audience’s existing revulsion and ridicule of its built-in direct adversaries, the gun control advocates. A transparent bonding device by a marginalized former politician in appreciation for the gig.
Witness the similar attempt in the same 12 minute speech to take
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $50-million threat to the NRA down a notch. That
chewing tobacco tin prop was a device to link the Mayor’s perhaps more easily trivialized smoking antipathy with his NRA-reviled gun control movement.
Several months ago, she did it with an exaggerated Big Gulp. This isn’t Will Rogers. If anybody has a right to get all riled up, it’s Carrot Top.
In my book, not a petitionable act. Her worst offence may be the same pandering syllogistic logic she also proffered at the rally, equating “guns kill people” with the otherwise well-delivered, “This is a fork. It’s why I’m fat.”
To me, the name SarahPalin always sounded like a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. The remarks did seem to relax her audience with a sense of well-being, if not that fuzzy warm feeling of which I am sure many are incapable. Maybe a liberal feeling of depression or occasional self-loathing can also be relieved with this type of assurance there’s an even bigger idiot out there making a fool of herself than you?
Let’s Put the Shoe on the Other Foot.
Would you be equally outraged at a liberal cartoonist criticizing the neocon moral justification for torture with Donald Rumsfeld waterboard- baptizing Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in the Potomac? How about Dick Cheney trudging the stations of the cross with the weight of a water board over his shoulder -- representing perhaps both a sordid legacy and the administration’s cultivation of social conservatives in the church? What about if Mark Twain had slipped a baptism reference into Huck Finn’s raft trip down the Mississippi? Condemning the idiom “a cross to bear” being used for anything but the ultimate sacrifice?
We can’t deny that our feelings toward the Palin remark cannot be entirely disassociated from our feelings about the woman who uttered them. I’m guessing even the more devout among us did not have a
holy cow over
Helen Gurley Brown’s inspired Single Girl's Cookbook chapter:
“What a friend we have in Cheeses.”
Or in the other direction, at least for some of us, when was the last time you ever gave your boss the benefit of the doubt in a similar situation?
Sarah Palin never seriously equated water board torture with baptism other than as two phenomena one experiences temporarily under water. It's possible she could have been implying one infused the recipient with the grace of God, and the other fear of him – but do you really want to grant her that level of sophistication? At best the insertion of Christian religious imagery was primarily to heighten the insult to “Muslim” terrorists.
Perspective, people. Sarah Palin also never said she could “see Russia from her house,” but the twisting of her actual words on SNL sure was a hoot -- and probably the most concise visual image ever to ridicule her profession of foreign policy expertise. What would you have said if the Palin camp seriously questioned the whole sketch based on that one literary license?
Get a grip, this kind of humor just
touching on religion has been a mainstream staple for decades. If you want to take on somebody really comparing baptism to water torture – as a slam on baptism, not as a rationalization of torture, you could go back at least 53 years to
Anthony Newley as the clown
Mr. Littlechap, in his 1961 musical,
Stop the World I Want to Get Off.
“You know the last time I went to church, I was only eight weeks old. And I haven’t been back since. You know what happened? Some fella dips my head in a bowl of cold water, as if I were a radish or something. Religion, on the surface it’s all right. It’s only when they hold your head under that I don’t like it.”
Even more to the point, if we insist on characterizing the Palin remark as sacrilege,
better get ready to crucify Bill Maher. Oh my, now I’ve done it, opened myself up to a petition, no doubt with “strong letter to follow.”
Admit it. Allowing for the same misleading exaggerated sense of stridency I've already suggested the printed word can imply, going even partial postal over the woman’s alleged blasphemy is as disingenuous as the Dukakis/Willy Horton pairing 27 years ago. Why you might have thought the Duke had committed murder himself. I worked in that administration – and even in a staff, rather than line capacity I was pretty impressed at how skillfully the accusers sidestepped the issue of how many lives had been changed for the better – or even saved – because of the furlough program's overwhelming effectiveness.
That assertion stuck a little better than that it must have been a humongous fail in patriotism that had the Governor refusing to fire teachers who wouldn’t recite the pledge of allegiance (which we all know begins, “Our Father who art in heaven….”). Are those our social wedge issue models?
Yes, I know torture is not something to take lightly, but neither was murder, kidnapping and rape. This Baptism deal is sort of worse intellectually, if not in nastiness. In the ridiculous opportunism Olympics, I'd place our baptismal brouhaha right up there with the Romney campaign implying the President of the United States had been encouraging supporters to vote “out of revenge.” Though, between you, me and the lamppost, how wonderful would it be to believe the Romney handlers actually had so little regard for the voters they were courting, as to believe they would be unfamiliar enough with the original aphorism as to take the bait.
And speaking of “Living well is the best revenge,” between you, me and the other lamppost, the Obama Crisis Quick Response squad did miss an opportunity to enhance their brushoff of the issue. Because we endeavor to be educational as well as marginally provocative, I’d like you to know that the original quotation happened to have been the contribution of a rather familiar sounding name -- the popular 17th century Anglican priest, poet and hymnist, George Herbert. Bazinga!
Worse, for the fundamentalist right, Herbert had lifted that one straight out of the Talmud: “Live well, it’s the best revenge,” i.e. why upset yourself and waste energy wishing ill will on the other guy? That’s what we have Carl Rove for.
In this case, overreacting to a religious reference not to be taken literally, and one that fits comfortably into both the American political and humor tradition, is more akin to that jihad over
Kurt Westergaard’s Danish cartoon of the Prophet sporting a suicide bomb turban. It’s a
fatwah turning
Salman Rushdie into a fish with the price on its head, even if rationalized as a deterrent to future offenders. The street slaying of
Theo van Gogh Yes, we know the severity of the sought-after punishment is by no means comparable. But,
people, because it can be so filling,
umbrage is a relatively precious commodity; leave some for the rest of us -- and for yourself while we’re at it.
BENGHAZI???
Far be it from me to disparage taking a successful page out of the Republican playbook. Especially in our culture of cynicism, people process negative information so much more readily than the opposite. Or have you not been paying attention to campaign ads? Here in Republican Texas, with primary runoffs imminent, it's practically intra-party cannibalism.
I have applauded Republican evil genius in several other areas, like owning the name of an issue. Frank Luntz's death panels and death taxes are the most frequent examples. On the other hand, it’s also likely their “Obamacare” trumping the Affordable Health Care Act will come back to bite them, once it is entrenched in the national psyche as Medicare.
Nevertheless, do you really want to be lumped in with that political spin machine, much less a world of 14th century religious fanatics? Sure, take all the pages you want from that playbook -- but for God’s sake, don’t insult us by scribbling “N.B.” and “true” in the margins.
Let me qualify here that there is no doubt in my mind genuine religious devotion was awakened. Identical posts on the Palin Petition generated some 314 overwhelmingly supportive comments in Daily Kos and about a hundred fewer in the Huffington Post..
“To use the language of the call to Jesus Christ as a metaphor for waterboarding is sacrilegious, blasphemous and distrespectful.”
“So Palin's remark is that we should use this act of grace . . . to forcibly convert non-Christians . . . . Which means she doesn't really think anything of baptism . . . .”
“She wouldn't be the first to turn what should be a sacrament into an instrument of coercion and a weapon against unbelievers. But that doesn't make it any less shameful.”
The blogosphere did offer some cogent analysis.
"I would hope that even these traditions wouldn’t take it [baptism] so lightly as to joke about it in the context of waterboarding. Or even if it is considered OK to joke about waterboarding being baptism by these folks, I’d hope they recognize how blasphemous it sounds to the ears of Christians who retain the historic and high view of the sacrament.”
--Mollie Hemmingway in The Federalist, writing under the Headline: No, Sarah Palin, Baptism Isn’t A Good Punchline For A Terrorist Joke
In a wonderfully informative and objective CNN Opinion piece, part of which he also shared with Daily Kos, history professor David M. Perry provided some interesting analysis of Palin’s cavalier use of religious/firearm metaphors: “Ammo is expensive, don’t waste a bullet on a warning shot [on Muslim terrorists].” We also were educated on the long history of forced baptisms linked to the Palin remark, and her previous careless application of the “blood libel” brand on those who had linked Palin's image of gun toting bravado to the Gabby Giffords shooting massacre. I have now also been introduced the concept of Existential Binaries (us/them mentality).
[Had to rummage around myself for the record of waterboarding having been around as an interrogation technique for 500 years, including as part of domestic U.S."third degree" techniques.]
Huffpost contributor Sarah Posner placed Palin’s playing fast and loose with religious imagery within the context of her view of religion as performative rather than sacramental, and what Posner says is Palin’s Wasilla denomination’s treatment of baptism as symbolic rather than sacred.
I recommend all three posts highly, but also suspect whatever disproportional disapprobation that appeared in any of these columns, may have been more out of the need to feed that 24-hr. news cycle beast, than with any substantial personal fits of pique. You try to come up with a visually accessible, interesting topic two or three times a week. I'll bet your lying eyes might even spot a whole lot of that going on right here.
But the rest of us? What were we thinking? Is this really where you want to waste your stand --abetting this perpetual pageant contestant’s attempt to salvage her self-image as
queen of the one-liners in the talent competition?
Enabling a nimrod (in both senses of the word), who believes she can not only feminize firearms, but regain a semblance of relevance by appearing at an NRA rally with the slogan “Women Hunt” emblazoned in pink on her T-shirt? Even if a spotlight impedes the Fox Populi in any attempt to untether themselves from her, is taking Sarah Palin seriously a productive thing to do? A PAIR OF SLACKS
Now there are two areas in which I might be willing to cut you a little slack. Hey I’m a liberal. if that means nothing else, it’s that whatever I believe this firmly, I'm always open to the possibility, even likelihood, that some of it is wrong.
The first is the hope expressed among some of the blog commenters that this may have been our moment – finally a chance to carve a wedge between the ultra-religious right and themerely conveniently religious right. For the sh*t to hit the fanbase.
Indeed,Rod Dreher, a genuine person of faith and a thoughtful conservative former columnist here in Dallas, currently contributing to the online American Conservative, writes under the heading The Sacrilegious Sarah Palin: "Not only is this woman, putatively a Christian, praising torture, but she is comparing it to a holy sacrament of the Christian faith….delivered in such a way that makes Archie Bunker sound like Cicero."
Yes there has been a modicum of distancing; but if the desired uproar from that side were to materialize over this, is there any doubt in your mind that would be because those folks are as nuts they’ve been until now? So what would that say about a similar reaction from the left? I'm talking the baptism part not the torture. Is it the pedophile or the priest part of pedophile priest "humor" that begs the circumspection? For most of us the answer is pretty obvious -- as it is to the late night talk show writers.
I’m a little more comfortable with the other pass I may be willing to give. That would be perhaps filing this temporary tempest at the teaparty under turnabout as fair play. The delicious unfairness of over-the-top overreaction for polemic advantage. Karma. The kind of perverse satisfaction you might only be able to duplicate with maybe an unexpected and uncalled-for ad hominem retort to an adversary who smugly believed she’d just gotcha.
The kind of response you might consider for someone like the intrepid tax fighter Grover Norquist if you’re just overwhelmed with facts and statistics you have no way of checking. “You may be correct in everything you say sir; but when you wake up tomorrow morning, your name will still be Grover Norquist.”
The Mainstreaming of Sick Humor
You’re familiar with the line on the left, usually credited to the “The Buttoned Down Mind of Bob Newhart” classic LP. In a sketch identified as Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue, the president’s publicist makes suggestions to punch up the Gettysburg Address, while POTUS complains how bored he is in Pennsylvania. The suggestion is made, “Hey Abe, why don’t you take in a play?”
However, the earliest attribution seems to be in the late Fletcher Knebel’s widely read, satirical column about Washington politics, “Potomac Fever.” The columnist mocks the vapidity of TV news interviewing, by illustrating what it would have been like during the Civil War.
It’s part of a long tradition of black, or sick humor: “No, Salome dear, not in the fridge.” “Hey Joan of Arc, how would you like your steak?” -- two entries in a British New Statesman magazine contest, where readers were asked to submit what they labeled “gruesomes.” David Letterman’s recurring variations on, “So, is it too soon to start hitting on Mrs. bin Laden?” Or my own Custer depiction on the right above, of fruitless reaction to hopeless dilemmas.
The facetious alleged inquiry of Mary Todd Lincoln has now long transcended humor to become a clichéd wry response, either minimizing the gravity of some unfortunate occurrence, or calling attention to the addressee having missed the main point. Or just as frequently, by understatement, letting the speaker know you do grasp the enormity of the situation. If not hilariously funny, these analogies are at least generally now seen as acceptable for a number of reasons.
One is that only the perpetually humorless or hopelessly credulous could ever believe they were anything but an illustration of carrying something to its extreme absurdity. (Go ahead, Google. I’ll bet you find some thread where someone seriously inquires if the question had ever actually been posed to Mrs. Lincoln.”)
Another is that the line is clearly not about the reference used to make the point. Nobody is minimizing the tragedy of the Lincoln assassination, the massacre of the 7th Cavalry, and certainly not, by extension, the abusive treatment of Native Americans. But if they were, there would be one other factor that most would consider tilting that toward acceptability:
COMEDY = Tragedy + Time
The most frequently heard fallback question rhetorically asked by comedians with regard to this issue -- most often disingenuously, or at least after it's too late is "Too soon?" The above criterion, in the form of a mathematical equation, has been passed along by so many wits and comics to encapsulate or explain the phenomena that it is often misattributed to any number of them.
The attribution I choose to accept, at least the one knowingly or unknowingly quoted by other humorists, is a personal hero's, who once, in conversation did me the honor of opining to a good-sized audience that an observation I had made was “very funny.” The TV host, personality, and polymath Steve Allen in 1957 Cosmopolitan Magazine Interview:
"When I explained to a friend recently that the subject matter of most comedy is tragic he said, “Do you mean to tell me that the dreadful events of the day are a fit subject for humorous comment? The answer is 'No, but they will be pretty soon.'
I guess you can make a mathematical formula out of it. Tragedy plus time equals comedy."
Of course, it's not just time. Although the casualty count was comparable, it was common to hear Pearl Harbor treated less somberly well before Sept. of 2011, not just directly through the passage of time, but because the personal connection was just not there for most of us. Still, I cannot help but feel the grace period between the World Trade Center and comedic reference turned out to be shorter than say for Pearl Harbor, not only because we've become so thick skinned through constant exposure to the "artform" that time is no longer such a critical factor.
We've also become rather deft at parsing the situation to recognize how the joke may not be about the tragedy itself, but about other related issues. Isn't it almost always? Did the Malaysia Flight 370 snark begin practically before we knew it was no longer in the air have something to do with the fact that it related to the 24 hour coverage of nothing new rather than just that it happened half way around the world involving nobody you knew? There's also that last distinction also occasionally observed: you slipping on a banana peel is funny, me slipping, well, not so much. (Personally, I find me slipping a lot funnier and anecdotable, with the passage of time and pain. Isn't the mind a wonderful thing?
That's also been one explanation of laughter: The exhalation of breath after realizing some dreadful conclusion, toward which the humor had been heading, either never materialized, because you had been misdirected until then, or actually did occur, but not really, so all survived.
In most cases it's some combination of time, distance, personal connection and scope of the disaster. I’ll venture, even among generations it will be some time before “Other than that, Mrs. Kennedy, how was your trip to Dallas?” enters the vernacular – unless perhaps sparingly offered as an original take on somebody else’s tasteless treatment of a horrendous issue.
I do feel confident I've proved one other truth here, Dr. Freud; if there is something that's hardly ever funny, it's trying to analyze humor.
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Finally, a true anecdote, because, honestly, when am I ever likely to be presented with an opportunity to invoke it again?
Years ago, as we and another couple were exiting the West Roxbury, Massachusetts neighborhood movie theater, an employee was up on a ladder, installing marquee letters announcing the following evening’s feature “Airport ’77 - Starring Charleton Heston.”
The gentleman descended and looked up at his uncompleted signage with befuddlement. He then searched the remaining letters still laid out on the ground. At that point, the marquee read as far as, “Airport ’77 - Starring Charleston He_ _ _ _ .” Obviously, he couldn’t find the now missing “s” in Heston, because he had already gratuitously squandered it in the actor’s first name. The man was still searching as we reached our car.