Know who wanted to nuke the moon? Hitler!
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Usually IMAO flies under the radar of left-wing blogs. They want stuff to be angry about, but who could be angry at fun-loving IMAO? We only want to nuke the moon — there aren’t even people there to hurt. Still, we’ve had our run ins with some of them such as when some guy named digby criticized us for our “hostile” humor and Amanda Marcotte and her commenters once spent about 500 pages in a horribly pedantic analysis of whether a post of mine was technically “satire.”
Now, Sadly, No! — a left-wing humor site — has latched on to our Fred Thompson Facts. By itself, it’s not that notable. It seems to be a lashing out at how the left-wing blogs’ favorite candidate Edwards is perceived as being “swishy,” and now they must be further frustrated on that count since Edwards took time out of the last debate to criticize Hillary Clinton’s outfit. The humor seems borne more out of being angry than being clever, but their audience seems to like it so I can’t really criticize.
Anyway, what was interesting to me was the monologue preceding the humor where this bit caught my eye:
Not that we don’t have a begrudging sort of respect for the I.M.A.O.s of the world. After all, it’s sort of mulishly courageous to tackle humor as they do, from the opposite end of what is actually funny. Very few humorists can find comedy in the violent victimization of the marginalized by the overclass, largely because there isn’t any. But points to I.M.A.O. for trying. And even if their output isn’t — how shall we put it? — ‘funny in the slightest,’ at the very least it makes for a nice sort of homage to the Golden Age of Beer Hall comedy. . .a kind of living monument to the jackbooted stylings of those brownshirted stand-ups who, once upon a time, quite literally ‘killed’ at venues across Europe.
Now, if this was meant in jest, it’s exceptionally clever. Basically they’re poking fun at their own side and how many have an overwrought hatred of any one with a different political viewpoint. It’s much more self-aware than you’d find anywhere on DailyKos. If it’s meant even partly serious, though, then it’s rather sad.
And that’s the problem with a humor site with politics like that of the popular left-wing blogs. If you handed me something written by Glenn Greenwald and said, “Here’s this hilarious parody of a left-winger I wrote!” I’d think it was some genius satire and admire the work you put in it (“Wow. You kept it up for like five pages.”). When I first read Amanda Marcotte, I thought she was joking as she preached a kind of feminism I had long thought was made up by the older conservatives to scare us. So, when a left-wing site is sometimes trying to be funny, how can you tell when it’s saying something in jest or when it’s saying something ridiculous with a hilarious though somewhat sad earnestness? When many on that side honestly believe the government is behind 9/11 and that President Bush is going to establish a dictatorship before leaving office, how can you tell when they’re joking about something?
If I were to guess, I’d say who wrote that at Sadly, No! meant it seriously. That’s because it’s extremely rare to see left-wingers use self-deprecating humor about their own politics. I could write a whole paper on the reasons why for that, but just think about: How often do right-wingers make jokes using the left-wing’s stereotypes of them? We here at IMAO do it about every other post; it’s fun to pretend to be a mindless warmonger who hates the poor. Now how often have you seen a left-winger make a jokes using the right-wings stereotypes of them. I can’t think of very many instances; they really hate those perceptions of them and don’t find anything about them funny.
So, if I’m wrong and that statement from Sadly, No! was completely in jest, it was all the more exceptional.
What do you think? Do you think they were joking, or do they really think our humor makes us like Nazis? If so, then which posts are the Nazi ones? Maybe it was the one where I drew Kos with exaggerated Jewish features.
UPDATE:
I got a response in the comments from what seems like a dour, humorless person. I’d thought I’d put it here with my response:
1: Power. The powerless use humor to try to deflate those with power over them.
That’s one use of humor, but it’s far from the only use. Most people who play the game of “[insert group here] can’t be funny” start by making up their own esoteric definition of what constitutes humor, trying to make complex a simple human impulse.
When the powerful make fun of those beneath them, that’s not funny, it’s cruel. It comes off like cheerleaders mocking the poor kids for wearing hand-me-downs. Brandi and Candi might laugh, but it’s not “humorous.”
Ridiculing is actually the basis of all humor (or so I argue). Still, calling all the humor of one side “bullying” shows a very narrow mind which probably isn’t open to actual discussion in the first place. It also shows absolutely no understanding of humor (which isn’t to say the person is incapable of humor; just incapable of understanding it outside partisan blinders).
It’s hard to make stuff funny when one side is dedicated to bringing Americans together to make things better for all of us and the opposing side is devoted to accentuating the divisions between different groups to increase their power.
Of course, this is just one person’s retarded viewpoint of the world which is shared only by a small fringe. Who gets to say what it funny and what isn’t is the audience to the humor. You can’t just say that it’s only humor if people with my own narrow political viewpoint thinks its funny; everyone can play that game and its completely pointless.
2: Fringe reality. The fraction of Kosites who believe that Bush was ACTUALLY behind 9/11 is roughly the same as the fraction of $Con_site who believe that Hillary is ACTUALLY a lesbian Mossad agent who had Vince Foster murdered b/c he wouldn’t keep quiet about Bill importing planeloads of cocaine into Arkansas. It’s a big country full of weirdos of all types and the internet just makes them a lot louder.
Of course, this is more a political than a humor argument. Those viewpoints make the recommended diaries (though 9/11 conspiracies are now verboten from Kos). Polls — as useful as they are — show those viewpoints are significant among Democrats and thus even more significant among the fringe that is Kos. I don’t think most fervently believe the conspiracies, and it’s mainly just how silly their partisanship has gotten that they even consider them.
Anyway, the person who wrote this comment obviously has a silly little viewpoint and takes himself way too seriously. From his own definition, that makes him the pompous one to deflate using humor. If this is the writer of the Sadly, No! post, then they really should change their name to the exclamation of “That’s not funny!”
UPDATE 2:
Phelps has an example of how the violent victimization of the marginalized by the overclass can be hilarious.
I laughed.
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John Edwards was rejected for the lead role in The Wizard of Oz for “not being butch enough to play a convincing Dorothy”.