Harvey gave us this in 2007 — The Editors
In the comments to a post on the Hollywood writers’ strike at Twenty Sided, RustyBadger asks the ultimate question:
“The people that write for The DailyShow are funny, yes, but they have an easy job: write funny stuff about famous people who are in the media spotlight so the viewers can feel smugly superior about their own pathetic lives. I mean, really. How hard IS it to make fun of Brittney Spears and Michael Jackson?”
As someone who makes fun of John Edwards EVERY SINGLE DAY, I feel emminently qualified to answer that one.
“Hardness”, as we all know, is measured on the Mohs scale, with Talc (the crumbly, powdery stone from which talcum powder is derived) being a 1 on that scale. Diamonds are a 10.
Mocking celebrities does not contain an absolute hardness factor, but is rather a repetitive-dependent sliding equation which is directly proportional to the number of times you have previously mocked the celebrity. By which I mean, the more often you make fun of someone, the harder it gets.
This SEEMS counterintuitive, as one would expect it to get EASIER with repetition – practice making perfect, and all that. However, the hardness in this case actually arises from the physical limitations of existing in a finite universe. That is, poking fun at the famous is based on making an analogy between the famous person and an existing object, and connecting the two in a manner that is completely unexpected, yet also perfectly sensible to the reader afterwards. Given that the universe contains only 1085 discrete objects, the writer has fewer and fewer objects to compare their celebrity target to with each joke written, thus making the job increasingly hard.
As anyone who’s contributed a Bonus Fact can attest, the first one is talc-easy, but pretty soon you find yourself smacking your forehead against Hydrated Sodium Beryllium Aluminum Silicate Hydroxide Fluoride.
In other words… “very”.
So as someone who makes a living writing (if you define “living” as “three squares a day – of Ramen Noodles”), I’m siding with the writers, and showing my solidarity by posting a video that explains the writers’ strike in terms everyone can understand.
Enjoy:
[YouTube]