Raven’s Aerie

I have noted before the saddening dearth of humor among modern academics and fellow liberals, which seems to me to have grown in recent years (though I admit that may just be a perception arising from my own growing awareness of the political and cultural landscapes and so might always have been thus).

Still, it would seem the left has become flooded with steely-eyed, starch-collared, dour moralists as bad as any similar in the Christian right with their wagging fingers, disapproving frowns, and strict demands of adherence to and acceptance of the moral righteousness of their tribe’s sacred creeds.

This trend is glaringly apparent when it comes to the types of reactions one finds to off-color humor; as proof here’s a collection of horrifyingly horrified reactions to Russell T. Davies’ dark humor regarding the question of what historical figure he would like to see play Dr. Who…his joking response was: “Hitler. He was stern and strong. He would be great.”

Clearly — that is, to anyone with a pulse who isn’t in a coma or brain dead and being kept alive with machinery — the joke is obvious, in that Hitler would make a terrible Dr. Who; Davies is playing upon the sheer absurdity of suggesting someone so ill-suited to the role. Such a cleverly crafted joke (suggesting someone as publicly hated as the Doctor is loved, playing up the ‘positive’ qualities of a negative individual) should elicit at least an impish grin, if not a belly laugh.

But consider the same sort of reaction occurs here to Elizer’s wit about the “virgin” Mary maybe not being such a “virgin”, with logically-supported denunciations spilled like blood and buoyed by the ever-popular outcry of “That just isn’t funny!”

Now, you might consider those pretty tame examples and agree that those people need to loosen up: they’re clearly not getting the joke and have some obvious personal issues to work out. Or maybe you don’t agree and think those folks reactions are reasonable.

Either way, now consider the amount of fur that flew over this t-shirt for ostensibly “promoting” rape, and the shirt’s subsequent censorship. Similarly note the fury and denouncement of Damon Wayans’ inappropriate/absurdist web comedy series.

Clearly that’s beyond the pale, right? Those things aren’t funny.

I point out these cases to contrast such reactions both between the two presented sets and with the same responses of aghast fury found among certain segments of the religiously devout populace in their reactions to humorous suggestions that Jesus can “suck it!” and similarly themed humor.

No matter the group, while rationales are provided in copious quantity regarding why the humor in question is in bad taste, outrageous, or disturbing, all such reactions can be sifted out into a few simple observations: most of those things objected to as being ‘unfunny’, no matter the publicly-provided rationale supporting such, are initially objected to on purely emotional grounds.

Wikipedia reports similar observations regarding objections to and failures to comprehend satire due to an objector’s personal involvement with some aspect of the satire, and such reactions are no strangers to history nor (sadly) to the modern age.

These reactions occur for a few main reasons:

1. The humor may be about subjects the objectors feel are too serious to be made fun of. Often this is because the joke is perceived as an attack upon the internal value the individual ascribes to (some of) the ideas being targeted, particularly when those ideas comprise a part of that individual’s own identity, or threaten the validity or safety of the same.

2. The objectors feel making fun of a horrible thing makes that thing acceptable. That is, the humor is viewed by the objector as advocating or devaluing some horrible act (often one they have some personal connection to as a victim), and as reflective of an acceptance and advocacy of the associated behavior. The joke is viewed as condoning or promoting the act and is mocking the pain felt by victims of such an act.

Both of these are problematic as foundational reasoning.

In the case of the latter, in most cases the humor is not advocation, support, or insensitive mockery: the viewer is only responding to and treating it as though it is. The outrage arises from the viewer imposing their perception of the meaning as the only view — formed by their personal emotional history — and forcing that interpretation on those around them through outrage.

Rationally, we must realize there is an inescapable difference between actually hurting someone and using absurdity and satire to mockingly denounce or direct attention to some misbehavior.

Consider the Wayans’ example: the negative reaction is founded on the failure to differentiate between absurdity and its associated humor and an actual act of aggression or discrimination.

But is the piece encouraging or pardoning this sort of violence against women? That is how it is being read and reacted to by the objectors, with no comprehension that such an interpretation may be wildly misguided.

As an example, this distinction between absurdity and advocacy is why I find the concept of flooding an epilepsy support forum with flashing images somewhat amusing — a number of humorous comedy sketches could be made of such an event — while such an act perpetrated against real people is horrifyingly unfunny for obvious reasons.

By the logic that confuses absurdity and advocacy, I should also not laugh at the lynching in Blazing Saddles or the wit of Mark Twain when Huck Finn talks trash about Abolitionists. But I would be an ignoramus and an idiot not to! Not because those things supported or encouraged lynching, racism or slavery, and not because I am laughing at racism, lynching, and slavery, but because those events skewered those very things with the language and behaviors their adherents utilize.

But why is it the objecting individuals fail to perceive this difference and confuse absurdity with advocacy, in fact confusing form with function?

Lack of education and perspective might be part of it, as is usually the case with attempts to ban Mark Twain’s works for being “racist”. But if we examine the former reason for these reactions, we should eventually tease out the influence of cultural and personal boundaries.

For the Right, the acceptable behavioral territories are bound up with religion and social tradition in the culture at large. For the Left, they are wrapped in the sanctity and centrality of each individual’s internal, emotional world.

The Left prioritizes and seeks to protect — through public mandate and social taboo — the private, personal, internal worlds of every member of the society, forcing the public sphere to conform to the limits of each private comfort zone.

But while the Right uses traditional morality and sacred cultural notions to decry that which offends their senses and the Left uses logic and social empathy to do the same, both manage to miss the point. Both utilize the acceptable social pressures of their cultural circles to enforce conformity within a populace, marking out tribal territories, sacred creeds, and behavioral taboos. Both seek to police thought in their own way.

Unfortunately, this also makes liberals who engage in this behavior a dark reflection of those they claim to stand against, and as bad as those they claim to stand against.

It comes down to this: the idea that so many things are “just not funny” is one perpetrated by some individuals as nothing more than a method of social control and manipulation involving the creation of taboos for others from one or more individual’s internal, emotional world(s).

By claiming the humor “is just not funny” and dismissing or rationalizing away the idea that it might be funny in any sense, the objectors demand their perception be validated, and worse, that their view is treated by others as the only possible, just, rational interpretation.

This is tyranny.

No matter how well-worded the rationale, no matter how emotional the issue, it is a tyranny of the very sort the Right embraces and upholds.

Thus what makes this all the more frustrating for me is that liberals — the supposed intellectuals and rationalists of the country — repeatedly fall into the trap of defending emotional territory with logic and fail to see it as such.

In the end, liberal fury and morally aghast denouncement of absurdist humor and satire involving their sacred cows sound no better nor are they more rational, progressive, or righteous than those of the fundamentalist Christian who reacts with horror and lashes out in outrage that anyone would dare make fun of the beloved Jesus or their traditions and beliefs.

As the Onion proves, many times being offended has nothing to do with being offensive, for surely, if anything in the Onion makes you upset because “it’s not funny”, you need to think long and hard about your own emotional state, rather than writing a letter to the Onion chiding them for being inappropriately un-funny.

“Oh, but that’s different!” someone might proclaim for any of various reasons, thinking of some story from that paper that either did or did not offend them.

No. It is not.

It is not different just because your personal buttons were or were not pushed.

All of which means “That isn’t funny” is no more a valid basis for argument than “It was just a joke.”

It is. You can’t have a smart, educated individual — especially a politician — talking about people behaving like people for known reasons without pandering to their egos, because half of them will raise a stink that you dared to analyze them, even if the analysis is completely true and well supported in the literature: that people, especially as groups, do in fact cling to certain issues and ideas out of frustration.

That fanatics and hard-core supporters and fundamentalists and true-believers are born from frustration and the need to find a stable center, a reason, a way to empower the self, and that many groups use that reality to recruit (and is, in fact, the go-to route of attack for racist groups: pin that frustration on a found enemy).

This is basic and proven human psychology, but we can’t talk about it in politics.

You can’t have truth in politics because people don’t want truth in politics. They say they do, all the time. But when you actually speak truth in politics — and I’m not talking snotty would-be ‘tough love’ truth that is really just a veiled attack, either, just truth — you get torn apart by the circling sharks, and denounced as elitist, out-of-touch, a snob. (My friends, just look at the politics in the gamer community.)

This is why politics is about the stupid — not the “you’re a stupid moron hick”, but the instinctual, the emotional. It’s about monkey grooming and comfort-petting behaviors that haven’t changed since we came down from the trees. Politics isn’t about being intelligent, about being the best candidate for the job, about telling the truth — all the things we say we want in our leaders and politicians.

You can’t win at politics that way.

Politics is about pandering to people’s pre-existing notions, making them feel comfortable and right, and outright lying or manipulating individuals and groups to do so. All to gain power over them.

And we the people enable this state of affairs. We lie to ourselves about wanting truth instead of taking a hard look at what our group’s behaviors are encouraging and reinforcing, rather than the words coming out of our collective mouth.

People are small and petty and ignorant and self-blind and over-estimate their own positive qualities, and good politicians — bad humans — know this and use that to their own advantage to gain power over them, to manipulate them using people’s known blind spots and through their ignorance. Speaking truth rarely achieves that in our cultural climate.

We say we want truth, but the minute we get it…

Self-reflection, knowledge, and emotional work is often distasteful for it takes us outside our comfort zones and self-perceptions, forcing us to accept things that might be valid beyond our sphere of comfort, to consider the possibility we are wrong, even if we are not, or are not who we believe we are, even if we are, to take a deep look at our frustrations and correct them inside instead of trying to fix them by surrogate or scapegoat outside, that how we feel may not be the most important thing or that it might be wrong, that feeling and correctness are not linked, that words are words and sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but needing to be said because that is how we learn, and that “I disagree” is better than “I can’t believe you said that” or empty and false reassurances to our egos.

You can’t talk about the real reasons people do things, not in politics, because people don’t want a leader who understands them, not really, not honestly, they want a leader who understands when to comfort them, even if that comfort is a lie or misplaced or unhealthy, because politics isn’t about education, rational observation, or truth. Even though it should be.

Because you can’t speak truth-to-power without consequence, without reactive fury, cold dismissal, and angry denial — and the greatest power in a democracy is the people.

Obama stated, regarding the voting habits of some small town voters: “It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

And then a gimlet-eyed Clinton banshee leapt to the attack, twisting and distorting the words and ideas to her own advantage and painting them as lies and terrible elitist filth, like the best of the right-wing political spin machines, zealously puffing herself up as the champion of the people — but it’s really just a political stance. You know she realizes the truth and reality of it because she’s an educated woman. She just won’t say it now because she can put blood in the water, and it isn’t hers.

And so — concretely, personally — if it comes down to it, I’m certain now: I won’t vote for Clinton, even if she’s the Democrat candidate. I can’t in good conscience support her betrayal of ideals I say I stand for in our leaders, nor her support of such through the use of the manipulative behaviors I despise. I’ll write-in a candidate if I have to, but I won’t vote for Clinton, because you have to be the change you want to see.

Martin Luther King Jr. is a figurehead who has been co-opted by the media and the government as their symbol, standing for what they (expediently) claim he stands for, a white-washed hero of racial equality you learn only the government-approved story of through mass media channels.

What you don’t hear about, though — rather the same way you hear only about Helen Keller’s struggle and success against disability but never that she was a dedicated proponent of human rights, a woman’s-rights activist and a communist — is that after his success with civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr. had an awakening to the social problem that went beyond and lay underneath race and spent his later years fighting the bigger and all-encompassing problems of poverty and the class divide and American support and complicity of such throughout the world.

But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

We must honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few…

The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspire men to be more I-centered than thou-centered.

He was assassinated before his dream of social equality for all people could be realized. Instead, his image is used by those in power to continue to focus our concentration on the racial divide, and thus distract us and separate us as allies by reinforcing the idea that it is race which is the overwhelming issue.

Thus we argue among ourselves, with race activists claiming that white people who say they are colorblind are simply refusing to deal with how society treats people of color, don’t want to think about such, and are thus both selfish and part of the problem rather than enlightened allies. But the truth is more complex and less vicious:

In his Pierre Berton Interview (from 1965, though he’s identified as Malcolm X), El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz said, “I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being, neither white, black, brown nor red. When you are dealing with humanity as one family, there’s no question of integration or intermarriage. It’s just one human being marrying another human being, or one human being living around and with another human being.”

That doesn’t mean that if you asked him what color Martin Luther King or John F. Kennedy were, he would be unable to answer. It doesn’t mean he wanted to “live in a fantasy land where no one ever pays attention to skin color, ethnicity, culture, or religion.” He denounced white racism up to the day he died. He saw race clearly from the time of his hajj. His “neither white, black, brown nor red” meant what’s meant by directors who announce that they’re holding colorblind auditions: judge the person by the deeds.

And this bickering, this desire to have an enemy and attack them, to degrade our allies as not our allies, distracts us from the root and is meant to distract us from the root: the status and class divide that gives rise to racial and sexual inequality — for it is the culture of those with wealth and affluence who use its power to ensure the continuation and supremacy of that culture and its traditional bigotries.

Thanks to Will Shetterly for originally pointing me to this and other recent articles about MLK; you may wish to peruse The Sharing Way as well for more on the topic of giving and wealth redistribution.

The March 6th, 2008 Editorials section of the Star Tribune contains one “Letter of the Day” from a Martin R. Wellens of Shorewood, which I am bringing to attention because of the way the letter uses language to hide what it is actually saying, ideas we would all simply reject had they been openly stated. I’ll quote the relevant bit:

If we stopped attracting nonworking people from Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit and Mexico with our lavish welfare giveaways, law-abiding citizens would have less to fear. If we reversed our extremely high parole rate and extremely low incarceration rate, law-abiding citizens would have less to fear. We created government to preserve our life and property.

This letter would be a laughingstock fit for a “Letters from the sanitarium” page based simply on the absurd notion that Minnesota’s welfare programs provide “lavish” benefits worthy of moving across state lines to obtain (the reality is welfare benefits don’t provide even enough to meet minimum living expenses). But the repetition of such typical right-wing myths pales in comparison to the disturbing coding contained in the letter.

Take a look at what the letter is saying:

1. Non-whites are defacto unemployed.
2. The unemployed are looking for a free ride.
3. The unemployed are defacto criminals.

What we actually have here is classist and racist propaganda of the highest order, fit for publication in a Ron Paul newsletter, making claims and stating “facts” that should never have been printed in polite or intelligent company.

It slipped under the Star’s editors radar, unsurprisingly given the right-wing’s vicious public assault on the media as “biased” as part of their intimidation-control strategy, and given that the letter tried to make its point sound reasonable by avoiding words that would have sent up a decency flag.

What it boils down to, however, is that the Star Tribune just printed a letter that reads “Those poor niggers and wetbacks are all a bunch of lazy criminals mooching off society, waiting to kill us and take our property.”

Apparently, while it is not OK to say “nigger” or “black” or come out and be openly racist by accusing certain highly specific ethnic populations of being criminals, if you refer only to specific locations (such as highly ethnic areas) and even throw in an entire country, it is OK to stereotype them all as criminals.

But, of course, then the counter-claim would arise the writer was only talking about “non-working” people: the unemployed. So all unemployed African Americans and Mexicans are lazy criminals? Of course, the defense would be the writer is just talking about the “non-working”, regardless of race, and no racist intent was implied.

This, of course, is hardly better.

Notice how the writer separates people into the law-abiding and the non-working — the good, honest citizens and the bad, thieving outsiders. The race subtext is just icing on top of the class garbage.

Any way you cut it, this letter is bigoted nonsense. It repeats long-debunked right-wing talking points mouthed by the right for years: the poor are lazy, the poor are criminal, the poor want a free ride, the poor live lavishly off your sweat.

And even though we see the implication that ‘the poor are all Mexicans or blacks’, the letter isn’t about race. Note how the writer does a typically right-wing sort of thing: they make a claim about what government should be doing that is hypocritical when you look at their argument.

The government should be protecting life, you see, but somehow, government welfare programs that try to keep people from being forced to live on the streets without food or health care aren’t protecting life. That wicked welfare garbage doesn’t do what the government should be doing, it doesn’t really protect people.

How does that work?

Because, you see, there’s two types of people in the minds of those who think this way: the hard-working, deserving people who don’t need those benefits anyways, and the lazy, undeserving thieves and criminals who shouldn’t get any benefits.

Somehow, despite keeping people sheltered, fed, and healthy, welfare isn’t protecting people. Well, not the people who matter — poor people, you see, shouldn’t be protected. The implications of all this in a letter whose premise is state self-defense laws make the underlying rhetoric disturbingly clear: the poor should be feared and driven away and shot and killed because they are either lazy moochers or dangerous criminals.

This is the song of the right wing. You have heard it sung regularly by Republicans and Neo-cons and Libertarians for decades.

How such hate rhetoric managed to get past the Star’s editorial filter, I don’t know. What I do know is that if the media didn’t print or air this crazy shit, those responsible would simply start screaming about repression and freedom of speech and liberal bias. That’s a very successful strategy, to attack someone using their strengths.

This is why the right has been very successful in verbally bullying the media into adherence to an ideal of “equality” or a supposedly “balanced” presentation of viewpoints that has thus far only served the right-wing, especially with the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. Our media is very concerned with appearing to be unbiased, and are proud of being neutral.

While the doctrine was originally a tool of the left, today, the right has exploited its absence equally well. Right-wing media outlets are no longer required to give equal time to the left, and so they don’t. However, they do demand equal attention from everyone else.

The right will loudly accuse any outlet that refuses to present what they want presented of being biased, and then further whip their lapdogs into a frenzy of media noise as part of the social power game: making the enemy look bad by simply repeating the accusation often enough.

It’s a working strategy: force mainstream media to print any nonsense handed to them or suffer being labeled as “biased” by the noise machine and thus in the public consciousness.

Of course, the problem with equal media representation is that “balanced” does not mean giving equal time to the ravings of extremist conspiracy theorists and calling it “fair” or “balanced reporting”, no matter how many nasty names the extremists call you or how many unfounded accusations of bias they hurl.

Of course, this is problematic: when is it bias and when isn’t it? It can be a slippery slope that preys on people’s fears about human nature. But this is precisely the perfect sort of environment in which such accusations thrive and the media dies.

So, in an effort to appear fair, balanced, and neutral and avoid the undeserved stigma, the media caters to these demands (and yet, I note, still get called biased) and print the rhetoric and myths the right thrives on, giving them a false air of credibility via media endorsement. Because, after all, respectable media doesn’t air anything biased, non-factual, un-researched, or lunatic…