FAFO

  • Thread starter Thread starter UNCMSinLS
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 1K
  • Views: 26K
  • Politics 
heelinhell said:
I have a different perspective when it comes to engaging with posters like Silence and Ram. ..

First, they contribute to the board by sharing the latest views and "news" emanating from the ooze in the right wing fever swamp

Second, it provides an opportunity to correct the record with the actual facts

Third, there may be some lurkers who may be duped and influenced by the misinformation being spread. Confronting the misinformation may help some lurkers avoid being duped.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. And don't get me wrong: I'm not claiming facts don't matter. You can't have society without facts or objective truth. Just one reason why Trump is so deleterious. He's literally a society-breaker.

I may have not explained myself well in the aforementioned post, but basically, what I'm saying is that these people do not operate in good faith. In fact, they probably just laugh their asses off after someone like Super (love the guy) spends an hour crafting an essay-long response to their nonsense. So you talk to them, or perhaps even just ignore them. But don't attempt to actually have a conversation with them.

As far as lurkers go, you can present the facts without having to dignify bad faith actors.
 
Ramrouser said:
So, if you hire a nanny or an au pair you have "disdain" for your children? My children turned out just fine.

Pete should have never taken the position of Trans Sec. in 2021 if he knew he was going to take off two months during the supply chain crisis or at least disclosed this to the Senate during his confirmation. He did go on a tour supporting the movie during his break but I'll have to find it when I have the time. I remember there was a funny segment on Gutfeld about it.
Click to expand...
Well if it was Gutfield it was probably not funny and there's a good chance it wasn't factual.

How do you trust fox for anything factual based on their history. Murdock has been a republican schill since Reagan arranged his easy path into the country.

johnmenadue.com

How Reagan and US agencies made Murdoch a king.

Rupert Murdochs role in a secret project jointly financed by the US government and wealthy backers in the private sector to influence public opinion demands the attention of Australian lawmakers.
johnmenadue.com
 
Ramrouser said:
Seriously, y'all don't find Gutfeld funny...or at least clever? I've followed him since the days of "Red Eye." Jesse Watters is also entertaining.
Click to expand...
Ram,

Why have you not responded to my request from this morning regarding Pete ? I count on you to inform me:confused:

I truly want your list of the supply chain disasters that Pete could have prevented during his paternity leave, and I am even more interested in knowing what the current Sec. of Transportation is planning to do to prevent a supply chain crisis post the Trump tariffs.
 
Ramrouser said:
Seriously, y'all don't find Gutfeld funny...or at least clever? I've followed him since the days of "Red Eye." Jesse Watters is also entertaining.
Click to expand...
Jesse waters is horrible. They guy did a segment on his family not inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner. Which i can believe. Waters acts like a 5 year old.
 
Last edited:


On his Skagit Valley dairy farm bordering tulip and daffodil fields, Jason Vander Kooy called President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown a touchy subject.

“I support Trump,” said Vander Kooy. “I respect him.” As a volunteer firefighter, he sees fentanyl overdoses he believes stem from drugs brought across the border as a record number of migrants arrived during the Biden administration.

Yet, his views don’t exactly match those of a president who has pledged to deport the entire undocumented immigrant population in the U.S., estimated to include nearly 14 million people, and whose administration has detained green card holders, student visa holders and at least one citizen.

While Vander Kooy supports deporting immigrants who have committed crimes, he’d like to see workers with a clean record given a path to staying legally in the U.S.

The son of a Dutch immigrant and father of three children adopted from China, he intimately knows how much immigration policy affects people and families. As he noted, he’s “kind of surrounded by immigrants.” They constitute most of his workforce.

Sharing that same reliance on immigrants are farmers throughout the state and indeed the country, who tend to lean right. In largely agricultural Grant County, for instance, Trump won 67% of November’s vote. Yet, if Trump carries through with his plans, the agriculture industry could not continue operating as it does now.

As the president’s immigration crackdown ramps up and spring kicks off labor-intensive work on many farms, owners and employees are trying to figure out what vast changes in immigration policies mean for them and an industry that in Washington produces goods valued most recently at $14 billion a year.
 
heelinhell said:
Ram,

Why have you not responded to my request from this morning regarding Pete ? I count on you to inform me:confused:

I truly want your list of the supply chain disasters that Pete could have prevented during his paternity leave, and I am even more interested in knowing what the current Sec. of Transportation is planning to do to prevent a supply chain crisis post the Trump tariffs.
Click to expand...
I don't know because I'm not a international supply chain expert and I'm guessing you aren't as well. It's a terrible look for the Department Head to be MIA when the country needed him.

I reject the premise of your second question. The trade/tariff issues will be solved or mitigated by the time any serious supply chain issues develop. Plus, at least Sean Duffy is on the job working and he's got like 10 kids - including a Downs Syndrome baby.
 
Huh? said:
Geez, get some help. Reminds me of the old line, "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and jackwads are from Pluto."
Click to expand...
Guess you're more of a cryin' Kimmel fan or used-to-be-funny Stephen Colbert. Gutfeld, btw, is killing them in the ratings so I'm not alone.
 
Ramrouser said:
Seriously, y'all don't find Gutfeld funny...or at least clever? I've followed him since the days of "Red Eye." Jesse Watters is also entertaining.
Click to expand...
This marks a significant difference between conservative and liberal political humor. No, Jesse Watters is not entertaining at all, not to me. His style is anathema to what I consider humor.

1. The essence of liberal humor is wit. Wit is the invocation of hidden contradictions, absurdities or inconsistencies in the established order, which is normally experienced as a whole, complete set of social norms. That makes wit a type of speaking truth to power, which is why it appeals to liberals. Some of this has been a relatively recent development, but the idea of wit as a tool to speak truth to power goes back at least as far as Jonathan Swift.

Wit is only effective when it's non-obvious. It's all about revealing what is hidden. So liberal political humor arises from the audience coming to realize the implications of what is described in the setup. Hemingway once said something like (I'm paraphrasing) good fiction is an iceberg, where the most important parts remain underwater. That's liberal political humor. If the setup for a joke is point A, and the punch line point E, a liberal comic will say A, B, C -> E, leaving D to the reader, and it's the realization of that D that creates the laugh.

2. Conservative humor's essence is mocking, and the targets are marginalized groups. For conservatives, humor originates in any departure from the status quo. Liberals celebrate difference; conservatives condemn it. This is why liberals consider conservative humor to be exceedingly "on the nose." The conservative comic's task is to describe something weird in great detail; that frees the audience to laugh at that thing because it's weird. Conservative political humor is about stuffing difference into the standard boxes and showing that the pieces don't fit. This is why you folks laugh at the idea of gender fluidity. It's why you have jokes about which member of a gay couple is the woman and which is the man. Your goal is to project what you see onto your a priori worldview, and where there are conflicts, it's not the system that is mocked but the conflict.

Liberals mock too, but for the most part the mocking is of behavior or of the system, not of people. That has become less true this century, in part because it's increasingly difficult to distinguish the behavior from the person. Dana Carvey ruthlessly mocked GHW Bush, but the joke wasn't that the president was stupid. It was rather that he talked in stupid ways, as an attempt to cover for the underdeveloped ideas the GOP was pushing. That was the central joke in the famous mock Bush-Dukakis debate. By contrast, Trump simply is stupid.

Liberals also implicitly laugh at hypocrisy. What makes Trump particularly mockable isn't that he's an idiot; it's that he's an idiot who thinks of himself as a genius, who convinces his followers that he's not stupid; and the result creates absurdities. Trump followers end up adopting stupidity as a personality type, politically speaking, because their standard bearer demands it. Hence, mocking behavior becomes indistinct from mocking the person. When Pam Bondi says that Trump saved 250 million lives, the first thing we laugh at it is the utter stupidity of that comment. The next thing is, "how could any serious person say that?" and hence the collapse of the person/behavior distinction.

3. Here's an example: political humor in Monty Python, and in particular the "Help, help, I'm being oppressed" scene and the "what have the Romans ever done for us" scene. Neither are on the nose. The peasants don't say "look at how ridiculous we are, spouting 20th century political theory in the Dark Ages." They don't have to. It's left to the audience to figure out the incongruity. The humor is speaking truth to the power of leftist political theory (among the intellectual classes, not the actual political system), and in particular the tendencies of leftists to mechanistically apply simplistic (but dressed-up) ideas to situations where it's entirely inappropriate. And the viewer is supposed to reach that judgment. The film doesn't have to say the peasants are ridiculous; we can see it.

Same thing with the "what have the Romans done for us"? That's mocking the persistence of leftists ideas -- ones that originated in an experience of impoverished oppression -- in a society that increasingly meets everyone's material needs. They say, "what have the Romans ever done for us?" but the subtext is "what has capitalism ever done for us" and the answer is, quite a lot actually. And the humor comes from the reader drawing that connection, from the gradual realization during the scene that the radicals deep down know that their complaints are petty, but having gone all-in on theories of resistance, they can't step back. Again, the viewer is doing a lot of work.

So these two scenes are about liberal humor mocking liberal causes. The underlying mechanisms of the humor are not fundamentally different than Swift mocking British imperial callousness.

4. Imagine how Jesse Watters would do these scenes. In the "what have the Romans done for us" scene, the protests would come from an external observer. Perhaps a narrative character; maybe a Roman. The viewer wouldn't be encouraged to realize for him/herself that the radical Jews are ridiculous in their petty squabbles; it would be asserted by a character with authority and the viewer would be left to laugh at the accuracy of the depiction (as they see it). In the "help, help, I'm being oppressed," the conservative comic would be unable to resist making assertions about the poor economic efficiency of the peasant's purported anarcho-syndicalism. Arthur would say something like, "you stupid git. Look at your pathetic agricultural production. No wonder you're hungry." The audience would laugh at the attempt to do something different.
 
Ramrouser said:
I don't know because I'm not a international supply chain expert and I'm guessing you aren't as well. It's a terrible look for the Department Head to be MIA when the country needed him.

I reject the premise of your second question. The trade/tariff issues will be solved or mitigated by the time any serious supply chain issues develop. Plus, at least Sean Duffy is on the job working and he's got like 10 kids - including a Downs Syndrome baby.
Click to expand...
istockphoto-165033226-612x612.jpeg
 
Ramrouser said:
Guess you're more of a cryin' Kimmel fan or used-to-be-funny Stephen Colbert. Gutfeld, btw, is killing them in the ratings so I'm not alone.
Click to expand...
Now do the combined ratings of late-night comedy and compare to Gutfield. Gutfield does well because he's the only conservative option, whereas liberals have many choices. Anyway, popularity isn't the same as quality.

I'm absolutely content with my judgment that Watters or Gutfield -- they are just not funny. To me, humor is about cleverness and they have none, by design. As I noted above in my long post.
 
superrific said:
Now do the combined ratings of late-night comedy and compare to Gutfield. Gutfield does well because he's the only conservative option, whereas liberals have many choices. Anyway, popularity isn't the same as quality.

I'm absolutely content with my judgment that Watters or Gutfield -- they are just not funny. To me, humor is about cleverness and they have none, by design. As I noted above in my long post.
Click to expand...
Gutfield also doesn’t share a time slot with Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon or The Daily Show, John Oliver and Bill Maher, for that matter.

I’ve only seen a small amount of Gutfeld and agree that it’s low grade, way too on the nose. I initially thought he was sarcastically delivering what would be a way too obvious and low bar punchline.
 
superrific said:
This marks a significant difference between conservative and liberal political humor. No, Jesse Watters is not entertaining at all, not to me. His style is anathema to what I consider humor.

1. The essence of liberal humor is wit. Wit is the invocation of hidden contradictions, absurdities or inconsistencies in the established order, which is normally experienced as a whole, complete set of social norms. That makes wit a type of speaking truth to power, which is why it appeals to liberals. Some of this has been a relatively recent development, but the idea of wit as a tool to speak truth to power goes back at least as far as Jonathan Swift.

Wit is only effective when it's non-obvious. It's all about revealing what is hidden. So liberal political humor arises from the audience coming to realize the implications of what is described in the setup. Hemingway once said something like (I'm paraphrasing) good fiction is an iceberg, where the most important parts remain underwater. That's liberal political humor. If the setup for a joke is point A, and the punch line point E, a liberal comic will say A, B, C -> E, leaving D to the reader, and it's the realization of that D that creates the laugh.

2. Conservative humor's essence is mocking, and the targets are marginalized groups. For conservatives, humor originates in any departure from the status quo. Liberals celebrate difference; conservatives condemn it. This is why liberals consider conservative humor to be exceedingly "on the nose." The conservative comic's task is to describe something weird in great detail; that frees the audience to laugh at that thing because it's weird. Conservative political humor is about stuffing difference into the standard boxes and showing that the pieces don't fit. This is why you folks laugh at the idea of gender fluidity. It's why you have jokes about which member of a gay couple is the woman and which is the man. Your goal is to project what you see onto your a priori worldview, and where there are conflicts, it's not the system that is mocked but the conflict.

Liberals mock too, but for the most part the mocking is of behavior or of the system, not of people. That has become less true this century, in part because it's increasingly difficult to distinguish the behavior from the person. Dana Carvey ruthlessly mocked GHW Bush, but the joke wasn't that the president was stupid. It was rather that he talked in stupid ways, as an attempt to cover for the underdeveloped ideas the GOP was pushing. That was the central joke in the famous mock Bush-Dukakis debate. By contrast, Trump simply is stupid.

Liberals also implicitly laugh at hypocrisy. What makes Trump particularly mockable isn't that he's an idiot; it's that he's an idiot who thinks of himself as a genius, who convinces his followers that he's not stupid; and the result creates absurdities. Trump followers end up adopting stupidity as a personality type, politically speaking, because their standard bearer demands it. Hence, mocking behavior becomes indistinct from mocking the person. When Pam Bondi says that Trump saved 250 million lives, the first thing we laugh at it is the utter stupidity of that comment. The next thing is, "how could any serious person say that?" and hence the collapse of the person/behavior distinction.

3. Here's an example: political humor in Monty Python, and in particular the "Help, help, I'm being oppressed" scene and the "what have the Romans ever done for us" scene. Neither are on the nose. The peasants don't say "look at how ridiculous we are, spouting 20th century political theory in the Dark Ages." They don't have to. It's left to the audience to figure out the incongruity. The humor is speaking truth to the power of leftist political theory (among the intellectual classes, not the actual political system), and in particular the tendencies of leftists to mechanistically apply simplistic (but dressed-up) ideas to situations where it's entirely inappropriate. And the viewer is supposed to reach that judgment. The film doesn't have to say the peasants are ridiculous; we can see it.

Same thing with the "what have the Romans done for us"? That's mocking the persistence of leftists ideas -- ones that originated in an experience of impoverished oppression -- in a society that increasingly meets everyone's material needs. They say, "what have the Romans ever done for us?" but the subtext is "what has capitalism ever done for us" and the answer is, quite a lot actually. And the humor comes from the reader drawing that connection, from the gradual realization during the scene that the radicals deep down know that their complaints are petty, but having gone all-in on theories of resistance, they can't step back. Again, the viewer is doing a lot of work.

So these two scenes are about liberal humor mocking liberal causes. The underlying mechanisms of the humor are not fundamentally different than Swift mocking British imperial callousness.

4. Imagine how Jesse Watters would do these scenes. In the "what have the Romans done for us" scene, the protests would come from an external observer. Perhaps a narrative character; maybe a Roman. The viewer wouldn't be encouraged to realize for him/herself that the radical Jews are ridiculous in their petty squabbles; it would be asserted by a character with authority and the viewer would be left to laugh at the accuracy of the depiction (as they see it). In the "help, help, I'm being oppressed," the conservative comic would be unable to resist making assertions about the poor economic efficiency of the peasant's purported anarcho-syndicalism. Arthur would say something like, "you stupid git. Look at your pathetic agricultural production. No wonder you're hungry." The audience would laugh at the attempt to do something different.
Click to expand...
I'm a huge Monty Python fan and have been so since middle school. The scenes you quote from "Life of Bryan" are some of my favorites ("Listen, the only people we hate more than the Romans are the f*cking Judean People's Front..."). I'm likely a fan of numerous other comedians of whom you would classify as "liberal" humor. That goes for music and cinema as well. Things aren't always as black and white as you articulate.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top