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Randy Cassingham's BlogHistorical Details and Author's Notes from This is True®
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Laugh, or the World Laughs At You
It's so sad to see how people just can't take an obvious joke. (Say, like on a site called Jumbo Joke!) There was a political item today, and it resulted in a lot of whining -- and protest unsubscribes.
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Ray in Utah was the first to complain about today's item on Jumbo Joke: "Some things are funny and some things are not. Everyone is different when it comes to humor. If you believe things are fixed politically, you need to order a 'Get Out of Jail' free card. You are going to need it."
Well, "here we go again" as Reagan liked to say. They're "Get Out of HELL Free" cards, dummy, not jail. And, um, Ray? I don't have to buy GOOHF cards: I have thousands of them already. And taste the irony: "Everyone is different when it comes to humor." Why yes, they are. But one joke offends his tiny little conservative heart and he has to run away crying.
Les in ...Italy(!) was hot on Ray's heels, with "I feel we need to apologize to the world for what happened between 2008 and 2012." Maybe we will, and maybe we won't -- we need to see first, Les. And if so, you can be sure I'll joke about that, too.
And Arthur in Texas couldn't come up with anything better than "Phttttttt."
The joke that they all just couldn't stand, and had to shield themselves from the possibility that there could be another they don't like? Dear World.
Yeah, The Ten Dumbest Things Hillary Clinton Has Ever Said brought a few complaints, but no unsubscribes.
I'll bet every conservative that saw it laughed at this one -- Donald Trump's Daughter -- because, simply, it's funny.
Heck, one entry there manages to slam both the left and the right: Liberals and Conservatives Tell a Joke.
You can see all the jokes tagged "Politics" at Jumbo Joke.
It's called "Jumbo Joke" because they're jokes. No, I don't expect everyone to laugh at every one of them. But when someone laughs again and again and again, and then stomps their feet like a child and whines that one is "so unfair!" while others laugh at it? Well, it simply just leaves the rest of us laughing at them!
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Posted by Neil, UK on February 10, 2009:
Timothy, your analysis is itself interesting. Torture has nothing to do with liberty or democracy, you say? Few would agree with you - protection from "cruel and inhuman" treatment is one of the values that the US "supplies"...
Actually, I can see an argument for the use of torture to get convicted felons or traitors to reveal information (not to extract confessions, obviously, as that would render them meaningless), but its use against those who should, according to the values of both our nations, be considered "innocent until proven guilty" is certainly a "service outage"...
Posted by Timothy in Hayward on February 10, 2009:
"The fraction of people on this planet who think that Bush's war of aggression against Iraq was a 'forced exportation of democracy' is vanishingly small." Come again? If true (I'd be surprised but won't refute it), it just goes to show what people think can very well have nothing to do with reality. This isn't a matter of opinion but of fact. Iraq was forced into becoming a democracy by the war. Do you deny that previously Iraq was not a democracy, or that it isn't now?
I can follow that "protection from 'cruel and inhuman' treatment is one of the values that the US 'supplies'" -- or had supplied, or should supply -- but what's the connection back to liberty or democracy? For clarity, my working definition of liberty:
1) freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control
2) freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice
The first I would identify with the "ideal" of liberty, and the second with the civil liberties lost by U.S. citizens. But both of them were expanded in Iraq and Afghanistan during the last 8 years. I will concede that if you want to singly highlight the word "interference" and claim the U.S. interfered, fine, but in my opinion you're missing the point.
Posted by rewinn, Mercer Island on February 10, 2009:
Timothy -
Torture imposes "arbitrary or despotic government or control."
Neither torture victims nor other members of the subject population are free from the threat of further torture; that threat is how governments use torture to limit liberty.
I, and most of the world, deny that Bush invaded Iraq to force it into becoming a democracy. Its announced purpose at the time was to protect the United States against the threat of WMDs in Iraq. "Democracy" become the purpose only after the WMD claim become a bad joke.
Every person who loves democracy is ashamed that its name is now tarnished by being associated with turning 10% of Iraq's population into refugees and grossly reducing the personal freedom of the female HALF of the Iraq population. Certainly Saddam was an evil dictator but under his tyranny, women attended school, joined the professions, and wore the hijab only if they felt like it ... and most didn't.