rigorousintuition.ca

RocketMan wrote:I wonder what the value of some premium Colbert stock would be right now if he had engaged in the same kind of fearless, savage satire in Iraq, in front of Tha Troops as he did in front of Bush?

Easy for you to say.

TOO easy for you to say.

So someone doesn't meet your fantasy projection of who they're supposed to be (in your mind). So how they're "whoring" for the Pentagon?

Nordic wrote:

RocketMan wrote:I wonder what the value of some premium Colbert stock would be right now if he had engaged in the same kind of fearless, savage satire in Iraq, in front of Tha Troops as he did in front of Bush?

Easy for you to say.

TOO easy for you to say.

Even easier for Stephen Colbert to say. He knows precisely what the value of his stock would be. By god he knows. He knows even better how his stock would fall if he took a stance even remotely as courageous as Muhammad Ali's.

So someone doesn't meet your fantasy projection of who they're supposed to be (in your mind). So how they're "whoring" for the Pentagon?

This is complete nonsense. Colbert is a highly-paid popular "liberal" comedian choosing to do a high-profile public gig for the occupying forces in Iraq (in a photogenic funny-ha-ha desert-camouflage business-suit). That is an intentional act designed to be noticed and to have certain carefully-calculated effects: 1) to assure the occupying forces that they are supported; 2) to assure the American public back home that Colbert is a Good Guy at heart.

And it has nothing whatsoever to do with what Colbert is "supposed to be" in Rocket Man's eeevil mind. (As if Rocket Man were some kind of Orwellian thought-controlling fascist dictator, merely because he expressed an opinion, fairly vehemently!)

Oh, WAIT! I did it again, didn't I? This thread is really a role play in satire, and I jumped in thinking it was for real, not seeing the subtleties in rigid, black and white thinking that's always seen on the right Nevermind, carry on.

chiggerbit wrote:Oh, WAIT! I did it again, didn't I? This thread is really a role play in satire, and I jumped in thinking it was for real, not seeing the subtleties in rigid, black and white thinking that's always seen on the right Nevermind, carry on.

Yeah, exactly. Colbert is now a bad guy.

Right.

If you're not white, you're black, right?

Nordic wrote:The troops are victims of all the bullshit.

If he's there to entertain the victims, well it's like Johnny Cash playing to the prisoners, no?

Did Johnny Cash get shit from people like us for playing prisons?

I don't think he did.

I'm with you on this, Nordic.

Henry Rollins does USO tours. And you know his politics.I just heard a Rollins interview where he said he doesn't do politics or 'issues' over there because those people are just trying to get through each day without getting dead and he wants them to survive the abuse of the system that screwed them over.

I also share some of MacCruisekeen's view.
The challenge is to support the troops without supporting the war.

I parse it thus in the weighing of ha-ha during war:

> Humorizing atrocity back home is enabling through minimization.
No doubt about it.

> Humorizing for troops already out in harm's way is enabling their survival in hell so they might get home in some kind of condition to get over being abused.

Plus it's good to let the troops know that the anti-GOP guy lambasting Limbaugh is totally on their side. Acknowledging the injustice of the 'stop-loss draft' is the least (and therefore probably only) thing that Colbert can say about that.

My husband was a Nam draftee, who went in with not a clue about what the war was about. He came home with a very negative impressionof why we fight wars. In other words, he did a lot of growing up while he was over there. And you had better believe that the army was very busy during Nam informing the troops that the public had turned on them at home.

Now, admittedly, today's recruits are volunteers, so it will take a bit more insight for them to see the light than it did the draftees in Nam. But they're going to have to expend a lot of psychological energy, probably for the rest of their lives, in trying to maintain their fantasy. I'm as tired as the next person of the "support our troops" mantra being shoved down my throat, but I'm not going to use my neighbors kids who were over there as political punching bags.

Sometimes a seed can drop in the most inhospitable enviroment, but still manage to grow with a minimum of nutrients. Colbert's humor may be like those seeds-- some will take, many won't. Some is better than none.

chiggerbit wrote: .....
...I'm not going to use my neighbors kids who were over there as political punching bags.

Sometimes a seed can drop in the most inhospitable enviroment, but still manage to grow with a minimum of nutrients.
.....

Well said.

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:

chiggerbit wrote: .....
...I'm not going to use my neighbors kids who were over there as political punching bags.

Sometimes a seed can drop in the most inhospitable enviroment, but still manage to grow with a minimum of nutrients.
.....

Well said.

The thread is not about chiggerbit, her neighbours or her neighbours' kids, and it's surely perfectly obvious that nobody is asking her to use those kids as punching bags, either literally or metaphorically.

The thread is about a highly-paid TV jester in a desert-camouflage business suit choosing to be a tonic for the non-conscripted troops who are earning their wages by prosecuting an imperialist war in a devastated foreign country.

That's what it's about. Let's not complicate it unnecessarily.

MacCruiskeen wrote:
That's what it's about. Let's not complicate it unnecessarily.

Sorry, but the facts of the matter is that it IS indeed more complicated than that.

These kids don't join the military to "prosecute an imperialist war in a devastated foreign country. " They do it because they're in economically devastated towns all across America and want their parents to be proud of them when they buy their first car, and go see the world, and "become men" and all that other crap that young men feel they need to do.

Please, these kids, and they ARE kids, are not YOU.

Sure, some of them want to go kill some "sand niggers" or whatever, but I guess that's just another "complication" of the whole situation, isn't it. That kind of clutters things up, doesn't it?

MacCruiskeen wrote:
That's what it's about. Let's not complicate it unnecessarily.

From a book review of Folklore Fights the Nazis: Humor in Occupied Norway, 1940-1945, just one example relating the effectiveness of humor:

http://www.amazon.com/Folklore-Fights-N ... ewpoints=1


Humor as Psychological Warfare, January 6, 2000
By A Customer

"Hitler and Goering were once out driving. Passing through a village, they ran over a pig. Goering thought he should find the farmer and apologize for what had happened. He was gone a very long time and received very fine hospitality. When he returned, Hitler asked why he had stayed so long. 'Well, there was so much celebration in the house over what I told them,' Goering replied, 'and finally I had to join in.' 'What did you tell them?' 'That the pig was dead.' This was one of hundreds of jokes told by the Norwegians from 1940 until 1945. While the phenomenom of occupation humor has certainly not been ignored, the role it played in developing a resistance mentality among the Norwegian people has until now been largely unexamined. This humor was expressed in overtly anti-Hitler and anti-Nazi jokes, but it was also found in snide replies, double-entendres, insinuating newspaper advertisements that were not understood by the occupying forces, children's stories, and even Christmas cards. Kathleen Stokker, extending an earlier study by Magne Skodvin, observes that "wartime humor granted a voice to those deprived of free speech, discouraged the undecided from hasty attachment to Nazism, and helped the initially amorphus group of individuals opposed to Nazism to develop a sense of solidarity." Norway was a neutral country in 1940, and just as it had done during World War One, it hoped to remain neutral. Geopolitical realities, however, including the German desire to control access to Swedish iron mines, made Norway and Denmark Hitler's first victims following the end of the Phony War in April of 1940. The Norwegians did not surrender. King Haakon VII established a government in exile in England, and the Norwegian people would wage one of the bravest and most effective resistance campaigns of the war. The popular image of Norwegian resistance has been created by films such as "The Heroes of Telemark," but there were tens of thousands of ordinary Norwegians who resisted in more subtle ways, even if it were only to wear a red cap in defiance of their occupiers. Stokker points out, however, that the image of a people united against oppression is only partly true. There were many Norwgians who did acccept and serve the new National Government headed by Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian Nazi Party. But these people were for the most part shunned, and Stokker points out with brillliant originality the way the resisters used humor to debase the collaborators. Stokker, a professor of Norwegian at Luther College, is the author of the most widely used Norwegian-language textbook in America. She draws upon a large number of interviews with survivors of the Occupation, archives in the Norwegian Resistance Museum and the University of Oslo, and "joke notebooks" kept by women who experienced the event. It is a delightful book,well-crafted and historically meticulous. As other societies have discovered, oppression can be endured with humor, for it is a valuable form of psychological warfare. The Norwegians developed that humor, as Stokker so aptly proves, and in the process maintained the spirit that was necessary to prevail. As one reads the book, and looks at the drawings, posters, and cartoons, one gains a deep appreciation for the courage of a people. One also gets a good laugh! Dr. Gerald D. Anderson Department of History North Dakota State University

I hope the Iraqis (among others) have good senses of humor.

I hope the Iraqis (among others) have good senses of humor.

I'd be willing to bet they do, just as the Russians and the Jews did (before there was an Israel, of course *cough*).

And I'll add, that once the people of the Middle East start poking fun at us publicly, we are finished.