Laughter on the Left?

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sun May 24 18:30:30 PDT 1998


Doug replies to Dennis R.:
>>But I would argue that Leftist, subversive, genuinely progressive humor
>>really is qualitatively different from Rightwing humor.
>
>Lots of lefties have problems with humor, I think, because of the large
>helping of aggression it often disguises. The right, obviously, has no such
>problems - like this fellow....

Aggression per se ain't the problem--in fact we need more of it! The problem is that the target of aggression is so often wrong. For instance, how can Moore get a laugh by practically saying, 'isn't it funny for the left to work on the defense of Mumia, when there are so many other _more important_ issues--the issues that "ordinary working people" care more about?' As if the issues of police brutality, frame-ups of black activists by the state power, the ever-increasing prison population, racist + anti-working-class death penalty + other means of repression, etc. weren't class issues! Moore had better make use of his considerable talent to make _connections_ between the above and what he considers to be more proper objectives of left activism. And make it aggressively funny!


>>Buchanan's stupidity is the stupidity of our entire mass-culture
>
>Buchanan isn't stupid, not at all. He's a brilliant polemicist, who can
>turn a phrase and knows how to make propaganda.

Well, should we not discuss the affinities between left and right versions of populism, since we have been talking about Moore, Rorty, Gitlin, etc.?

Yoshie



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