Marta Russell wrote:
>
> >original message:
> >someone watching these shows anxious/depressive/shitty emotional responses
> >are parried off by the "legitimacy" of the anger, and so humor would not be
> >as necessary in a defensive/fantastic sense.
> >
>
> Bill Mar used his "humor" to put down disabled people every
> opportunity he got. He created a legitimate anger in our community.
> He was NOT liked by any of us. No body felt any loss when he was
> dumped. So he did far more to damage whatever left leanings his show
> purported to have.
This is characteristic of political humor: it needs a defenseless victim. "Left" humor of the Eisenhower era had to go along with the major ideological tool of that administration: the pretense that Eisenhower was stupid. Hence the love of so many on this list of equating capitalist policy with stupidity. Whether or not Bush is personally not very bright is totally irrelevant. His administration is bright enough. The archetype of all humor based on Bush's alleged stupidity is the joke about "Bushonics" -- the real (whether intended or not) target of that being Ebonics: mockery of which in turn simply repeats the contempt of three or four thousand years for stupid peasants, etc.
If someone can devise a left humor that does _not_ put down any individual person as stupid, incompetent, clumsy, fat, clumsy, blind, deaf, dumb, etc., he/she might have something. _Might_.
Carrol
>
> Marta
> --
> Marta Russell
> Los Angeles, CA
> http://www.disweb.org