On Sun, 11 May 2008, B. wrote:
> Interesting to see an exchange between someone in the clutches of a kind
> of humorless holier-than-thou populism (defending NASCAR Romance books
> because you're elitist if you think they're culturally funny -- the
> working class likes such stuff, so don't make fun of it
Well, B, you are aware that lots of girls like romances just like lots of boys like techno thrillers, right? They read them because it's fun. So if you're in favor of having fun, you'd be for people reading romances. And NASCAR romances can't be any sillier than swashbuckling romances.
Now don't get me wrong. I can see why they'd strike you as absurd and funny -- or me for that matter: it's because the whole idea of *us* reading them would be absurd. In fact it would be doubly absurd, since we get neither NASCAR nor romance novels.
But lots of girls feel the same way about our stuff, like sports or action movies. I remember my friend Nicole summarizing why she thought Clint Eastwood's _Unforgiven_ was so boring: "Here's the story. There's a boy, and he can't kill. And everybody's very sad. But then, happily, he learns to kill again. And everybody's happy. The end."
And this kind of mutual joshing is much of the fun of social life. We're forever asserting ourselves in relief through our tastes. And every such assertion is putting down someone who feels the opposite. And we wrastle.
But the whole thing that makes what anthropologists call "the joking relationship" work is that it's mutual. So while Kathleen is going way too far in extrapolating from your joke to a generalized contempt on your part for the working class (she clearly hasn't read your posts for 8 years like the rest of us have), surely you can also suspend the joke any moment you want to and admit that of course it's perfectly possible that the mother of somebody you know might be enjoying one of these book right now. And that deep down you can probably think of something you read for enjoyment (graphic novels? Sci-fi? Classical anarchist theory -- for enjoyment?) that she would find just as hilariously absurd.
But wasting time pleasurably is what play and fun and art is all about. And we all do it differently. And you're for this, IIUC -- it's one of your fundamental principles. So in real life, it seems, you have to be for people reading these novels if it gives them pleasure. Just so long as you're allowed to make fun of them for it. Which I daresay their husbands do too.
So no one's saying you can't joke. The point is simply admitting that you do know that every joke is at someone's expense, and that an analog of it could be made at yours for their pleasure.
You're perfectly right that we can't remove offense from humor without removing humor. But neither to we need to suspend consciousness of what humor is in order to protect it. When people attack humor for belittling others they're usually right. Humor is rarely innocent. That's why it's funny.
Michael