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- November 13, 2009
- By Dale McGowan
- In death, humor, morality, My kids
- 25
ERIN (11), doing social studies homework: Hitler isn’t still alive, is he?
DAD: Nope. He killed himself.
ERIN: When did he do that?
DAD: Right at the end of the war. The Soviet Army was closing in, and he shot himself before he could be captured.
ERIN: Omigosh, that’s exactly what happens on Club Penguin all the time!!
DAD: Uh…buh?
ERIN: You can do these karate duels on Club Penguin, and RIGHT when I’m about to beat the other person, he logs out…and I don’t get the points for winning. So Hitler did the same thing??
DAD: Pretty much.
ERIN: Figures. That is totally not fair.
Laughing matters 7: Mr. Deity
I am always the last to discover cool and interesting things. Hat tip to Facebook friend Beverly Emond for helping me deduct one more dollar from my Shameful Ignorance account by introducing me to Mr. Deity.
Mr. Deity is a brilliant and hilarious series of satirical shorts on YouTube that proves once again that comedy beats the keeeey-rap out of every other means of enlightenment.
We think of comedy as entertainment, which is about like saying sex is exercise. Sure, comedy’s fun, but it also reveals the truth more head-top-removingly than any argument could — especially when the purveyor has his head on straight. In the case of satire, that means understanding and, if you can manage it, empathizing with your targets. Brian Keith Dalton, the creator and star of Mr. Deity, does both, and we get the benefit.
Wanna grapple with the Problem of Evil? You can read volumes of treatises and apologia on theodicy and the Epicurean paradox. Or you can watch this:
You can lunch with Benedict XVI for a week to explore substitutionary atonement — the idea that one person can atone for the sins of another — and the dual nature of Christ. Or you can watch this:
And you can ponder and argue how and whether God answers prayers, and the implications of the conclusions you reach. Or you can watch Bruce Almighty, a smart and worthwhile comedy. Or watch this:
I know why these things soar the way they do here. Dalton is uncovering inconsistencies and problems and nonsense, but he is not sneering. He gets religious belief, empathizes with it, respects the impulse, even though he doesn’t share the conclusions. That’s essential to the comedy. My own religious satire falls flattest when I am least understanding of my targets and soars highest (imho) when I get where they’re coming from — because the latter is more likely to be rooted in the truth.
This from Mr. Deity’s FAQ:
I am a formerly religious person (non-bitter), and as such, have great sympathies for the beliefs and feelings of religious people. I love the fact that they are concerned with the big issues like Good and Evil, Existence, Creation, etc… I don’t always agree with the answers they provide to these questions, but I deeply respect their concern. Our goal here is not to mock religion, but to use it as a foundation for the humor. I’m thrilled that so many religious people have written to tell me that they love the episodes. In future episodes, I intend to turn the tables a bit and poke fun at what I call the “angry atheists” (of whom I am not fond). We’ll see if they take it so well.
As for his implied question….
We’ll see if the [angry atheists] take it so well [as religious folks have]
…with a few notable exceptions, I’m not even one tiny bit optimistic.
Mr. Deity’s YouTube Channel
MrDeity.com
Read the complete Laughing Matters series
Spot the double entendre
- April 21, 2009
- By Dale McGowan
- In humor
- 4
I use this blog all the time as fodder for my talks. In preparing for Connecticut a few weeks ago, I came across this paragraph in a post about restrictive labeling of kids. I described how my youngest helped me see that “humanist” (sans “secular” or “religious”) can be a non-restrictive, even helpful label as kids find their own place in the world.
But see if you can spot an unintended ambiguity at the end:
So Laney’s done it again — she’s taken my armchair abstractions and turned them inside out, making me realize that not all worldview labels are ridiculous or harmful for kids. Some can even serve as catalysts for the next stage in a child’s process of finding her place in the world. And the next. And the next.
Heh. Oops.
I pledge-a yada yada
- April 11, 2009
- By Dale McGowan
- In humor, schools
- 14
Just back from a family week in D.C. We imposed on the hospitality of very good friends, both of them deeply impressive and humane people employed by admirable non-profits influencing public policy and making a difference in the world. The kind of people who make me feel (through no fault of their own) like I’m not doing nearly enough with my own limited time as a sentient thing to make said difference in the aforementioned world.
They have twin daughters on the cusp of eight, both of them funny and adorable and whip-smart. One evening the girls shared, in identical sing-song, their school’s morning ritual, which is led as in most schools today by a talking head on closed-circuit TV. In the process, they illustrated the pure pointlessness of such things:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God,
indivisible with liberty and justice for all, as a Belmont student
I promise to do my school work to the best of my ability,
I will be kind courteous, considerate and respectful
to other students and teachers, today’s lunch choices are.
pwned by the little sister
- March 30, 2009
- By Dale McGowan
- In humor, My kids
- 3
ERIN (11): What in the world is that?
DELANEY (7): What?
ERIN: Uh, the huge fancy book in your lap, hello.
DELANEY: Oh. It’s the bible.
ERIN: Why do you have the bible?
DELANEY: I’m reading it. It’s interesting.
ERIN: Yeah right, you’re reading the bible.
DELANEY: I’m not done yet. I just started today.
ERIN: Okay, then tell me what happpens first.
DELANEY: God makes light, then he splits apart the light and dark, then he splits apart the water from the land.
ERIN: I’m so sure. Lemme see that. (Flip flip flip. Flip. Flip.)
(Long pause.)
ERIN: Whatever. (Tosses bible back to beaming little sister. Fade to black.)
Isn’t this enough?
An homage to the unconditional love of reality. One of the wittiest and best-done bits I’ve seen in ages and ages. (Caution: Rated R for language. Deep breath, you’ll be okay.)
This is not a post
- February 13, 2009
- By Dale McGowan
- In humor, myths
- 15
(Mustn’t post today. Bad juju. Shoo.)
Name the Brazilians!
- October 07, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In Atlanta, diversity, fear, humor, My kids, Parenting, values
- 19
Most of the time, our family life is typical. But every so often, without warning, a Monty Python sketch breaks loose.
Connor (13) asked the other day why there are bad names for black people but not for others. At first I didn’t understand what he meant. Then I realized he meant exactly what he had asked.
It’s not the first time I’ve been made aware that he is growing up in a very different day-to-day environment than I did. I once asked him if middle school kids still told jokes about people who were different from them.
“Different how?” he asked. I assumed he was just torturing his liberal dad.
“You know…different races. Different nationalities. Different gender. Handicap. Sexual orientation. Hair color.” I was momentarily aghast at the number of categories that leapt to mind, not to mention the number of verbatim jokes I could instantly recall. And they kept coming. “Weight, intelligence. Religion.” I lowered my head. “Birth defects.”
“You told jokes about people with birth defects?” he asked incredulously.
“No! Not me,” I lied.
In fact, I was always the comedian in school. Dale needs to learn when it is time to be funny and when it is time to pay attention was a common report card comment — right next to the ‘A’, thank you very much. I protested that the official “time to be funny” never seemed to arrive. Having chosen comedy, I engaged all the genres of my tasteless time. Fat jokes. Quadriplegic jokes. Black hitchhikers and Polish lightbulb changers and Chinese shlimp flied lice. And yes, any and all birth defects.
This question was different but clearly related. “There are rude names for others,” I said, “not just blacks.”
“What about for white people?”
“Honkey,” I said. “Cracker. Peckerwood.”
He laughed. “What about the Chinese?”
“Chink, slant, gook. You’re telling me you’ve never heard those?”
He was shaking his head in disbelief. “Never. I’ve heard Grandma talk about A-rabs,” he said, leaning on the ‘A’ — “and you can tell what she means.”
“Well, it gets a lot worse than that.”
“Like what?”
“Is…is this for a social studies report or something?”
“I just never heard these. It’s crazy. What else? I’m just curious.”
I looked at him sideways, finally deciding he was not pulling my leg. My teenage son was hearing his first genuine ethnic slurs not in the school corridors but from his dad. I thought about pretending we’d exhausted the list, then decided he could handle it — that hiding hateful stuff from him is less productive than looking them in the eye, giving him a chance to flex his own moral judgment.
“Well, some others for people from the Middle East are towelhead, raghead, camel-jockey.” I paused. “Sand nigger.”
“DAD!”
“I’m sorry, jeez, you asked! Did you only want the pretty slurs?”
He shook his head again, slowly. “What about countries? Like Germany.”
“You mean krauts?”
“What, like from sauerkraut?”
“I guess.”
“Italy.”
“Wop, dago, goombah…”
“You’re making these up!”
“…guinea, greaseball…”
“France!”
“Frogs. Or cheese-eating surrender-monkeys.”
He laughed so hard he turned red. “Why?” he asked at last.
“Well, some people think they caved in too fast to the Germans in the Second…”
“No, I mean…okay, I can see why somebody would make up rude words for people who are really different from you. Still rude, but I can see it. But the French?”
I thought about it for a minute. “Well, I guess it depends on whether you’ve been in conflict with someone, one way or another. We don’t have a name for Greenlanders, as far as I know, because our interests and actions don’t overlap. If they did, I guarantee we’d come up with a slur in a heartbeat. Some people resented France for costing American lives in the Second World War, and some get mad when they don’t support U.S. policy.”
“So we probably don’t have anything for Mexicans.”
“You’re joking.”
“Oh wait. Okay…yeah, I know some of those.”
There’s a large and growing Mexican-American population in Atlanta, which means an increasing perception of conflicting interests — most often groundless — and resentments stoked in part by angry talk radio.
“What about Brazil?” Connor asked.
I thought about it. Brazil. “Hmm. No…I don’t think we’ve ever had enough to do with Brazil to call them anything.”
Ahh, but the century is young. If that shoot-first devotee of Teddy Roosevelt makes it to the Oval Office, can a name for the Brazilians — and the Belgians, and just about everyone else — be all that far behind?
The Devil Goes Down to Georgia
I read to Delaney’s first grade class yesterday. She had prepped me for my visit like a military operation, reminding me at least five times of the exact time and S.O.P.
“There’s a chair you sit in, and I’ll sit right by you,” she said. “You have to bring three stories, but don’t be sad if we don’t get to all three.”
I promised to hold it together.
She nodded, then ran upstairs to rummage through her books. Five minutes later she was downstairs, beaming.
“First, you’ll read this one,” she said, handing me Rosie’s Fiddle, a great version of a classic folktale. “Then Crictor, the Boa Constrictor, and then”–she held up a finger, eyes closed– “IF there’s time…you’ll read Pete’s a Pizza.”
“Ooh, good ones,” I said, only really meaning it about Rosie’s Fiddle. The other two are nothing much, but Rosie’s Fiddle is the kind of story that can keep a roomful of six-year-olds perched at attention on the edge of their buns.
The operation commenced at 1330 hours.
“If Rosie O’Grady ever smiled,” I read dramatically, “no one but her chickens had ever seen it. She was as lean and hard as a November wind…”
The story goes on to describe the solitary Rosie playing the fiddle on her porch at night.
Folks said Rosie could fiddle the flowers out of their buds. They said she could fiddle the stones out of the ground. Folks said Rosie O’Grady could outfiddle the Devil himself. And that was a dangerous thing to say.
Oh…shit.
I flashed forward through the story in my mind, a version of Aarne-Thompson taletype 1155-1169 (Mortal Outwits the Devil). The tale has taken many forms through the years, but once a Russian folktale put a violin in Lucifer’s hand, the fiddling faceoff became the preferred choice, from Stravinsky’s L’histoire du Soldat to The Devil Went Down to Georgia. And Rosie’s Fiddle.
“What’s the Devil?” one kid piped up.
Shitshitshit. I looked at Mr. H, Laney’s magnificently gifted and cool teacher, whose smile was unperturbed.
“It’s a kind of a monster,” offered another kid.
“No,” said a third, “the Devil is the one who curses you if you do something bad.”
Aw shit. Stupidly, this hadn’t even crossed my mind when Laney selected the book.
I turned the page to reveal a drawing of the Devil, horns and tail and dapper red suit, standing at Rosie’s gate with a golden fiddle. They exchange pleasantries, then he gets down to bidness. “I hear tell you can out-fiddle the Devil himself,” I said with a growling Georgia accent, for some reason.
Soon the inevitable challenge is made, and Rosie mulls it over:
Now Rosie wasn’t any fool. She knew what the Devil would ask for if she lost: it was her soul she’d be fiddlin’ for. But Rosie had a hankering for the Devil’s shiny, bright fiddle.
I see all of this as great folklore. But I also knew that if I’d walked into my daughter’s classroom and heard another parent reading a parable of the Devil casting about for human souls, I’d have laid a poached egg.
The kids were riveted — it is quite a compelling story — and Mr. H didn’t seem the least bit troubled. But I was glad to pick up the second book, leaving the world of Faust and Charlie Daniels in favor of a safe, dull story about a pet snake — pausing for only a moment to remember whether the damn snake offers anybody an apple.
Thinking by druthers 5
[The fifth installment in a series on confirmation bias. Back to druthers 4]
Leave it to The Daily Show to give the most devastating exposition on confirmation bias I’ve ever seen. And once again, as Twain said, only laughter can achieve this kind of surgical strike:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
Sarah Palin Gender Card | ||||
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(Rove I can understand. But how in the world something so perilously identical to spin found its way into O’Reilly’s No Spin Zone…I need a moment to collect my thoughts. Please, just…just scroll away.)
ADDED THURSDAY NIGHT:
I have to add this bitterly-true quote from Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen:
Probably the most depressing thing about Palin is not her selection but the defense of it. It has produced a parade of GOP spokesmen intent on spiking the needle on a polygraph. Looking right into the camera, they offer statement after statement that they hope the voters will swallow but that history will forget. The sum effect on the diligent news consumer is a feeling of consummate contempt for the intelligence of the American people — a contempt that will be justified should Palin be the factor that makes McCain a winner in November.