House of Eratosthenes

Poor Tom.

(This video is a perfect metaphor for what happens when liberals try to “fix” things.)
- Daniel | 01/19/2013 @ 17:04
The problem isn’t liberals trying to fix things. The problem is someone who is clueless to social realities — and of course, it’s parody. Or we hope it’s parody.

It’s a great example of what the GOP hopes you think they are — clueless, and dropping those race-baiting, sexist lines accidentally, all the while just trying to ~~bilk~~ earn an honest dollar from anyone who thinks that someone so clueless about history and manners must be a really good guy who knows what he’s doing, deep down.

Next you’ll tell us that everybody knows that the washing machines will only clean legitimately dirty laundry, and if it’s not legitimate dirt, the clothes have a way of keeping it off.
- edarrell | 01/23/2013 @ 15:31
Okay, since you’ve managed to suck the humor out of it, we might as well go ahead and discuss the serious side of this clip…

Ed, let us assume for sake of argument there exists somebody who really is this clueless — but nothing apart from that, just really, really clueless. Let us further assume this fellow is getting the crap kicked out of him in the “news” he mentions, his business is completely hopeless now, he’s probably even getting sued…when he isn’t actually bigoted, just mind-bogglingly clueless.

Would you say he’s got it coming? If so, I’d say you missed a good 50% of the point, at least. There’s a reason “politically correct” has become a pejorative.
- mkfreeberg | 01/23/2013 @ 15:58
My comment was directed more at Daniel’s response, which still makes no sense to me.

Yeah, this guy’s probably got it coming. No liberal intervened to fix anything, though, to get him his just desserts, so far as I can see.
- edarrell | 01/23/2013 @ 21:37
Every time they fix something, it’s worse than it was before. That’s all I meant. 🙂
- Daniel | 01/23/2013 @ 21:56
Okay, well that is the folly of political correctness. And the contradiction involved, since I think most Americans would acknowledge, correctly, that it is a leftist creation…and with certain types of mental or experience deficiency, lefties will line up to chastise us that such deficient people do not deserve any kind of a beat-down merely for being deficient. But PC seems to be an exception to this. With political correctness, if you don’t know, for whatever reason, then you deserve a good thrashing.

It requires tolerance, by teaching intolerance. I think everyone understands there’s a certain aspect of injustice to it. So this clip is kind of like “dark” humor. But…that can be as funny as any other kind. I literally LOL’d 33%, 66% and at the end of this.
- mkfreeberg | 01/23/2013 @ 22:01
I had always thought manners chiefly a conservative invention. Still do, in fact.

Okay, well that is the folly of political correctness. And the contradiction involved, since I think most Americans would acknowledge, correctly, that it is a leftist creation…and with certain types of mental or experience deficiency, lefties will line up to chastise us that such deficient people do not deserve any kind of a beat-down merely for being deficient. But PC seems to be an exception to this. With political correctness, if you don’t know, for whatever reason, then you deserve a good thrashing.

No on has a right to require people to be “tolerant” of racist insult, even if the insulter seriously had not thought it through.

Still no hint of any liberal sin here — you got a gag about a guy who seems clueless about much of life. Wouldn’t it be doing him a favor to let him know, as opposed to letting him find out when the neighbors march on him with pitchforks and torches, and tar and feathers?

There is no folly to “political correctness,” if by your definition political incorrectness is rude insults.

The First Amendment protects a guy’s right to believe foolish stuff. That doesn’t mean we have to act like fools.
- edarrell | 01/23/2013 @ 23:17
There is a crucial distinction applying here which seems to be lost on you, between effect and intent. I know you’re plenty sharp enough to see it. The phony ad is a critique against political correctness for its core belief system that there is, or should be, some level of comprehension required merely for survival in our evolving society; required merely for not getting beaten up.

“If by your definition political incorrectness is rude insults.” Well, I think of it as like darkness or cold, it simply exists as the lack of something else. I suppose in order to communicate, I have to start worrying about whether everyone else sees it that way. Maybe I shouldn’t; like darkness or cold, it is technically the correct way of seeing it, as just another front in the culture wars where liberals say “Hey we’ve got a cool idea” and conservatives say “Let’s not do that, and say we did.” (And then liberals say “But we really like our idea, so we’re going to tell everyone we know what awful terrible people you are.”) So I suppose I’m picking up a different message from the ad, than Daniel. I’m seeing what William F. Buckley was seeing, when he made the comment about “Liberals are always concerned about hearing from all different points of view, then are shocked to discover there are other points of view.”

Yes, you’re right, the manners thing is valuable. One must question, however, what good are manners in a society in which people start to look for reasons to be insulted…often on behalf of a third party, that they have not taken the trouble to verify actually exists.
- mkfreeberg | 01/24/2013 @ 06:19
There is a crucial distinction applying here which seems to be lost on you, between effect and intent. I know you’re plenty sharp enough to see it. The phony ad is a critique against political correctness for its core belief system that there is, or should be, some level of comprehension required merely for survival in our evolving society; required merely for not getting beaten up.

Morgan, you’ve overthought this thing way, way too much.

It’s not a screed against political correctness. It’s a comedy routine poking fun at the cluelessness among some people — it’s a pointed jab at the GOP’s cluelessness about their offensive positions on rape, women’s issues in general, race, and a raft of other issues. It’s not so clever as Dave Chapelle’s routine about the blind black man who joined the Klan — but that humor went over the head and past too many people, Chapelle eventually concluded. The Bilderbergers, the comedy troupe who put together this video, probably couldn’t get away with that (is any member black? See here: http://thebilderbergers.com/post/24404626556/moskovciak-one-last-reminder-the-last-ny ).

Here’s the problem: Jokes aren’t funny when they have to be explained. Post it on a nominally conservative blog, and someone (looking at you, Daniel, surprised you joined in, Morgan) misinterprets it as a jab at civil rights advocacy and the calls to get racial insults out of public.

Especially if you look at any of the other jabs the Bilderbergers do — look at their send up of birthers — you would have a difficult time making a case they’re supporting any campaign against the civil rights moves you guys try to lampoon as “political correctness.”

Like “All in the Family” in rural Georgia, where the rednecks thought it was amazing that CBS would give a redneck like Archie such a platform and failed to see Archie was the butt of the jokes, like Dave Chapelle’s stuff, which actually encouraged the Klansmen being lampooned, this one seems to zoom past you guys.

Back in the 1970s, before they sold, got stodgy and athersclerosis stole their thinking abilities, American Spectator had a column called “Brayings from the Barnyard,” with an almost-accurate quote from Euripides to kick it off every month: “Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.”

If you’re missing the joke — and if you thought this was an anti-liberal screed, you threw a massive airball on this one — maybe the gods are trying to tell you something.
- edarrell | 01/24/2013 @ 08:52
::ahem:: ” . . . before they sold out . . .”
- edarrell | 01/24/2013 @ 08:53
Morgan, you’ve overthought this thing way, way too much…It’s not a screed against political correctness. It’s a comedy routine poking fun at the cluelessness among some people — it’s a pointed jab at the GOP’s cluelessness about their offensive positions on rape, women’s issues in general, race, and a raft of other issues.

As usual Ed, I see you have eloquently stated one entirely legitimate way to perceive it.

As usual, there are others.

And, as usual, you feel you have attained mastery of the entire situation, while remaining fixated only on the one.

Here’s the problem: Jokes aren’t funny when they have to be explained.

True, but my explanation has nothing to do with making this clip funny. To the contrary, like much of the other Bilderberg humor, the quality is enhanced by the fact that there are lots of legitimate ways to look at it. Everyone can take away from it what they want to.

But the paradox I have highlighted, still stands: Liberals want incompetence and cluelessness to be made entirely irrelevant to an individual’s ability to survive in an advanced society — but only with regard to certain things. When it comes to political correctness, the rules are all flipped around, and we are obliged to learn our correct dance steps, or else die. It’s the complete opposite of the way they want it to work with, for example, voting when you can’t learn to drive a car.
- mkfreeberg | 01/24/2013 @ 09:16
But the paradox I have highlighted, still stands: Liberals want incompetence and cluelessness to be made entirely irrelevant to an individual’s ability to survive in an advanced society — but only with regard to certain things. When it comes to political correctness, the rules are all flipped around, and we are obliged to learn our correct dance steps, or else die. It’s the complete opposite of the way they want it to work with, for example, voting when you can’t learn to drive a car.

When push comes to shove, you ask for authoritarian rule over free markets.

The comedy video shows no liberal action on anything,. It shows a businessman — albeit a clueless, probably Tea Party nominal Republican — responding to market issues.

That is all. When the markets work, your readers scream “LIBERAL INTERFERENCE!” Then you jump in and claim it’s some deep indicator of a deeper and unexpressed-anywhere-else-(and-completely-made-up) liberal desire for incompetence.

No, we really wish y’all would get a clue or hundred. Buy them if you have to. It’s not nice to lie, it’s not good for public policy. When you get corrected, fix the error, don’t dig in your heels and claim the right to stop action against pollution as if it were a human right to make others suffer. Keep your sense of humor; if you deal with conservatives, it’s the only thing that saves their lives, and is therefore a valuable thing to have. That’s for starters.
- edarrell | 01/24/2013 @ 11:10
Right, it is for starters. As we have established, you do not want to stop at educating the clueless. You want them to be punished. “Got it coming.”

Liberalism is an effort to destroy, in perpetuity, thinly cloaked as an effort to build…by those who cannot state, in any level of quality or detail, what exactly it is they’re trying to build.
- mkfreeberg | 01/24/2013 @ 11:27
Post it on a nominally conservative blog, and someone (looking at you, Daniel, surprised you joined in, Morgan) misinterprets it as a jab at civil rights advocacy and the calls to get racial insults out of public.

When liberals try to fix things, they make things worse. How in the world did you make the leap to your conclusion from that statement? Is this some dog-whistle I don’t know about that I unintentionally blew?
- Daniel | 01/27/2013 @ 14:20
I took your first comment to refer to the post, Daniel. I regret that I misunderstood. Godfrey Daniel, can’t you get your comments under the right post? What in the hell were you referring to?
- edarrell | 01/27/2013 @ 15:05
You might have me confused with another Daniel; I think this is the only post on which I’ve commented this year. But, if you’re gonna go, you might as well go all-out, eh?

I personally feel that the hyper-sensitivity with which liberals treat race relations nearly as distasteful as the way the white supremacists treated them; neither places them on equal footing with others. In other words – if their forbears endured true slavery, is it at all believable that today’s blacks are irreparably harmed if they hear a n-word joke? And is it further believable that they need guilty white people to defend them?

Racism is certainly not extinct from our nation, but the form of it against which the typical anti-racism machines are working is. You mentioned Chappelle above – remember his comments about chicken? “Maybe we just like chicken… ’cause it’s delicious!” Have you had fried chicken prepared from the recipes handed down through southern black families? It’s amazing; blows KFC, Church’s, and Popeye’s out of the water. (Man, now I’m hungry.)

Without listing a bunch of bullet points, suffice it to say I have a somewhat unique-for-a-white-guy experience. (It certainly seems unique, given what other people have shared with me about their lives.) Even if my politics trended toward liberal, I’d have a hard time buying into the blacks-are-victims-who-need-our-help thing; it simply doesn’t square with the reality I’ve lived. And, thankfully, though the simple act of living life, I’ve convinced some of them that not all white people are out to get them (and they really did think that).

The biggest problem I have with the whole “racist” thing (other than it being WAY over-accused and under-proved) is that it has somehow become a disqualifier for any futher debate. If we can paint the speaker as racist, we do not have to address the substantive points of what he said. It’s an entrenched form of ad hominem; it seems to be the inverse of the “appeal to authority” logical fallacy. It debases discourse to the point that it’s nearly pointless.

All the while, the majority of blacks are out doing what the majority of whites, majority of latin(o/a)s , etc. are doing – trying to do the best they can to provide for their families. This means that they’re too busy to engage in the discourse. If I hadn’t just gotten back from a ski trip (and been notified of new posts via the plug-in), I’d likely not be typing this now. I blog, but it’s rare; but even with that, you, Morgan, and I are probably engaging in the discussion more than most. Most are trying to figure out how, given the environment in which they find themselves, they can best provide for themselves and their families.

I guess. to wrap up this rambling: the anti-racism movement has won; they just not acting like they know it.
- Daniel | 01/27/2013 @ 16:05
…fuRther…
- Daniel | 01/27/2013 @ 16:05
I’m still trying to figure out this evident paradox:

If you lack the competence to learn to drive a car OR to get yourself a state-issued ID, it somehow becomes a noble exercise to make sure you never endure any consequences of this — and you absolutely, positively have a right to vote;

If you lack the competence to figure out & dance to the PC tune, like our friendly doofus being ridiculed in the ad above, you deserve the beatdown. Ed said it himself. He’s got it coming.

How is it that incompetents have a “civil right” to be treated exactly like the competent in one aspect of life, but deserve full wrath and retribution in other aspects of life?
- mkfreeberg | 01/27/2013 @ 16:39
You might have me confused with another Daniel; I think this is the only post on which I’ve commented this year. But, if you’re gonna go, you might as well go all-out, eh?

The only ID I see here is daniel.summershome.org.

I thought you were confused when you first posted. That might be the ticket.
- edarrell | 01/28/2013 @ 08:12
I personally feel that the hyper-sensitivity with which liberals treat race relations nearly as distasteful as the way the white supremacists treated them; neither places them on equal footing with others. In other words – if their forbears endured true slavery, is it at all believable that today’s blacks are irreparably harmed if they hear a n-word joke? And is it further believable that they need guilty white people to defend them?

If your mother was raped at gun point, but survived, you think it’s okay to tell rape jokes around her? If your forebears perpetrated slavery under the U.S. system, or the genocide against Native Americans, if you have a heart and any sense, you’ll avoid those topics. No, it’s not hypersensitivity. You appear hyperinsensitive to your fellow humans. That’s a problem. Maybe you should rethink.

Racism is ugly in any form. That it may be in the past doesn’t make it less ugly.

People of all races can fight racism. You’re not required to be racist just because of your color.

Racism is certainly not extinct from our nation, but the form of it against which the typical anti-racism machines are working is. You mentioned Chappelle above – remember his comments about chicken? “Maybe we just like chicken… ’cause it’s delicious!” Have you had fried chicken prepared from the recipes handed down through southern black families? It’s amazing; blows KFC, Church’s, and Popeye’s out of the water. (Man, now I’m hungry.)

As I noted, Chapelle knocked it off because, he said, too many people thought his lampooning of racists was saying that, since slavery is long past, it’s okay to tell racist jokes. He said that was not his intent at all. He was trying to make racists look like fools. He didn’t like that some people confused that with making racists out to be just good ol’ boys.

I mentioned Chapelle in reference to that lesson. Regret you completely missed the point.

Without listing a bunch of bullet points, suffice it to say I have a somewhat unique-for-a-white-guy experience. (It certainly seems unique, given what other people have shared with me about their lives.) Even if my politics trended toward liberal, I’d have a hard time buying into the blacks-are-victims-who-need-our-help thing; it simply doesn’t square with the reality I’ve lived. And, thankfully, though the simple act of living life, I’ve convinced some of them that not all white people are out to get them (and they really did think that).

Go back to that philosophy.

The biggest problem I have with the whole “racist” thing (other than it being WAY over-accused and under-proved) is that it has somehow become a disqualifier for any futher debate. If we can paint the speaker as racist, we do not have to address the substantive points of what he said. It’s an entrenched form of ad hominem; it seems to be the inverse of the “appeal to authority” logical fallacy. It debases discourse to the point that it’s nearly pointless.

We can’t live in a fantasy world and hope to make necessary changes in the real world. Labeling racism as racism is sometimes necessary to stop it. Just as you don’t think it’s racist to continue racist language, others need that pointed out, too.

All the while, the majority of blacks are out doing what the majority of whites, majority of latin(o/a)s , etc. are doing – trying to do the best they can to provide for their families. This means that they’re too busy to engage in the discourse. If I hadn’t just gotten back from a ski trip (and been notified of new posts via the plug-in), I’d likely not be typing this now. I blog, but it’s rare; but even with that, you, Morgan, and I are probably engaging in the discussion more than most. Most are trying to figure out how, given the environment in which they find themselves, they can best provide for themselves and their families.

I guess. to wrap up this rambling: the anti-racism movement has won; they just not acting like they know it.

If anti-racism has won, how in the hell did you confused this edge-of-knife humor as a diatribe against liberals? Why did The Bilderbergers even think it might be funny, in contemporary society?

It would be nice were racism a thing of the past. Racism is with us very much — too much — today.
- edarrell | 01/28/2013 @ 10:08

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