Eric Allie at Townhall, by way of blogger friend Buck.

Now we’re up to fifty new words I’ve made up.

Why do I do this? Because language is culture. You show me a society, with all the concepts that society has deemed to be worth describing with words; and the concepts that society has chosen to ignore, by refusing or failing to come up with words to describe them. You show me that, and I’ll show you the fiber that makes up that society. I’ll show you its passions and its collective apathy.

We have a lot of problems we’re leaving unaddressed, because we haven’t come up with words to describe certain things. So I just make up new words.

It should be noted that I don’t pretend to have any talent at this. But some of these concepts are pretty important, and I figure it’s better to deploy a sucky-ass word to describe whatever it is, than to flail around without the benefit of any word at all.

The latest:

Ji•no (n.)

1. The act of pretending something was intended to provoke a jocular response, when it wasn’t, as a defense mechanism when called out for saying or doing something thoughtless and unacceptable.
2. The act of repackaging something as a “joke” only for the purpose of pretending false things are true, true things are false, right things are wrong and/or wrong things are right.
3. Anything played off as a joke that, on careful inspection, is found to be entirely lacking in mirth.
4. A joke that one must find funny, or else there’s something wrong with that person; a reprimand is sure to arrive after the joke, “You take everything way too seriously, can’cha take a joke.”

Joke
In
Name
Only

I see Congressman Anthony Weiner, during his infamous press conference today, employed (in part) the “joke” defense, much as Sen. John Kerry did seven years ago.

There seems, to me, to be a sharp uptick in this over the last few years. It’s like the accuse-the-accuser method on steroids. I accuse you of slander, you accuse me of not being able to take a joke; the real damage is done by the implication that my inability to take a joke is some kind of a crime, or transgression.

This is extraordinarily dangerous, because there is difficulty involved in distinguishing it from the reasonable. For example, I’d be the first in line to protest if someone were to lodge a complaint against an off-color bit of humor from the South Park cartoon, especially if they were complaining about their young children bearing witness to it. Sit down and shut up!, I and persons like me would say. Change the damn channel if you can’t take a joke! What’s your precious babums doing up after ten o’clock at night anyway.

But you see, there is the difference. South Park jokes are actually funny. They are supposed to be non-family-friendly, but funny. Genuinely jocular. And not thoughtless by any stretch.

Contrast that with some of the JINOs told by repeat-offender Bill Maher:

It’s that fearlessness — he acknowledged that some people would probably be uncomfortable with some of his remarks about religion, not to mention calling Sarah Palin a “cunt” (“there’s just no other word for her”) — that makes Maher the most dangerous person in comedy. He’s painfully well-informed, which means he takes no bullshit from anyone. President Barack Obama took it on the chin almost as much as Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. How dare the President say he would not settle for America being No. 2 — America is already out of the top 10 in most international lifestyle and human rights categories (health care, education, social mobility, women in high political positions). “I’d be thrilled if we were No. 2,” he ranted, noting it’s nice to be behind Bosnia in life expectancy (where the chief cause of death is wolfman attacks, he joked).

It seems like a legit defense as long as you don’t take it too seriously. To take it seriously though, you have to walk a mile in Bill Maher’s shoes…let’s say you hate Sarah Palin and the United States of America, as well. Now try it on for size: Are these remarks honestly hilarious knee-slappers? Or is it more fair to characterize it all as a nervous giggle? Calling a woman you don’t like, a cunt? That’s “humor” right off the elementary school playground.

There’s an awful lot of stuff being presented over the last, let’s say, ten years give-or-take that just isn’t funny. Maybe you think I’m speaking out of my own unique perspective on things, bringing my biases into it. I admit that’s a possibility, but not an altogether imposing one; it’s dealt-with pretty easily. Just take the identities out of it, and with those identities, the objects of loathing, hatred or affection. Pretend Bill Maher referred to some generic, faceless, nameless woman as a cunt. Is it still gut-bustingly funny? If not, then how come it’s that way when you re-insert Palin’s identity? There’s only one answer possible: Audience & comedian are sharing a moment, not of jocularity, but of camaraderie. And only weak camaraderie at that — the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” type.

And so they jiggle their voice boxes to show their unity…and if any outsiders should call out that this says derogatory things about their character, huddling together in agreement that an object of mutual loathing is a cunt, out comes the “can’t ya take a joke” defense. Read that as: We’re good, you’re the problem.

But then, in that situation, this isn’t really a joke. If I have to disclaim everything under the sun as being unworthy of serious thought, in order to find a joke funny, then the joke isn’t funny. If in only inspires laughter in people who feel some strange surreal urge to laugh at everything, then it isn’t funny.

One final point worth mentioning: Some people, and not just a few, manage to straddle the chasm. That is to say, some people have been known to lodge verbal or written complaints of the sort “I do not find that funny in fact I find it offensive” — even on behalf of third parties, who exist in no way except as hypotheticals, as in “someone somewhere might find that joke offensive.” And then, go on to tell JINOs. As if to say: I get to blow the whistle on your jokes, but your complaints about my jokes are meaningless even when my jokes aren’t even supposed to be funny.

See, this is a situation that remains unclear only when we refuse to come up with the words to properly describe it. These nattering nabobs are not declaring this thing or that thing to be funny or unfunny; they’re passion judgment on who matters. The stand they are taking, is one of defining strangers into insignificance and irrelevance, by saying: “Yes, I know this is offensive to you and that is the point. Nothing will come of that. You just need to learn to take a joke.”

Ed Morrissey wonders,

What makes free men [in] landing craft in rough seas jump out to face this?

Continuing…

Think of that picture above and the courage it took to take that first step. Many of the men who saw this vista died without ever getting past the shore. What made them take that step? Certainly discipline strengthened them, but these men knew that they faced one of the most evil regimes the world had ever known — and that the Nazis wouldn’t stop with Europe. Evil could not be contained, nor appeased; it had to be fought and destroyed, and that it would take a tremendous sacrifice to end it. They went forth to battle evil, and even if they as individuals fell, these men knew that liberty and justice would defeat evil, and that their sacrifice would make that victory possible.

What compelled free men do such a thing sixty-seven years ago? Probably the fact that eighty-seven years ago, that thing little kids do with with the “Why do I have to do it? It’s his/her tuuuuuuurn…” was thought of as a little-kid thing. By the time a child reached majority age, he was expected to say something more like “If it’s gotta be done, then who better to do it than me?” You know, the kind of guy you’d like to be the closest neighbor if your house caught fire.

The good news is, that if such a mission were ever made necessary again, God forbid, we have the young men & women who would and could do it. The outcome of the war would not be won so decisively, I’m afraid…in American history, it hasn’t happened very often since WWII that a foe was well and truly vanquished.

But with liberal degenerates taking over everything, it’s still possible to bring out the best in people. The military is in good hands.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t learn a lot from such historical examples. There is a world of difference between a free man seeing what needs to be done & doing it, and a communist slave-in-all-but-name just plodding along at something to the detriment of his own interests, for the “greater good.”

Sonic Charmer wants to know why they change size. Or, not so much wants to know, but is having trouble getting past the dimension shift.

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the increased mass. Although there is an explanation:

Charles Q. Choi from LiveScience.com further explains that unlike the Hulk, gamma rays are not green; existing as they do beyond the visible spectrum, gamma rays have no color at all that we can describe. He also explains that gamma rays are so powerful (the most powerful form of electromagnetic radiation and 10,000 times more powerful than visible light) that they can even create matter from energy – a possible explanation for the increased mass that Bruce Banner takes on during transformations. “Just as the Incredible Hulk ‘is the strongest one there is,’ as he says himself, so too are gamma ray bursts the most powerful explosions known.”

Sonic takes particular umbrage with the increased size of the teeth. His real beef is with the CGI…he’s watching the most recent version of Hulk. And he’s right, Hulk’s teeth are like the size of cereal boxes. It just doesn’t work…

But I disagree about this being in a completely different league from Superman zipping through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, and then landing just as clean as when he took off. I rode my bike twenty miles just today, and I’m covered with scum and dust and dead insects…even pebbles. Of course, Superman doesn’t have to wear sunscreen, but still.

Yeah, that bothers me just as much as Hulk’s teeth. Superman’s speed is measured in miles per second…speeds like this can melt the wings off aircraft…but when he lands, every hair is in place.

That’s just as bad, I say.

And while we’re at it, how come seagulls always seem to be immaculately groomed? I mean, in real life. They’re wild animals, aren’t they?

Hat tip to Gerard.

I have this weird opinion floating around in my head, that as one surveys the fruited plain — or the junkyard full of wreckage — of American cinema, one can glean from all the items strewn hither & yon all the strengths and weaknesses of our dominant culture. In other words, my nutty opinion is that if you can show me what we’ve been watching to distract ourselves from the pain of life, I can show you our thinking as we’ve been going through that life.

Maybe I can even show you some of what brought about the pain. Oh, but that’s getting a little deep for this particular post…

…the point of which is, it seems to me that Sonic Charmer shares my nutty opinion about movies. Or, just pieces of it anyway. Our thinking is more eccentric than we as a society are willing to admit, and this shows up in our cinema:

Being a teenager is like being royalty. You have no responsibilities and virtually all your mental energy is focused on your personal entertainment and relative social status. This royalty is also perpetually declining, however; by definition and construction it has a finite shelf life: the royal status ends more or less when high school does, or at least college. And teens are painfully conscious of this expiration date, even if not explicitly in these terms.

This is why so many teen movies are tinged with nostalgia, sadness, and angst. In any event it should be possible to identify strong parallels between stories of ‘declining royalty’ and stories of ‘teen angst’. Are they really the same story? Crossover movies like Cruel Intentions made the link explicit. But the sense of a sadness for a lost royal age, and desperation to salvage something before the peasants storm the castle, is there in most teen movies, from explicitly nostalgic ones like American Graffiti to modern ones like Can’t Hardly Wait.
:
If this is even partially right, society seems to have made something of a macro error in creating the life stage we call ‘teenager’, which is a relatively new phenomenon. Consciously it is a well-intentioned effort to shield young people from realities while they have a chance at an extended childhood and to complete their development, but in practice it seems to be a recipe for unhappiness while it lasts and regret/nostalgia once it’s over. To treat people like royalty only to set them up for an ouster from the royal house is not an unalloyed kindness. Worse, we seem to be going in the wrong direction; according to conventional wisdom, an ever-increasing percentage of young people are supposed to continue with more and more years of ‘school’ after age 18 – and the more schooling the better. This is a doomed attempt to extend the unsustainable stage of royalty beyond economic realities.

I’m having a difference of opinion with a certain family member concerning the leisure activities of a mutual relative who is junior to us. The discourse is a meeting of the minds between two worlds…one world in which the “down time” of lazy children is somehow sacred and sacrosanct — for reasons never clearly stated — and the other world, in which…well, kids get a “vacation” when their parents get vacations, not before. And that’s if they’re good.

I think, if memory serves, the first “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie starred Heather Langenkamp as the “smart girl who lives until closing credits” girl, and the killer robot from Six Million Dollar Man co-starred as her dopey ol’ small-dee dad who was the police chief or something…that fits the mold beautifully, maybe even defines it. The authority figures — parents & police — are entirely ineffectual in their attempts to deal with the supernatural threat. It’s all up to the kids.

Now interestingly, you go back before this “relatively new phenomenon” of the royal figure who is the teenager…and you enter an earlier time in which it really is all up to the kids. This twenty-year-old and that nineteen-year-old are going to strap themselves into a bomber, fly over Hitler’s troops together and let the bombs fly. Just like facing off against Freddy Kreuger, some come back and some don’t. Except, this was for real.

And teenagers weren’t royalty. Teenagers did what they were told…and later, they did what had to be done. Perhaps the latter would not have been possible were it not for the former.

I’m revising my position. After reading this well-thought-out article linked by our blogger friend in New Mexico, I have experienced a spiritual awakening, the scales have fallen from my eyes, and I can see Sarah Palin is a thoroughly inadequate candidate. We’ve got to do something to make this woman go away before she scuttles our chances in 2012, and Barack Obama coasts to an easy second term…which I don’t think this country can survive.

This is the passage that really turned me around:

The years since 2008 were Mrs. Palin’s opportunity to redefine herself, to shake off the McCain tinge, to shatter the press stereotypes of her as a right-wing zealot. This was certainly within her ability. After all, prior to getting tapped in 2008, Mrs. Palin’s reputation was as a clear-eyed, inclusive reformer—one with soaring bipartisan approval ratings.

Instead, Mrs. Palin has chosen to cater mostly to her loyalist base. She’s purposely chosen to insert herself into nearly every national controversy—all but forcing voters to be for her or against her. Far from being reassured, many independents have felt confirmed in their fears about her temperament. She remains radioactive among a majority of voters, and she has even polarized Republicans. A March poll showed that 37% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents view her unfavorably, a number that far outpaced that of any other potential GOP candidate.

The stakes in 2012 are high. Mr. Obama is a sitting president. It will take a mighty GOP nominee (not to mention a lot of luck) to knock him off. Mrs. Palin would come into this race with little or no infrastructure, a near complete lack of a policy agenda, and eye-popping unfavorables. Nothing is impossible in politics, but her start is not encouraging.

Yes, now that I’m looking in on this “other” world from the outside, and making my first moves toward joining it, I can understand the appeal.

Making decisions a certain way, because & only because nameless, faceless strangers, whom you don’t know and never will meet, made the same choices. Choices you embrace fully, but the logic to which you will not, and cannot, explain.

It’s like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. No responsibility. Don’t ask me why this is the right choice, I only know that it is! Look at all those other people! Whoops, sorry, you can’t see them and neither can I. Oh well, they’re out there. Somewhere. Other nameless, faceless no-account busybodies keep telling me about ’em…and they wouldn’t lie. Why would they? They have no preconceived agenda at all! I think.

Anyway, I can certainly see the appeal. “Everybody knows it’s true because everybody knows that everybody knows.” No one taking individual responsibility for figuring out what the facts are, or what they might mean. Proxy fact-gathering, proxy-inference-forming, proxy-freakin’-everything. It’s like going back to high school or something.

Well, here’s one nagging problem with my conversion: If Palin is not the good candidate, then who is? So far, in spite of my asking this question of the rightward-leaning libertarian-spirit Palinophobes…I haven’t got back a single cogent, coherent response. Not one. Not a single time.

I haven’t even got the beginnings of a list of requirements to be applied, to figure out who such a candidate must be.

So I figured I’d do this legwork for them. Heck, if they were ever going to do it themselves, let’s face facts, they’d have done it by now. And they won’t put together such a list, so it falls to me.

They’ve been unified, and enthused, about why they disapprove of Palin so much. So the way I figure it, this is just building on top of the foundation they’ve already laid. So onward with Step 2 — your “Good Candidate” requirements document…

1. Male, or ugly woman; either way, never wears a skirt or dress
2. Went to Yale or Harvard, or a school with the right “prestige”
3. There is nothing novel about the state of origin, which rules out not only Alaska but probably a dozen others
4. Enlisted, saw combat, but not in any war or engagement that was particularly controversial
5. Meticulously puts “g” on the ends of all words
6. No pregnant daughters, no family members with mental disabilities
7. Children all have common names
8. Never participated in any gross or disgusting work that might show up on Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs
9. The usual with kids’ education; candidate is an advocate for public schools, but kids all go to Sidwell
10. Takes “moderate” positions on global warming, which I guess means we need new taxes to fix it all
11. “Moderate” on the economy, which I take to mean we need more regulation like what caused the mess in the first place
12. “Moderate” on stimulus spending, means we need to keep trying it again and again until it magically works
13. “Moderate” on drilling, which means don’t
14. “Moderate” on education, and that would have to mean don’t make any waves with the teachers’ unions
15. Wears all kinds of expensive clothes, but for unexplained reasons the media will never question it
16. Knows that Gaborone is the capitol of Botswana and that it has a population of 192,000…or isn’t asked about any such thing
17. Refuses to talk about Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright
18. Despises waterboarding
19. On record as thinking Dick Cheney is pure evil
20. Friend to Oprah
21. Gets along great with Joy Behar
22. Bill Maher thinks he’s a swell guy
23. David Brooks likes him
24. Plays a musical instrument while guesting on Letterman
25. Laughs good-naturedly at jokes at his expense, even if he’s called a baby killer or a war criminal

And after all that, don’t tell me let me guess…everyone to the political left of Orin Hatch is going to stay home, or vote to re-elect Obama anyway. Because He’s cuter. Sounds like a plan!

Hmmm…you know, after looking this plan over, along with what details I can cobble together and the likely outcome of it all…I dunno. It’s like I have a feeling of deja vu. Like I’ve already been through this a couple years ago…plus six months and twenty-nine days. Just a feeling I can’t shake. Am I imagining it?

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

Why go into the details. Sarah Palin recited an historical event that “obviously” was supposed to go in a certain direction, and she took it in a direction different from that and this is ipso facto proof that the woman is a complete ditz who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Aaron Worthing, guest blogging at Patterico’s Pontifications, has an excellent roundup of the explosion that ensued…and, the salient linkage that shows Palin was not so wrong after all.

Isn’t it obvious what’s going on? Palin is doing what this guy is doing:

Whitney Pitcher has more to say about the details of Paul Revere’s ride, but that isn’t what I wish to inspect at this time.

Now that we’ve been through enough turns on this merry-go-round, I wish to take a look at the people who continuously pipe up, sneering at Sarah Palin that she needs to study a history or just crack open a book…without first studying history or cracking open a book.

I made the link to Stockholm Syndrome because some of the people I know who are doing this are, in fact, sympathetic with Governor Palin’s point of view that the country is going in the wrong direction. These people are not pussy liberals; in fact, the picture that emerges is one of a freedom-loving, rightward-leaning libertarian type. They agree the Second Amendment is the only gun permit anyone should ever need, and that the best cure for an ailing economy is to simply allow the lowly citizenry to make money. They pay their taxes on time, and they take notice when the people helped by those tax dollars, have much bigger teevee sets than they have. They know global warming is a scam, and they fight the scam. They’re good Americans. They know things are cocked up, and as long as the matter under discussion is non-Palin-related, they can be counted-on to do the right thing. They’ll fight the madness with the resolve of Sisyphus.

But when the Barracuda pops up, this all changes.

These are the very same people who really go apeshit when Palin warbles her way through another “Kyle Steals a Ride” fake-out. They tap into a great wellspring of adrenaline, which our left-wing friends don’t seem to have, I see; beating the Wasilla Wonder upside her pretty head, transforming themselves into frenzied perpetual-motion machines of spite, ridicule and snark, while the lefties quickly tire of the game and move on. These are the people who seem to learn absolutely nothing from the last go-’round.

Yesterday morning, having no idea what was about to take place with the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, I updated the list of Things I Know with the stuff that had been stewing in my smartphone for a few weeks, and it just so happened this item came in through that batch:

396. Once disaster is perceived as inevitable, people will resist any efforts to thwart it.

The captive will begin to sympathize with her captors, and not only defend them but resist the efforts of rescue. It’s like, they’re dangling off the edge of a cliff, desperately clinging to some sagebrush or whatever…Sarah Palin extends a dainty and well-manicured, but strong, hand in their direction…and no thankyew. Palin’s voice is annoying, or she must be an airhead because perception is reality, right? Or her legs are too shapely. There must be someone else up there who can yank us up — we’ll hold out.

Just ridiculous. But that’s where we are, I’m afraid.

And it would be an object of merely intense quizzical study and maybe some measure of pity. But the captive is the United States of America. Obama’s got the country hostage, and is forcing it at knifepoint to withdraw from its own ATM, repeatedly. His handling of the employment situation is a complete boot-pissing exercise, an absolute albatross.

And He may get another four years to do His damage, just because of the repeated fracturing of the eleventh commandment. Nope, it hasn’t gone out of style yet. The Gingrich hoop-de-doo, evidently, didn’t teach anybody anything.

Commenter Peter probably said it better than anybody this morning:

Keep devouring your own dear pseudo-conservatives. You will ensure that Obungler gets reelected.

Yup, there it is. If you allow your skills to atrophy, and de-value your powers of reasoning, you eventually lose out and it doesn’t matter how many or what kind of services you receive. If you can’t do, you can’t get.

A society filled with such people cannot survive for long.

It starts with the little things.

Hat tip to Boortz.

Gallup:

Americans break into two roughly evenly matched camps on the question of whether the government should enact heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth in the U.S. Forty-seven percent believe the government should redistribute wealth in this way, while 49% disagree, similar to views Gallup found four years ago.

Notice the question that accompanies the graph: “Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich?” The sway that is involved is actually very slight, but since the ramifications involved are so significant I wish there was a better idea of how many people are deciding this based on economic climate of the moment. In other words, how many say “No it should not, as a matter of principle” versus how many say “Ordinarily it might be a swell idea, this just isn’t a good time for that.”

Maybe they should conduct another poll in which they ask “Do you think it’s any of the government’s [expletive deleted] business?” In our modern culture, I notice people are rather slow to say “I have a right to my property” but they’re great for saying “it’s nobody else’s [expletive deleted] business.” Privacy over property; take my spare change but leave me my weed.

Well anyway, it’s good to see the right side is winning out. If it can happen with gas approaching five dollars a gallon, it can happen anytime. Question for the “Yes, should” types: You do realize this country doesn’t have a wealth tax, right?

Hat tip to Ed Morrissey, who adds:

Redistributionist policies will always appeal to those who see themselves as outsiders to economic success. One might expect that the terrible economy of the last three years would have boosted the popularity of Barack Obama’s populist agenda, but it seems the opposite has occurred. Americans know that job creation comes from private investors taking risks with their wealth in order to create even more wealth, and not from government confiscation of wealth to create new bureaucracies that create nothing but red tape. We have spent the last two years watching what happens when government takes wealth out of the economy, and the results — chronically high unemployment, bad housing markets, and a falling dollar that brings high fuel and food prices — are no longer dim reminders of the 1970s, but our current environment.

RealClearPolitics:

As megablogger Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, has noted with amusement, the word “unexpectedly” or variants thereon keep cropping up in mainstream media stories about the economy.

“New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed,” reported cnbc.com May 25.

“Personal consumption fell,” Business Insider reported the same day, “when it was expected to rise.”

“Durable goods declined 3.6 percent last month,” Reuters reported May 25, “worse than economists’ expectations.”

“Previously owned home sales unexpectedly fall,” headlined Bloomberg News May 19.

“U.S. home construction fell unexpectedly in April,” wrote The Wall Street Journal May 18.

Those examples are all from the last two weeks. Reynolds has been linking to similar items since October 2009.

The first question that naturally emerges is, how much do you really know about what’s going on if every little thing that happens comes as some sort of surprise to you?

The second question is: In what way is an Obama administration good for the economy? What Obama policy is likely to make sales & purchases & profits take off and go through the roof. Any Obama policy…anywhere. Any industry, any year. Where could we expect such an effect to happen, or to have happened?

There’s Cash For Clunkers, which “unexpectedly” didn’t pan out. So that’s toast. What else is there?

Time to face facts: Obama is a democrat. The policy proposals of democrats, make commodities more expensive. All of them, across the board. Unless you count what is to be provided for “free,” at taxpayer expense.

But with a democrat in charge, those who have the means to pay for the things they consume, will have to pay more. The labor costs more, the transportation costs more and the taxes cost more. This is true of all commodities, all issues, stem to stern.

So can someone please explain to me how it’s “unexpected” that the economy will stall? When you put some quality thought into it, it really can’t go any other way…can it?

On Memorial Day, I started out inventing another new word and ended up penning an essay about Give-A-Damn, and the comical and tragic situation into which we’ve placed ourselves by not…well…giving a damn about it. I proclaimed Memorial Day to be Give-A-Damn day. Events since then, have unfolded in such a way that the essay puts them in a new light.

Nothing with regard to that particular piece — this is The Blog That Nobody Reads, after all. But Blogsister Cassy is on the warpath against Hallmark Greeting Cards, and their fictional cranky Madam Maxine. We’re squarely in her corner on this. Although, for reasons that will be explained, we’ve had far less charitable feelings toward this cartoon than she’s had…

On 5-30, for those customers who feel so inclined to send cards on Memorial Day, this panel appeared:

This is where Maxine cartoons start to lose me, on any day. A lot of the time she acts as an emulsifying bonding agent among people who’ve found it somehow virtuous to — well, here we are right back at square one all over again — not Give A Damn about anything.

Here’s the problem: However these lazy apathetics may protest to the contrary, they don’t find a lack of Give A Damn a virtuous thing straight out of the chute; they have to do their fellowshipping with one another about it, in order to maintain this illusion, and I get the feeling that’s where Maxine comes in. Look how hip the old battleaxe is, she doesn’t give a damn about anything. Supposedly there’s something admirable about that. If we gave a damn, we’d tell you what it is.

She’s like a seventy-five-year-old goth chick. No, I don’t think we have a shortage of such an attitude.

But as Hallmark is finding out, it becomes an especially aggravating problem on Memorial Day. In my family, the service members who saw combat all lived through it, thank God, and have since retired naturally from their mortal coils. Now they’re gone. Cassy, meanwhile, has a husband who’s been through multiple deployments just lately, and has survived one roadside bomb. So Memorial Day has special meaning for her family, and for many other families as well for the same reason. So Hallmark, which makes its very living off of the feelings people have when they lay their eyes on the company’s products, has engaged in something wretchedly insensitive here. Plus, they’ve made an idiotic business decision because these are the very people who would feel so inclined to exchange mementos on Memorial Day…who, typically, might consider purchasing Hallmark products for that purpose.

But here’s where it gets weird. I made the comment up above that, when people who find it virtuous to lack any Give A Damn about anything display said virtue by showing off that they don’t have any Give A Damn, they need to fellowship & bond with each other before they find it virtuous. From what I’ve read, out on Maxine’s Facebook page, several offended persons made their feelings known politely and respectfully — and here came the guff. Not “I disagree the cartoon is not offensive,” but rather all kinds of smear and slime and snot and flamewar nonsense. Personal insults aplenty.

Cassy’s treatise on it is here, Susan Katz Keating has examples of the snide snippets over here and BlackFive has a very decent and thoughtful write-up here.

Cassy’s message to Hallmark is here, which I’ll quote in part:

I am writing to inform you that you have lost a Hallmark customer. On Memorial Day, you published an offensive cartoon from your character, Maxine. The text was as follows:

“Lots of people don’t have to work today. Which is why my motto is “Live every day like it’s Memorial Day!”

This was offensive to many people, including myself and some Gold Star families. I know many of the people who commented on Maxine’s Facebook page to express their disappointment. All of them are supportive of the military beyond just complaining on a Facebook page, as your fans would have you believe. It’s bad enough that most Americans view Memorial Day as a day only for a three-day weekend and barbecues. It’s even worse that Hallmark would further this idea.

After many of us posted that the cartoon offended us, Maxine fans responded extremely crudely. They attacked us, including a Gold Star mother. The page moderator did nothing. We were insulted, told to shut up and go away, and still the moderator did nothing. After a while, Hallmark issued a rather weak apology. However, they still took a stand against the military. Comments from military families who were offended were deleted. Comments from fans attacking military families, though, were let stand. Some of these included being called “inbred hicks”, “retards”, and much more. Why were comments from military families — respectful comments — deleted while vile, crude insulting comments directed at said military comments let stand? Clearly, the company apology was not sincere. Actions speak louder than words, and your actions clearly show that not only does Hallmark NOT support our troops and respect the sacrifices of the fallen, they actively side with those who disrespect and insult our troops and their families. This situation could have been handled differently, but Hallmark made a choice and took a stand. You chose which comments to delete and which comments to keep, and the comments you chose were vile, rabid, insulting, and disrespectful. Apparently those are the customers you value — not our troops and their families who are sacrificing for your fans to have the right to insult us.

I visited the page to try to find comments about this, and most of what I found was more polite than “inbred hick” stuff (although I did see that). However, even the polite counterprotests from the “pure” Maxine fans crossed a line, although I don’t think the authors of those comments realized it…because they all had it in common that they presumed the offense taken by the others, was due to some kind of personal problem.

And this is why I’ve never been particularly fond of Maxine. We’re finding something out about human nature here, and what we’re finding out is not pretty: To be dysfunctional is to be a controlling ass. There is no such thing as a lovable, not-give-a-damn type of curmudgeon. If you make a decision not to pick up litter, and then someone picks it up, you look like a jerk. So it’s going to be a natural thing, if you don’t make the world a better place you aren’t going to want anybody else to do it either. If you don’t have the balls to intervene and keep someone from being beaten up, you aren’t going to want anyone else to do it either.

And if you think it’s just great that Maxine, and all the “taker” type people she represents regard Memorial Day as just a day to sit on the ol’ ass and not give a rip about anything…then you’ll be offended when someone else is offended…and you’ll feel inclined to lash out, to lay down these snide insults, as if the offended persons had something “wrong” with them that made them offended, and therefore, should just shut up and go away.

Well yeah, they do have something “wrong” with just them that doesn’t have a bearing on everybody else. Except it isn’t “wrong,” it’s more like special and exclusive, and that’s exactly the problem. The problem is that they, and their family members, and their families themselves, have made meaningful, often life-changing, debilitating sacrifices, sometimes mortal sacrifices, and they’re getting the feeling the rest of the country could care less. You know what really bottom-lines it? There are times when Maxine-style apathy just isn’t funny.

Actually now that I think on it, this nails it even better:

…I hear Marines say over and over again that the Marine Corps is at war while America is at the mall. You people are a shining example of that.

Well hey. They’re Maxine fans. There is bound to be a huge chunk of this crowd, made up by worthless buttholes who think if you give-a-damn about anything, there must be something wrong with you.

This is a bigger problem than just Maxine. All too often, our culture tends to place value on things without first asking salient, sensible questions about things that are supposed to be precious: Is it useful? Is it rare? This “don’t give a damn” is neither one of those. It is, in fact, prevalent and to the best I can discern, it is the source of absolutely nothing that’s any good.

I do admit though I’m wondering what Maxine does for Veteran’s Day to get the crowd giggling. Does she walk up to the vet handing out flowers & pins at the entrance to her corner grocery store, and kick him in the shins or something?

Lesson to take away? Everybody can’t Give A Damn about everything…but its polar opposite, the not-give-a-damn, is not a fashion statement. Or it shouldn’t be one anyway. It’s rather toxic and it isn’t really funny. There does exist a need to find it funny, but that by itself doesn’t make something funny.

In my opinion, and this is not exactly going out on a limb, the need-to-find-not-give-a-damn-funny, is related and connected to the need-to-beat-up-on-people-who-give-a-damn, and the friends and family members who are offended on their behalf. So maybe, before people make a decision to go through life not-giving-a-damn about things, they would do well to look down the road, to think through ahead of time, how they would feel about it if someone else came along who gave a damn. Would that make you look foolish? Would that make you look lazy? Would it make you look like an asshole, a jerk, a dickwad, a horrible human being, or maybe just a waste of skin and vital organs that would do more good in someone else’s body?

If so, then maybe you need to think twice before constructing an entire identity around this goth-hipster “I’m cool because I don’t give a damn about anything” thing. Because if you do, someday it’s gonna happen — someone will bring a good outcome, when you’re too cool to think about doing it yourself, and you’re gong to look like the jackass you are…and then you’ll want to lash out. Best case scenario will be you’ll stay silent and be thought of as a dick; worst case, you’ll speak up like these Maxine fans and remove all doubt.

So your one-liner is: Only way to win at this game is not to play. Better to just Give A Damn. Ironically, that just might end up being less work!

Update: You know, thinking on this some more: While the statement,

Everybody can’t Give A Damn about everything…but…

may or may not be true. Let’s assume for sake of argument this is true and it’s impossible as a human endeavor to go through life giving a damn about everything. How should we then live? If we can’t give a damn about everything, the next best thing would be to place value on people who give a damn. Which means, to appreciate people who give a damn, more than people who don’t give a damn.

That ultimately means looking down on people.

So the inference I’d draw is, this cultural movement we had throughout the final third of the twentieth century, or so…that nobody should ever look down on anybody. I see a linear path of parentage there. We, as people living in a sophisticated society that is trying to right the wrongs of the past, are forbidden by taboo from seeing any other people as better or worse than any other people no matter what. We are required, therefore, to see all people as equal.

But humans cannot see other humans that way.

So…we do whatever takes the least amount of effort, and some diseased minds in our midst have taken to seeing the apathetics as better people. This hyper-enthusiastic drive toward not-giving-a-damn about anything, and finding Maxine cartoons to be “funny,” is like a bastard love-child of this other hyper-enthused drive for a perfect society so strictly egalitarian as to remain entirely fictional.

If you’re wondering where this is coming from, my suggestion is to hop on over to the Maxine page on Facebook, and see how risible and rancorous some of those “nothing to see here” comments can be. It’s really shocking and really deplorable.

Obviously, not-giving-a-damn means never having to be ashamed of your own conduct.

I’m on the Dad’s side on this one, I think. He’s not ignoring the ball for yet-more-clingy with the daughter…he decides to try to catch the ball instead. And he gets a lecture from security?

Hat tip to Jawa, who seems to have a different take on things.

There is a parent-code solidifying before my eyes here; maybe it hasn’t taken on the form & shape it seems to have taken on, to me, since I live in Folsom and I may be getting an unnatural perspective. But I don’t like what I’m seeing.

If you are a man, you cannot use your voice to address your children in a pitch lower than a woman’s voice…even though you’re not a woman. Hugs & kisses all of the time, and never, ever tell them they did anything wrong. The adorable moppet knocked a hole in the wall and then smeared feces all over it? Just adorable!

Maybe I’m reading too much into it. But answer me this: If the guy ignored the ball to do some more huggy bonding with the kid, how safe would the kid be then? Right…if it were not a baseball, if it was some other projectile with no glory attached to it, only danger, then the loving protective Dad would have done exactly what this guy did. And come out of the situation a hero. But since it’s a baseball, the community needs to rise up against this creep and maybe put the kid in protective custody.

Well, it is a different situation, I’m sure the Dad thought of the baseball as a glory souvenir and not a deadly missile. But it isn’t diffferent, meaningfully so. It’s essentially the same thing happening. My point is, sometimes the community needs to just jam its hands in its pockets, turn around and mind its own business. The kid’s obviously fine. Dad needs to work on his baseball skills a little, maybe the girl can help out with that. But the nattering nabobs can chill out a little here. Ease off.

Legs in the news…albeit photoshopped…

From here, which is linked over here, which we found out about by way of FARK.

The problem is not with the cheerleaders, or with the sixteen-year-old (girl) student who put the insulting article in, but in grown-up-land. Some grown-ups think the yearbook is an exercise in free speech, is therefore sacred…in fact there is a Supreme Court decision, or law, or something saying the administrators have to let the students have the final word. Other grown-ups think the cheerleaders enjoy some equally sacrosanct right to flip open the yearbook and not be offended by anything they find in there. Many grown-ups, I’m gathering, believe both things and glide on through life blissfully unaware of the contradiction.

But there’s a contradiction. You can’t have both of those. It’s one or the other.

Me? I’m one of the rotten stinkers who doesn’t believe in either one. I think the admins have a right and an obligation to interfere if the content flouts some standard or other — and, when you open the yearbook you might find something that might not necessarily appeal to you, and that’s okay. Both these ideas of mine, I hasten to point out, reflect the world in which grown-ups live after they’ve grown up. So why we’re trying to impress on children that it’s not really that way, is something I’d need to have someone explain to me…doesn’t seem to me like anything that will help them down the road.

I’ll go along with this, though. It’s rotten to put in something insulting about identified individuals right before graduation — no rebuttal possible, no recourse available if the writer & editor happen to be seniors. Maybe that’s the best way to handle it: The yearbook content, cover to cover or most of it, is decided by graduating freshmen. So the image-conscious sophomores and juniors have an incentive not to be complete dicks to the freshmen, and the freshmen have an incentive to save that “done with school, answer to no one, rebel without a clue” nonsense for three years down the road.

Granted, that does not address the problem here quite so much…but, like I sad, that’s alright. I’m not sure it has to be addressed. Imagine such a snotty article is written about you and your fellow cheerleaders, now add ten or twenty years. Is it a problem? Really? No, it’s funny. Admit it, it’s a minor footnote at best.

This one needs an attitude adjustment:

“Ugh! I was really mad. I was shaking,” said cheerleader Breannah Gully after picking up her yearbook. “And I started reading, and everyone had to tell me to calm down and I was just angry at the words, and I called my mom and I was crying.”

So that’s another litmus test I have: If you describe the problem to me, and I end up more worried about your upbringing than about the problem itself, then that’s a fail. This girl seems to think performing before an audience has something to do with controlling the reaction the audience is supposed to have, right down to each individual within…and that’s a much bigger problem than the yearbook.