Category Funny

Lighten up, America

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

(You too, Canada; Mexico, you got reason to bitch…good luck).

Things are weird all the time.  “The 60s” didn’t seem strange to me because I was just the right age—not old enough for “the 50s” to have made an impression, so no frame of reference to know that political assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate and the rock ‘n’ roll were unusual.  But life in America has bounced from one weird extreme to another my whole life.

Things in America are weird today: technological advances are changing our lives daily in ways my grandparents couldn’t have imagined, while we struggle to recover from the most severe economic shock to the system since my grandparents were newlyweds; without the courtesy of a declaration of war from Congress we’re still fighting the longest war this country has ever fought, while the dysfunctional political system rewards those who shout the loudest and refuse to play nice, and the dysfunctionaler journalism system stands witlessly amidst the chaos trying to sell me today’s “ordeal” or the latest “narrative.”

And then, some nice people who’ve somehow maintained a sense of humor and a little perspective about life try to give us a break, and a giggle or two, just before the next societal convulsion, and what do they get?  A lot of criticism from a whole range of folks who just don’t get it.

The D.C. publication TBD.com had a great summary yesterday of some of the dirty bathwater being tossed at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for Saturday’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear: that they’ve crossed the line between entertainment and politics (line?), or the location is too sacred to be used in this way (Cordoba House, call for Cordoba House!), or they might offend someone (someone?).

Even when the weird is on high, a laugh can do you a lot of good…could be the best time for one.  Try it out.

Things you do when your team has a bye week

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

First thing this morning I’m heartened to see the Leonard Pitts Jr. column from yesterday’s Miami Herald, and so what if he’s piling on Christine O’Donnell for not understanding the Constitution—the point can’t be made too often that our country is in trouble if we voters don’t really think about what we’re doing when we get to the voting booth.

That this woman is a major party candidate for national office, that she is among the brightest stars of a constellation of like-minded cranks — some of them already in office — tells you all you need to know about this moment in our political life…Somehow we have forgotten the lesson we spent most of the last decade learning at ruinous cost, that faith-based governance, foreign policy by gut instinct, choosing leaders on the basis of which one we’d most like to watch television with, simply does not work.

It’s not  a question of conservative versus liberal:

…this is no conservatism Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater would have recognized. At least their ideology adhered to an interior logic. This ideology adheres to a perverse illogic which posits that the less you know, the more authentic you are. So what triumphs here is not conservatism but rather, mediocrity. The Know Nothings and Flat Earthers are ascendant.

And then while I was looking for a cartoon I saw to fill out this post, I ran into something even better—humor at the expense of our leader, in the form of a show tune!

Enjoy the lazy Sunday…the World Series, Halloween, and STS-133 are coming up the rear view mirror.

All hail the radical middle

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

I don’t write here every day because I promised myself I would try to think about things and then write rather than just explode all over the keyboard when something struck me as odd, inspiring, stupid or funny—Little League World Series developments, of course, being an exception.  And if that sets me apart from that part of the planet that’s always ready to respond to any development with the predigested talking points of some demagogue or another, I can live with that.

The more I think about this weekend’s TDS_RallyPosterRally to Restore Sanity/March to Keep Fear Alive, the more I think it will be a fun and educational way to remind everybody that we, the people who are not exactly pleased with everything that goes on in our government and our economy but haven’t thrown in with the extremist wingnuts du jour and want to talk about ways to make things better, are the center that holds this all together.  As the rally organizers say:

We’re looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it’s appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles.

TCR_RallyPosterNow, I think that’s funny.  But I bet you, too, know people who wouldn’t laugh, who consider any deviation from the revealed truth to be treason and heresy, people unwilling to scrape the rust off of their imaginations for an honest discussion about possible alternatives to what they’ve told.  Leonard Pitts Jr. calls them “people who believe what they believe because they believe. Their ignorance is bellicose, determined, an act of sheer will, and there is not enough reason in all the world to budge them from it.”

Rex Huppke in the Chicago Tribune sees us as a sizeable block of Americans who are aware that the emperors on both sides of today’s partisan hissy fit are naked, and are occasionally amused by the spectacle.

…what about those folks who have remained largely on the sidelines during the campaign, chuckling at the often absurd rhetorical volleys of our feuding politicos? This could be their moment to stand up and say, “Hey. You all are acting like jerks. Cut it out.”

I’m sorry I can’t attend this weekend’s rally in Washington, D.C., but I plan to enjoy it from afar.  And I plan to keep thinking about and writing about issues that are important to our future, as Americans and as Earthlings.  A good place to start is among the ideas laid out by political consultant Mark McKinnon, who thinks we need more talk and good will in the political arena to get the radical middle into the game.

They don’t agree on every policy, but they are willing to debate on principles. And consider principled compromise. They recognize hard decisions are ahead. And neither party is stepping up to make the tough decisions.

We could use a little more sanity around here for a change.

UPDATE Oct. 20→

This was published last evening about the same time as my post; Timothy Noah argues that what is likely to happen in the rallies next weekend could feed the animus that Tea Party types feel toward the “elites,” of which he believes Stewart and Colbert will be representative in their eyes, and actually influence the elections in favor of Republicans, which Stewart and Colbert would regret politically if not professionally.

Everybody, chip in

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

I come courtesy of today’s Daily Mail, and was captured using a Nikon D3S camera with a 24-70 mm lens and a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second.  What are the words that should appear underneath me?

Woods smashes photog

“Find the secret Groucho and win a hundred dollahs.”

“I got it, I got it!”

“Four?  I only count one.”

“Needed a faster shutter speed…”

“The referee signals it’s good—right down the middle!”

“That’s gonna leave a mark.”

“Juust a bit outside.”

You got a good one?  The comments are open…

UPDATE Oct. 10→

I didn’t even realize this was a big mystery, but…mystery solved!

My English is very goodly!

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

The Southeast Asian character who said that in a television show that’s stuck in a dusty corner of my memory—maybe a “M*A*S*H” episode?—got away with this funny line it because (1) she wasn’t a native English speaker and (2) it was the 1970s, excuses not available to the people who write and edit our newspapers and television newscasts today.

Last week  in The Washington Post Gene Weingarten lamented the death of English at the hands of journalists, the people you might have imagined should know how to properly use the tool that has expedited our exchange of information ever since evolution stole our ability to do that task with a simple sniff.

The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post.  A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the “youngest” daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their “younger” daughter.  In so doing, however, the letter writer called the first couple the “Obama’s.”  This, too, was published, constituting an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy.  Moments later, already severely weakened, English died of shame.

You in the hinterlands, do not take solace imagining that the plague is restricted to Our Nation’s Capital…oh no:

The Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal has written of “spading and neutering.”  The Miami Herald reported on someone who “eeks out a living” — alas, not by running an amusement-park haunted house.  The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star described professional football as a “doggy dog world.”  The Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald and the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune were the two most recent papers, out of dozens, to report on the treatment of “prostrate cancer.”

The demise of the language has not happened in a vacuum: readers supplied Weingarten with some of the more irksome examples they have stomached:

7. “loose,” as the opposite of “win.”

8. A mute point.

9. “amount” used to describe countable objects. 

Although regrettable, the slaying of the language by those who (arguably) should know better isn’t that much of a surprise.  These are the same people who, for instance, recently accepted the explanation from golfer Erica Blasberg’s doctor that he removed the suicide note and pill bottle from the scene of her suicide to save her family embarrassment without asking why he didn’t remove the plastic bag that was tied over her head, and who showed “dramatic video” shot from on board a Coast Guard helicopter of a rescue at sea without ever explaining why the boat was still speeding across the surf!

Got an excellent example of egregious and excess execution of English?  Hit the comment button and share with the class.