By Capt. Fogg
Well no wonder they don't think The Daily Show is funny and don't notice when Colbert rips them to pieces.
Some scientific folks at UC San Francisco have completed a study indicating that people in the early stages of dementia have lost the snark detection system most of us were born with and can't tell when you're lying or being facetious. It explains a lot of things, actually, from why people send their life savings to Nigeria to why they can support a candidate who changes his entire philosophy from hour to hour to negate whatever his opponent says.
"Divergent Neuroanatomic Correlates of Sarcasm and Lie Comprehension in Neurodegenerative Disease," a paper presented Thursday at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Hawaii, suggests that dementia can be detected earlier by noting this telltale disability. Fans of Blade Runner will smile and those of us baffled by the thought processes of Sarah Palin disciples will say "AHAH!" Perhaps we can now begin to understand why there are no really funny conservative comedians and how John McCain can flip and flop faster than a Cray supercomputer without fostering the slightest cynicism from the right.
After all, what has been eroded by disease in some people may simply not exist in others.
Well, I don't think the Daily Show is that funny. The idea that saying the F-word is a good substitute for intelligent humor is so dated. But I think Colbert is hilarious.
ReplyDeleteYesterday, Paul Krugman didn’t mince words, Civility is the Last Refuge of Scoundrels:
ReplyDelete“But now that the [Ryan] plan has been exposed as the cruel nonsense it is, what we’re hearing a lot about is the need for more civility in the discourse. President Obama did a bad thing by calling cruel nonsense cruel nonsense; he hurt Republican feelings, and how can we have a deal when the GOP is feeling insulted?
Is one of our two major political parties run by people so immature that they will refuse to do what the country needs because the president hasn’t been nice to them?”
I think our Captain is on to something. Among the abilities either lost or non-existent – conscience, judgment, and maturity. We have become so verbally abused by the opposition party, it drags down the quality of life.
I have noticed this as well, the difference in "sophistication" between what Conservatives versus Liberals think is funny.
ReplyDeleteLiberals are drawn more to satire... which takes some level of intellect to understand and appreciate the humor. Conservatives think that mean spirited and personal attacks like this are funny. Their humor is often low-brow and lacking maturity.
I'm a bit tired of the Daily Show too and yes, much of the humor is sophomoric, I agree. Still, the ironic displays of Republican density, soaring hyperbole and clownish antics can be funny - if you like painful humor. No one else is willing to display the dishonesty of daily life to that extent. Colbert wears thin after a while too, but that's just my opinion and both their audiences tend to be half my age so it's not surprising.
ReplyDeleteOcto:
If you've any experience with bullies, you'll know that they cry like babies when retaliated against. You'll know that they tend to have a deep sense of inferiority, sometimes well founded.
It always surprises me, when I'm in a third world country, that there is a far greater sense of optimism and hope and appreciation for life than one finds amongst most Americans. We're the ones bitching about how hard life is and feeling sorry for ourselves. It's us crying "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon."
We have such a poor quality of life amid so much.
RTS:
ReplyDeleteGood example.
I wonder if our good Captain had read this about conservatives who don't understand that Colbert is playing a character on his "Colbert Report."
ReplyDelete"...[A]study from The Ohio State University, which proves, with math and stuff, that lots of conservatives seem to NOT understand the intrinsic, underlying joke of The Colbert Report:
"This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion."
A psychologist friend of mine and her colleague wrote a book on bullies. She told me that their research found that, contrary to popular belief, bullies do not feel inferior - they're just flat out mean. Their tears stem more from anger at getting caught than anything else - along with putting on an act.
ReplyDeleteI don't I know one single conservative who has a sense of humor - they don't have the intelligence.
Capt. Fogg & All,
ReplyDeleteI suspect that ideologues of any persuasion are similarly humorless, but in the American context (since we don't have an impressive number of radical-left ideologues) those studies you cite make sense. Tighty-Righties don't often seem to have much of a funnybone, and are easily outraged by things at which you or I would probably not be offended. The older generation of pundits and such aren't all so rigid, though -- I mean, W. F. Buckley Jr. had a wry sense of humor, and Patrick Buchanan knows how to take a joke and make one. Pretty much the same goes with Alan Simpson of Wyoming (yes, that guy -- Mr. Deficit Grinch himself) and the inimitable Michael Steele, who is a very funny guy. Have you seen him on Rachel Maddow lately? The two of them ought to take that show on the road....
At the same time, there's something to tnlib's view that the worst of the Rightists are just plain meaner than a junkyard dog -- the birther loons among them, for example, find it good clean fun and entirely appropriate to insult the president's parents. What else is it to question a man's birth circumstances than an insult to his mother and father? After all, wouldn't they be the ones who would have had to tell all those initial fibs about where he was born? To me, insulting a person's mother is the most low-down, dishonorable thing a body can do, yet these people apparently think nothing of doing so, and even consider it downright cute.
Finally, on The Daily Show, yep, I find myself not watching lately -- I appreciate JS's efforts and skills (he does a spot-on Glenn Beck impression, for instance), but I think he turned a lot of liberals off with that rally a while back and with the way he responded to legitimate criticism of it as a piece of false equivalence. But what the hey? He's on our side, and I like him.
Colbert -- yes, it IS hard to understand how anyone could miss the satire. But then, some of what Colbert says is true: the truth DOES have "a liberal bias," by all the Dinosaur Gods! Truer words was never spoke....