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December 02, 2004
I Am Already Drunk With Power, Among Other Things
(This entry posted by Jonathan Schwarz)
Dear everyone,
While Zeynep is in Venezuela, seeing what the country is like before America gets around to invading it, I'm going to be guest posting here. I'm a writer and a friend of Zeynep's. Much of what I say will also appear on my site, A Tiny Revolution. I swiped the name from "Funny, But Not Vulgar", a 1945 essay by George Orwell about comedy, in which he said:
A thing is funny when... it upsets the established order. Every joke is a tiny revolution.
Also good is this part:
It would seem that you cannot be funny without being vulgar... For it is not only sex that is "vulgar". So are death, childbirth and poverty... And respect for the intellect and strong political feeling, if not actually vulgar, are looked upon as being in doubtful taste. You cannot be really funny if your main aim is to flatter the comfortable classes: it means leaving out too much. To be funny, indeed, you have got to be serious.
The whole thing is worth reading, and weirdly resonant today. Of course, Orwell was writing about an empire that was collapsing around his ears, whereas Americans don't live in an empire, and even-if-we-do-so-what-it's-
not-going-to-collapse-ever-because-it's-completely-different-from-all-other- empires-in-history.
Anyway... is Zeynep gone? She is?
Okay! You call everybody and I'll get my older brother to buy some beer. He totally said he'd get beer for us the next time Zeynep went out of town. Just don't smoke in the comments section. I don't know why, maybe the drapes absorb it, but she can always smell it even if it's like ten days later. AND NOBODY THROW UP AND TRY TO HIDE IT IN THE TRACKBACKS. Rahul, I'm looking at you.
Posted by jonathan at December 2, 2004 11:42 AM
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Comments
Hahaha. Zing. You, 1, PJ O'Rourke, 0.
Posted by: Mike at December 2, 2004 07:12 PM
Dude, you're cool, let's like, give zeynep a wedgie when she comes back. She TOTALLY wouldn't expect it. That would be SO cool. OK, um.....back to your regularly scheduled blogging.
Posted by: Toddini at December 3, 2004 01:31 AM
Mike,
Thanks -- glad someone noticed and enjoyed my wee joke at Mr. O'Rourke's expense. It was between him and Christopher Buckley.
Toddini,
The comedic metaphor I was going for was "Zeynep As Mother, Me As Irresponsible Child." But it sort of broke down in the middle and dissolved in a haze of confusion.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at December 5, 2004 12:29 AM