In Nonsense Is Strength

Vonnegut reads from Breakfast Of Champions:

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Let’s Talk About “Rape Jokes”

Lately a lot of people have been saying “rape jokes are never funny,” and since that’s an awfully broad statement, I wonder how exactly those people define “rape jokes.”

If they mean, “Jokes which exist primarily to trivialize the gravity of rape, and/or to ridicule victims of rape, are never funny,” then OK.  That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

Or if they mean “Daniel Tosh’s rape jokes are never funny,” that’s also OK, because it’s true that Daniel Tosh is never funny.

But if any of those people mean to say that “Any joke which involves rape as a subject is never funny,” then something’s wrong.  There are so many hilarious jokes which involve rape.

Jokes which ridicule rapists- again, without trivializing rape or also ridiculing the victim- can be very funny.  They’re also necessary.  Rapists need to be ridiculed, at least until they’ve finished serving an appropriate prison sentence.  This sketch from Mr. Show shall elaborate:

Of course, rape is a powerful subject, so there’s a lot of humor we can milk from the different ways people use, discuss, or react to the topic.  The Daily Show found a lot of great “rape jokes” during that Duke Lacrosse scandal.  Arrested Development made some funny “rape jokes” while poking fun at Lucille Bluth’s manipulative narcissism and Buster’s childish ignorance.

On the UK version of The Office, Ricky Gervais delivers one of his best-ever line readings with a “rape joke”:

Louis CK has a few great “rape jokes” in his routine about a woman who makes some peculiar assumptions:

I often wonder if the kind of people who say things like “rape jokes are never funny” and mean exactly that, with no room for nuance or further elaboration, have ever laughed at, say, a “death joke,” or a “violence joke,” or a “disease joke.”  If they have, then they’re being awfully hypocritical.  And if they haven’t laughed at any jokes about any sort of horrible topic whatsoever, then they have no sense of humor anyway, and must be far more miserable than most of us, and thus we should make numerous jokes at their expense.

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Analyzing The Deep, Nuanced, Multi-Layered, Extremely Artistic Art Of Jon McNaughton

One Nation Under Socialism , painted by Jon McNaughton

To quote Montgomery Burns: “I’m no art critic, but I know what I hate…and I don’t hate this.”  Now if you know me, you might assume I would totally hate Jon McNaughton’s One Nation Under Socialism.  That’s probably because you also assume that this painting is one-dimensional right-wing propaganda rooted in misplaced rage and utter ignorance of what “socialism” is.   But those assumptions would be wrong!  If, however, your artistic sensibilities were as keen as mine, you’d see that Jon McNaughton is, in fact, a subversive left-wing propagandist.  That’s right: Sean Hannity is actually shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for commie agitprop, and Jon McNaughton’s laughing all the way to the non-corporate credit union!

To the untrained eye, One Nation Under Socialism appears to portray a sinister Barack Obama burning the U.S. Constitution because he hates it, and wants to replace it with whatever the Socialist Constitution is.  But if you look closer, the truth is right in front of your nose.  President Obama’s look isn’t sinister, it’s angry.  Anger that comes from sadness and frustration.  This is because it depicts Obama holding a Constitution that was set on fire by someone else.  Notice how there’s no matches, or lighter, or any kind of fire-making device in his hand.  Also, if Obama had set the fire himself, and wanted to look bad-ass and intimidating while doing it, wouldn’t he be smoking one of his cigarettes that was lit from the flaming Constitution? The absence of such things in One Nation is but one example of McNaughton’s trademark subtlety.

Besides, if Obama really wanted to burn the Constitution, why would he still be holding it?  He’d just leave it on the floor or something.  Why would he risk getting burns on his hand for some capitalist, democratic-republic, white-man’s rulebook?  It should be obvious by now that he’s actually picking up a burning Constitution that he plans to save- a Constitution he found on the floor of the White House as he was moving in.  The implication being that the George W. Bush administration were the ones who burned the Constitution, which is, of course, the theme of all good left-wing propaganda.

Perhaps the most telling detail of the painting, though, is the pointer finger on Obama’s left hand.  Why is he pointing at the burning Constitution?  Anyone with eyes can clearly see the thing’s on fire.  Does the Obama in this painting think we’re so stupid that we can’t see a blazing fire?  Certainly not.  See, if we were to enlarge the painting, we would see that Obama is not pointing at the fire, but at a single word in the Constitution.  It’s the word “Prejudice,” from Article 4, Section 3 (where it states, “nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State”).  Basically, McNaughton’s Obama is telling us that prejudice is in our great nation’s DNA, and has been from the very beginning, and that’s why all those Republican assholes think he’s igniting our legal foundations with pinko-fire.

Now THAT’S what I call artmanship!

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If Santorum Wins, The Republican Primary Will Be “Son Of Jackass”

If Rick Santorum actually manages to win, the 2012 Republican Primary will remind me of “Son Of Jackass,” the epilogue to 2002′s Jackass: The Movie.

Like Ehren McGhehy, scrawny little Tim Pawlenty never had a fighting chance, and he gets blown out of it right away.

Dave England, like Michele Bachmann, is often willing to do the crazy shit even the other guys won’t do, like take a shit in a hardware store toilet, or advocate anti-gay policies while being married to an obvious closeted homosexual.  You’d think that kind of crazy would help in this kind of environment, but in fact it backfires quite early.

Ryan Dunn obviously wasn’t the sharpest tool in this shed.  He didn’t know enough to realize that no matter how many professionally-monitored stunts you survive, you can’t walk away from drunk-driving your Porsche at 130 MPH.  Similarly, Herman Cain didn’t grasp that no matter how much money you made selling pizza, you can’t really run for President of the United States- even in a struggling economy- if you sexually harass women at an alarming rate.

‘Party Boy’ Chris Pontius is fun-loving, seems like he has a good head on his shoulders, and is one of the more likable Jackasses.  Captain Beefheart fan Jon Hunstman seemed like one of the nicest, most sensible Republicans, which is why he had little hope of surviving the bloodthirsty tiger that Republican politics has become in 2012.

Bam Margera and Rick Perry seem like they’d be good bros to hang with if you’re into drinkin’ beers and shootin’ at stuff, but they’re also insanely reckless, even compared to this crowd, and they were bound to drive themselves into a fireball sooner than later.

At this point, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are still in it, though it doesn’t take a Nate Silver to guess that it’s just a matter of time before they’re smashed by the GOP truck.  Here, my extended metaphor is stretched to its thinnest, since Preston Lacy seems like a nice guy who could never be as much of an asshole as Gingrich, and really the biggest thing the two have in common is that they’re the chubbiest fellows in their respective groups.  Jason ‘Wee-Man’ Acuña also doesn’t seem to share much with Dr. Paul other than tiny stature, and outlasting most of his peers.

Mitt Romney, like Johnny Knoxville, is the handsomest, and seems like the natural choice to lead.  (Even if Romney has about 1/1000th of Knoxville’s charisma.)  But this GOP race is looking like it might surprise us, crushing Romney with a toolshed of indifference, leaving Steve-O/Rick Santorum- perhaps the batshittiest of them all- the last man standing.

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A Manipulative Piece Of Persuasive Art

I have to say I admire the Mitt Romney campaign for being so honest about how dishonest they are.  They took some of Barack Obama’s words out of context- like, practically as far out of context as you could possibly take words.  Obama was quoting someone else, and the Romney folks made it look like he was expressing his own opinions.  Then to justify their out-of-contexting, an anonymous Romney op uttered this flabbergasting explanation:

First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business … Ads are agitprop … Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context … All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.

Dudes, do you realize what this means?  This changes everything!  There’s no such thing as “out of context” anymore!  How awesome is that?  I’m so sick of context ruining all the things I want to pass off as truth.  No more libel lawsuits for this guy!

Hey, did you guys know that Mitt Romney once said, and I motherfucking quote, “Unemployment rates do not matter to the average American?”  He said it on his twitter once.  Maybe he was quoting someone else, and maybe he wasn’t; point is, the dude tweeted that shit,  so that means he means it.  That’s right: Mitt Romney said you don’t care about all the unemployment, average American! 

DISCLAIMER: If, by some slim chance, it turns out that what I’ve just written is far less than 100% true, then I can’t be held accountable.  This is simply my manipulative piece of persuasive art, dammit.

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Three Magazine Covers That Are Even More Hilariously Sexist Than TIME‘s “Powerful Men Act Like Pigs” Cover

Because I stopped giving a shit about TIME during my sophomore year of college, these days the only times I come across this magazine are either by accident, or when I’m waiting at the dentist’s office for a really, really long time and I’ve already read all their issues of Highlights and Ranger Rick.  So it was only a few days ago, as I was walking past the recycling bin at my office, that I finally saw the cover of TIME‘s May 30th issue:

I’ll admit that at first, I was somewhat offended.  As a man who aspires to be powerful, I thought it was awfully unfair of TIME to make an overly simplistic and grossly misandrist claim that “Powerful Men Act Like Pigs” just because recently a few powerful men have been caught having extra-marital affairs and one texted pictures of his schlong and another was accused of rape.  The big bold headline on the cover should have read, “What Makes Some Powerful Men Act Like Pigs- Not All Powerful Men, Mind You, Just A Minority Of All The Thousands Of Powerful Men In This World.”  Though I guess that version is not nearly as punchy as the one TIME went with.

What stung even worse was that they put that “No offense” in tiny, tiny print next to the pig, as if that’s supposed to make it all OK.  I wondered if “no offense” was national-news-magazine-speak for “Some of our best friends are men!” or, “We’re not really sexist, but..”

But then, after some thought and reflection, I yanked the splinter out of my dick-hole and stopped feeling so offended.  I remembered another TIME-published article I had read recently, one which I saw linked on Andrew Sullivan’s blog.  In this article, Joe Klein wrote about how “men are the lesser sex” and that “with any luck, women will be the dominant sex in a generation or two.”  And I remember laughing so hard at that!  As if women were inherently superior to men!  As if a world dominated by women wouldn’t be just as flawed as the male-dominated world we currently have!  And as if we should hope for a world not where all genders are equal, but where one gender continues to dominate others!  That article, I immediately observed, was obviously another work of brilliant satire from the author of Primary Colors (only this time he wasn’t such a pussy that he had to publish it anonymously)!

And then when I remembered Mr. Klein’s comedic masterpiece, I realized that since I had stopped reading TIME over a decade ago, it must have evolved into a satirical publication that sinks its teeth into all the silly sexist notions that continue to pervade the stupider corners of our modern world.  So I stopped being offended, and had a nice healthy belly laugh.  Well done, TIME!  You really had me there for a minute!

Since I’m something of an aspiring satirist myself, I thought I’d offer my services to your hilarious periodical.  Without further ado, here are just a few more cover stories you could run in the near future, should you choose to once again skewer society’s sexism by taking the entire gender population of a large group of people and comparing them to unflattering creatures based on the dishonorable actions of a select few.  Enjoy!

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American Library Association Urges Kids, “Watch More TV!”

JUNE 12, 2011 – BROOKLYN, NY

14 year-old Melissa Newkirk could hardly believe what happened last week when she visited the Windsor Terrace branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

After Ms. Newkirk had selected three books and brought them to the check-out desk, the librarian said something very peculiar.  Instead of “May I have your library card?” or “Did you find everything you were looking for?,” librarian Rosa Salvador said to the young woman: “That’s an awful lot of books you have there….have you considered maybe watching more TV this summer?”

As part of the American Library Association’s latest initiative, librarians across the country will be asking young library-goers that very same question.  In addition, the ALA will also unveil a multi-million-dollar campaign of print and video ads featuring celebrities watching their favorite shows.  “While the ALA will continue to value the written word as much as ever,” says spokesman Charles Perlmutter, “our organization wants to make sure that the American youth’s surging interest in literature doesn’t distract them from enjoying other aspects of arts and culture- especially all the totally awesome TV that’s come out in the past few years.”

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