I laughed till I cried …

The comments to the original Harry post are also amusing, especially once the Kos-ites start piling in. Harry responds with some typically opaque babbling about how he ripped off his prose style from “Sir Jeremy Clarkson.”

Eh? DD is from Wales, that makes him English right…

I’m not quite seeing any humor here. Let’s see…

First a Kossite posts a story about how a car crashed into his home while he was at Yearly Kos.

Harry writes a post making fun of this guy. (Curious choice of humor, but whatever.) dsquared makes a comment in that post that smacks of right-wing hostility:

“2. That Daily Kos type is gonna feel pretty fucking stupid when the guy who missed him first time comes back for the second attempt.”

And so somebody misidentifies him as a right-winger. Ha ha! Somebody acting like an asshole was mistaken for actually being an asshole. Ha ha! But I guess because he’s Welsh and writing for the Guardian means he’s above criticism?

Satire can be a tricky thing sometimes.

Perhaps the initial decision to make fun of somebody who had a car drive into his house wasn’t the best way to go if looking for humor.

“And being from Ireland would make him Irish.”

That’s just crazy talk. Next you’ll be saying that Normandy is part of France, which is just wrong.

“I make jokes continually, so I’m pretty up on my joke construction.”
Indeed.

That sense-of-humour failure reminds me of the one that the US right came out with recently against Charlie Brooker’s marvellous call to shoot GWB (and, to be fair, the entire human race). Is it that them thick Yanks just don’t get it, or is it something about the lack of available context on blogs? If all you ever read online is political hate-sites, then everything you see will be interpreted in the context of a hate-site. Rather than the work of the world’s #1 comedy genius.

This “Never mind what else it says, is it for us or against us?” question isn’t just one that only afflicts the US blogosphere, of course. It’s the main reason why 95% of arts criticism in UK Trotskysist publications is crap, to name but one example.

On the other other hand, anyone who decides that Hutton is an eliminationist Bushite without bothering even to spend 15 minutes checking out the rest of his output is probably some kind of liberal kneejerk eedjit.

And in the midst of all the self-righteousness, we get the commenter with the apparently unironic byline: “…People voting Republican, Give them a boot to the head!” What was that about ‘eliminationist language’ again?

Humorless earnestness is pompous and boring.

True, that; I find there is nothing to do with the earnest but send them on a very long errand.

Miracle Max, English or German? Given the way that American keyboards are set up, getting the full text of the latter is highly improbable — they’d have to input the ASCII codes for the umlauted letters, and the odds of getting a sufficient volume of them are virtually nonexistent. Of course, you didn’t give a specific timeframe, so you could just say that producing the German text would take longer than the English — and are you saying all three volumes here? Any particular edition or translation? All of them?

Stewart tends to take a very pro-Israel line I’ve noticed, so maybe that explains the Muslim thing?

the target wasn’t the car crash, but the Seriousness with which they Take Themselves

I though the target was the clumsy and absurd attempt at ass-kissing.

cancel that.

I remember reading, years ago, about Amazon natives who consider close brushes with death hilarious. One chap who nearly slipped while walking across the top of a waterfall was in stitches when he got to the other side (maybe he was thinking of chickens).

No translating or explaining humour, I’m afraid. I’m sure none of the Boris Johnsons are laughing either.

abb1: I though the target was the clumsy and absurd attempt at ass-kissing.

Yes, but I think that is a misinterpretation of the original Daily Kos post. The phrase “I just got a call that someone ‘crashed my gate'” and “Thank you for everything” were clearly intended to be mildly humorous and not taken literally. But I guess Mr. Hutton just assumes that all Americans are literal-minded jackasses. No doubt the second Daily Kos post was an overreaction, but the Hutton’s original post was more like Bush razzing a sight-impaired journalist for wearing sunglasses than a piece of trenchant wit.

Really, from reading all of this stuff, the only conclusion I can come to is that this Hutton guy is a jerk. I mean, seriously, the car was _in_ the guy’s house. That’s going to involve a tremendous amount of expense to repair, and it’s apparently only a matter of luck that he himself wasn’t in harm’s way. I mean, really–is some stupid, warmed-over Blackadder pastiche on the subject really necessary?

I think rob g is correct, that this is a matter of imperfect intercultural understanding–more specifically, most Americans don’t understand that 90% of English people are just congenital assholes, and that among the English, laughing at other people’s genuine hardship and misery isn’t just acceptable, it’s not even really seen as problematic. I spent the longest two years of my life living in England, and was just astounded every day by the fact that almost every English person I met (Note that I exempt the Scots and the Welsh; they were mostly okay) was basically unpleasant and horrible. To this day, if I hear an English accent anywhere, I cringe. The side of this exchange represented by Hutton, Davies, and Bertram (and, most especially, by the truly odious commenters on Hutton’s site)has been cringe-inducing for me in the same way.

All right Morat20, a large amount of damage to his house. My point still stands.

“Humor is the only thing that is properly translatable, because it is the only thing that finally demands translation.”

If the universe worked this way, we would all be either happily married or happily single.

Sean #30, I really don’t mind being called a congenital asshole, but “…Scots…mostly okay”. You’ve obviously never played Association Football with Scotsmen.

Rich Puchalsky, it seems to me that not only did “dday” misinterpret Harry, so did the majority of the commenters. When so many members are of one mind, it seems appropriate to say “Daily Kos” rather than “dday”.

Sean, you’re a prat. I’m Scottish and I live in Wales and I like to rag the English, but your comment is almost as stupid as dday’s. You can stuff your exemption.

You see it’s funny because a drunk driver behind the wheel of speeding truck crashed into this guys house. It obliterated his office and smashed his infants crib to bits. It’s even funnier because almost any other night he would have been sitting in his office and his infant would have been asleep in the now shattered crib. And it’s downright hilarious because the guy audaciously and dramatically claims that he and his daughter would likely be dead if he hadn’t gone to YearlyKos. Those silly thick sculled Americans have no sense of humor.

Lakema, your version of the joke doesn’t work for me as well as Hutton’s: it never really gets me to a chuckle, whereas his had me laughing. I think you’re a little too wordy and lay on the adjectives a bit heavily. Try tightening it up a bit! Also, you use a straight explanatory style, which is infamously hard to pull off.

Finally, it’s hard to be funny and sanctimonious. Perhaps you might consider straight sanctimony — you seem to have some real talent in that direction.

“When so many members are of one mind” […]

OK, you’ve got maybe a hundred out of the 500,000 people who visit per day. So many?

#36 it seems appropriate to say “Daily Kos”

It’s just like that time “Usenet” offered to sleep with me or that time “AOL” threatened to kill me.

#41,#42. I may be wrong here, but to post a comment on DK, you have to be a member. I’m not confusing the editorial line with half a million visitors; I’m talking about those registered. So, no, it’s not at all ‘like that time “AOL” threatened to kill me’. As I said, only two that I noticed attempted to gainsay dday; and silence is consent in my book. Even so, of those who had accounts with DK and who expressed an opinion, the vast majority were of one mind.

I’m usually irritatingly pedantic about not attributing intentions to collectives (such as national groups), but Kos seems to me to be a group of like-minded people far more than, say, the NYT is. If debate had been even closer to one-third to two-thirds, I’d go along with you.

Kos’s comments are giving Mickey Kaus credibility. And that really is unforgiveable.

46: I may be wrong here, but to post a comment on DK, you have to be a member.

Well, you have to register. Many of us are no doubt “members” of any number of online collectives in this sense, but I daresay most of us don’t feel moved to take time out of the day and condemn every silly or wrongheaded thing that’s posted in them.

“the only conclusion I can come to is that this Hutton guy is a jerk.”

i think that’s kind of the point. a lot of the time his shtick is that he’s a pompous, slightly eccentric, jerk. it’s very amusing.

also, “hsquared”. genius.

To each his own, I guess. But it really wasn’t funny. To say that there are even more tasteless jokes out there is not much of a defense.

Mocking the near death of a man and his infant mere days after it happened is clearly tasteless and ill-timed.

If you Brits must be tasteless and boorish, so be it. I don’t see why you keep denying it though.

Jesus, Chris Bertram, what is wrong with you?

I too found Harry’s post in poor taste. A great great great uncle of mine was stabbed in the arse by an assegai at Eshowe and had to sleep on his front for several weeks. And now Mr Hutton mocks what his sacrifice embodies for the sake of a cheap gag.

Oh who the fuck cares?

HH made a stupid fucking joke about something that was not particularly funny. He ripped the joke from Monty Python, which is just about on high-school sophomore humor level..complete with zits and pussy jokes.

Some folks at Kos over-reacted, misidentified and flew off the handle, and made themselves look a bit foolish in the process.

And the lesson of all of this is?

I don’t really know…nor do I particularly give a flying fuck.

ct got a big chunk of change to help recoup and recover, he DIDN’T get killed or lose his daughter.

Oh, and as for humorless nancies?

At least we’re fucking well trying to make a difference, and hopefully we’ll be doing better and better.

And when we DO make a difference, the first ones to get slated for gulag work camps?? Yes, tovarischi, that would be you!

Captain wacky: no need to start again, since I never said anybody died.

God knows there are plenty of tedious things to mock about Daily Kos – but a man expressing his thanks that he and his infant were not killed hardly ranks high on the list of tediousness.

Interesting reaction here. The joke was missed for a reason. It sounded a bit too much like too many on the right. Think Malkin, Coulter, the idiots at Redstate…or the kids that TBogg highlighted saying they were going to YearlyKos with baseball bats. The diarist didn’t know the name from anywhere and assumed it was real. No one in the thread knew his name so it was never corrected.

So in this thread there are basically two reactions.

1) “Those dKos people are too full of themselves. They take themselves too seriously. Everyone knows that (incert blog or poster’s name here) is way better than dKos because we are just so much cooler.”

2) “Harry’s a dick. And anyone who defends him is a dick. You’re a dick. Only a dick would find the joke funny which shows that I am way better than anyone who found the joke funny.”

Isn’t there a middle ground where it’s possible that if you know Harry’s style the joke is funny but if you don’t it’s not.

Or is the entire blogasphere really a sandbox where the cool kids have to be better than the cool kids so they snipe at each other like the little kids they are?

Isn’t there a middle ground where it’s possible that if you know Harry’s style the joke is funny but if you don’t it’s not.

Sure. And from where you can also recognise bumptious insularity when you see it.

In any case, what are you building bridges for? Isn’t arguing about what’s funny or not way more entertaining? See, Chris’ post wasn’t about how Harry’s post was funny. It was about how the Kossack’s garbled reaction was funny. Very funny.

What I’m finding funny is the tiff between CT and dKos.

I think it’s because the new dKos “diary rescue” is muscling in on the territory of CT: thoughtful, wonky, nerdy posts on sometimes arcane topics.

And it’s also a class issue, not a nationality issue. dKos are the unwashed masses, who aren’t blessed with nearly as many years of higher education on average as CT posters/commenters. Therefore, they suck.

Well, sometimes they do suck. It’s certainly a less polished world than CT. But the tiffs and trolls and spats are just as petty there as here, just not as well-worded or informed by many decades of experience with academic bickering. Nonetheless, the quality of dKos diaries is improving dramatically, and some are beginning to approach the CT-level. Of course I’d expect their outrageous pretention to be met with the requisite level of ridicule and disdain.

I wouldn’t get carried away about the erudition of CT commenters, Goatchowder, at least as far as those who have sided against Hutton on this thread are concerned. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, for instance, is apparently so stupid that he can’t articulate any point at all.

I can’t believe what I am reading here. It was a joke, people, i.e., not serious.

Here’s a clue: I don’t know where Hutton presently resides, but last time I looked it was Colombia, certainly not South Africa. And I seriously doubt that there are too many Zulus wandering around Medellin, save perhaps for the occasional cultural delegation.

So, its not very likely that an assegai really came flying though his window is it?

Now assuming you have the wisdom or plain good fortune to spot this first discrepancy, here’s the next tip: with judicious application of a method such as “extension” or “extrapolation” (please try to bear with me here, even though it may seem difficult for less technically-minded readers, or US citizens) one may readily discern the fact that Hutton may not have been completely serious about the first part of his post either.

At which point, anyone with even a residuum of voluntary cerebral function (not, apparently, a defining characteristic of most readers of Kos or of this blog) should either begin to appreciate the joke, teasing out the multiple layers of references it contains, or at least realize that a wider context should be considered before prematurely launching into their frothing rabid wingnut-style attack.

I have fought f**king Bush and the rethugs with everything I could summo for six years, at considerable personal cost for my job, family and financial situation. And now, with this sorry incident, comes the awful realization that nothing at all will ever really change, despite everything I have worked for and paid for over the past six years. (Most recently, copies of Kos’s damn book for the roots project.)

For any people who haven’t passed this particular threshold yet – it’s quite a shock to be forced to recognize one’s own naivete and foolishness so harshly and abruptly. That whatever BS they try to feed you, the entire game is about nothing more than a different name, different gang, tribe, color, in-crowd, whatever. Right or left, is nothing but egos and imbeciles. Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss, and we’re always going to be fooled again.

And the ironic part, (i.e., “funny”, for US readers): I used to think I was such a hardboiled cynic. My own foolishness, of course, but what a terrible waste of my time and money. DDay (you ignorant humorless MORON), Daily Kos, left, right, you people are all the same. If it all burns down tomorrow, I’m not going to try to stop it anymore. F**k it. F**k you. Take me off the list. You lost me. I burned out today. I’m gone.

Okay, I was lying about the storm cellar.

tortoise,

I hope a garden-variety, momentary internet flame-up isn’t really enough to make you give up all your principles and commitments, and that your cry of disillusion is either another work of irony or venting. (It can be hard to tell sincerity from irony on the screen, which is the cause of all the trouble here anyway).

And “ironic” and “funny” are not always the same thing, you know. For instance, it is highly ironic but only mildly funny that Captain Wacky mistook PNH in exactly the same way that the Kos poster mistook D-squared.

Reddan, you are a thing of beauty. Let’s see that again:

“At least we’re fucking well trying to make a difference, and hopefully we’ll be doing better and better.

And when we DO make a difference, the first ones to get slated for gulag work camps?? Yes, tovarischi, that would be you!”

That Firedoglake post definitely gets Harry, but the comments thread doesn’t half wander off the topic.

So leasons learned:

1. Don’t react/comment on a website until you’ve read many entries and have gotten a feel for what the writer is trying to do – a leason that anyone who’s read Jesus’ General should have a pretty strong understanding.

2. The English are condescending gits.

3. Americans often have trouble with complex forms of humor (satire, sarcasm, irony, etc.)

4. Insulting people’s national identity is just plain mean.

I do quite fancy Ann Coulter though.

btw, am i really going to have to explain this joke? OK then.

The comic conceit was that the Kos commenter believed his life to have been saved by going to their conference. However, this would only be true if the car crash was an accident. If it was a sign that someone was attempting to murder him in a bizarre manner, his life would still be in danger. This was an incongrous possibility, and therefore funny. I also tried to suggest that to assume that the Kos poster was being arrogant by assuming that he was so universally popular that nobody would try to murder him. This is funny because it is such an outlandish response to the concept. So in other words, the comic conceit was to pretend that an alternative assumption (murder) was the more natural interpretation of the events (accident) than what was clearly the natural assumption.

Deep in my heart, sir, I know I’m funny.

I bet Chris Bertram can’t believe what he started here.

Well, what happened to this guy’s house was awful, and he did indeed have a lucky escape.

But the post Harry reacted to still struck him (and me) as ridiculous, in its earnestness, its self-importance and its overtones of revivalist group-hugginess. (Even if it was meant as a joke, it came across as an earnest, self-important and group-huggy joke.)

Daniel’s comment essentially took the earnestness and self-importance seriously – why would you post something like that unless you actually thought somebody was trying to kill you? but if somebody was trying to kill you…

It seems a lot of people can’t tell the difference between “this person’s allusions to his own death are ridiculous” and “I relish the idea of this person being killed”. Shame.