Posted by farid from customer-148-233-71-42.uninet.net.mx (148.233.71.42) on Wednesday, September 17, 2003 at 12:46PM :
In reference to Kris Khoury's excellent, refreshing, timely, humorous, witty, intelligent and humane satirical site...why would anyone even ask the question..."is it appropriate"? Where would European or American letters and culture be if you deprived them of satire? And where do we rats run to when we leave the MidEast but to these countries? And why, because they're as stiff and hidebound as the places we ran from...or because they allow a kind of personal freedom every person deserves and hungers for?
Even the current Supreme Court, probably the most conservative we've ever had, upheld Larry Flynt's right and our privilege, to be treated to a satirical piece about Jerry Falwell having oral sex with his mother in an outhouse. A vigorous, vital, heart-throbbing, pulsating Democracy needs satire like Bush needs Mass Distractions. Satire exposes frauds, makes light of people who would crush you under their weightiness...it makes fools of braggarts, simpletons of those who would awe...it gives tyrants the fan tods...it lightens the load we're forced to bear when we have to carry so many assholes around on our shoulders...and it's feared most by those who know they're its choicest targets.
During the Vietnam War the "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" on CBS did a great job of lambasting the war and presidents Johnson and Nixon, the Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon...all of those who've learned that by scaring Americans you can get rich and into offfice. The skits, the comedians, the songs...the sly hints and outright confrontations were so refreshing and did a lot of good besides in getting people to think a little harder and also and maybe most importantly, showed them fresh faced, cheerful and bright American kids-next-door types dancing and singing and clowning their criticism of that stupid war...put a human, recognizable face on "dissidents" when the administration was trying to paint us all as wild-eyed, atheistic, nihlistic Commie stooges. They became so bold about it that CBS cancelled their contract over, among other things, a song by my darlin', Joan Baez. The Brothers sued CBS for breach of contract and actually won a few years later...and by then their mission had been a completed success.
The other TV show to lampoon the war was M*A*S*H, a show about a military field hospital ostensibly set in Korea in the 50's but everyone knew was aiming its satirical guns at Vietnam and using the utter senslessness of the former to expose the complete stupidity of the latter. Who today can imagine similar shows on national, main-line TV...and yet as much as life has moved beyond satire or even irony...look how badly we need to get some honest and well aimed dissent out before the public...and where is it? Today, under the Patriot Act, they just might throw the actors and writers in jail for giving aid and comfort to us, because to these people WE are the enemy!
What damage did, or would...or could Iraqi children do to the oil bidness? What could Al Qaeda do to Halliburton...except expand its bottom line to bursting? What do three thousand dead Americans count for when we sent 55,000 to their deaths for nothing but more profit for a few? What are two or three buildings worth when we've had our own Treasury robbed of incalculable wealth time and again? Who stands the greater chance, who's nearer the halls of power...who gets to vote on preserving the Alaska wilderness and the shoreline and the ozone and the children and their parents and the forrests and rivers and air we breathe from the greed, the drills, machinery and chemicals and thereby potentially frustrate the aims of big bidness more...Iraqis, Afghans, Terrorists...or us...Americans who simply try to exercise our Constitutional and inalienable rights to vote our consciences and express our beliefs...for which we're labelled the "enemy" here at home? These others have no power...no access and pose no threat whatsoever...on the contrary they are the unwitting and unwilling "allies" of our own American CEOs who waste lives and wealth and blight the future of our children and the planet in order to best each other...to get more useless billions than the other guy. If there weren't Muslim extremists and then Terrorists and finally Suicide Bombers...they'd have labored for years to invent them...what do you think they did?
And who needs and craves and cries out and begs for satire MORE than we Assyrians and Chaldens do? And you know it because no one reacts in mortal fear of it more than we do.
Any leader big shot who can't tolerate being roasted a light brown shouldn't be in the business...and those who deserve scalding should be eaten alive and shat out quickly before they do any further damage. This pretending that we have to pretend that every one of our leaders and patriots and hysterians who pretends to know his head from his arse must be upheld and supported and protected in his or her pretense...gets us nothing but nothing...worse than nothing because we're stuck having to carry through and extoll and revere and stand respectfully before nothing...which only makes us less than nothing in the eyes of anyone who happens to catch a glimpse of this farce through the swinging doors of a hotel ballroom somewhere...not to mention our own children and the best and brightest among us. We are a group of people determined to place all our hopes on those least capable and drive the best away so there'll be no obstacles...to what, total and comprehensive mediocrity? To rise before a group of people and make an ass of yourself is one thing because an ass is impervious and easily flattered...but to stand in the audience...and applaud an ass??? Who needs satire more than this kind of Peepil?
Did we think to puff an auto mechanic into a neorosurgeon merely by blowing hot air into him? Does an engineer become a "Leader" because he says so? Can our blind reverence or twisted common sense or blighted critical faculties make a silk purse out of a porker like Jackie Bejan? Would any of the people who cry shame on us for exposing frauds and charlatans and incompetants want those same kinds of clowns operating on a loved one? Piloting their airplane? Building their house? re-doing the deck? Repairing a handbag? Wiping their ass? Why is it only when we come to "Nineveh OY Nineveh" that we lose all human discernment...sense of proportion, quality, expectation or any of the things that lift people out of a National Gutter?
Who wants to eat a piece of cheese that can't stand a little satirical poking into its composition...how it's made...where the ingredients came from...how it's stored...how it goes down...or if its cost justifies the heavy price extracted for it? Likewise with these leeders and patrots and hysterians of ours. We aren't asking them to stand before an actual firing squad and not flinch...just take a satirical shaft or two to their fat and empty heads. If they can't survive that...what possible good are they to anyone...except to themselves...AHA! There again we just struck gold in this mining for motivation in what makes Assrin Leeders and Hysterians and Patrots and Experts tick. The people who don't want you rooting around inside of them and seek to divert you with warnings of "lost respect" for this Nayshun...are really only worried about losing the cheaply won "respect" of people more than willing to hold their noses as they stand to salute this rotten cheese we've been fed for so long we've actually grown to prefer the stench.
Way to go Kris...
-- farid
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