"Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful."

[nam78_two]

There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar.
-Molly Ivins

Rock on Molly :headbang:.

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. Link, please! I want to share this. n/t

[Reterr]

4. link

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/molly_ivins.htm

I have seen it in many other places too.

[ThomCat]

2. I hope she's doing well.

:(
She's battling cancer again.

[Reterr]

5. Good luck to her :( !

[nam78_two]

10. Really?

Thats so sad-she is a treasure :(. I hope she gets well.

[burythehatchet]

3. ergo. no funny republicans

[Minnesota_Lib]

9. But plenty of vulgar ones. LOL

[burythehatchet]

13. and one is worse than the next

right now Glenn Beck is at the top of that list. He truly thinks he is funny...he's funny like a car wreck with fatalities.

[ftr23532]

6. K&R!

:kick:

[Jcrowley]

7. K&R

The Next Greed Revolution
by Michael Steinberg

"Green-minded activists failed to move the broader public not because they were wrong about the problems, but because the solutions they offered were unappealing to most people." -- Alex Steffen, "The Next Green Revolution," Wired Magazine, May 2006

-- It's about time you woke up to the good news, Jimmy! If we can just unleash the forces of innovation, like the creativity that made Silicon Valley the hub of the Information Revolution, we can lick the environmental crisis once and for all!

-- Gee willikers, Mr. Caring Capitalist! I thought that unrestrained growth and ever-expanding energy consumption created insoluble problems!

-- Oh, Jimmy, don't make me laugh! You've been listening to those killjoy hair-shirt environmentalists again. They called for tightening belts and curbing appetites, turning down the thermostat and living lower on the food chain. They rejected technology, business, and prosperity in favor of returning to a simpler way of life. No wonder the movement got so little traction. Asking people in the world's wealthiest, most advanced societies to turn their backs on the very forces that drove such abundance is naive at best.

Those old fogey tree huggers didn't realize that technology can be a font of endlessly creative solutions. Business can be a vehicle for change. Prosperity can help us build the kind of world we want. Scientific exploration, innovative design, and cultural evolution are the most powerful tools we have. Entrepreneurial zeal and market forces, guided by sustainable policies, can propel the world into a bright green future.

-- Why, that sounds great, Mr. CC.

-- It certainly does, Jimmy. In the long run we won't have to give up anything. Remember Jimmy Carter's sweater? Boy, did he ever look silly! You can turn that thermostat up. We can afford it. Just as soon as we get our hands on clean, inexhaustible power: wind turbines, solar arrays, wave-power flotillas, small hydroelectric generators, geothermal systems, even bioengineered algae that turn waste into hydrogen.

-- Wow! What a terrific future! That'll be whole lots of windmills! But what about the sealife disturbed by the wave-power structures? And don't hydro plants create reservoirs with silting problems and release CO2 from the vegetation they drown?

-- Don't worry, boy! The sea life will adjust. And I'm sure we'll come up with a fix for the hydro problems, too. We've got the technology basics. The challenge is to scale up these technologies to deliver power in industrial quantities -- exactly the kind of challenge brilliant businesspeople love

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/steinberg240506.html

:hi:

[nam78_two]

8. :)

:hi:

[npincus]

11. Borat rocks.

[Orsino]

12. She's not making allowances for those powerless people...

...who parrot the lies of the powerful. They deserve ridicule, too--hence Borat.

[nam78_two]

14. What he did may have been funny

But some of it was still cruel. I mostly cringe at any average person being held up for ridicule on tv- even if it is someone who I think is an awful person.

[Orsino]

15. It's only cruel...

...when undeserved. I'm all for his calling people on their own bullshit. It seems to me that he's taken a couple of missteps, precisely because he forgot that principle--but at the moment I can't cite any examples. Haven't seen the movie.

[Ms. Clio]

16. I often feel the same way, but it can be done brilliantly and without degrading them

Like The Colbert Report's brilliant satire on the Minutemen building their flimsy little fence.

[noamnety]

24. I'd consider the minutemen to be privileged

So I think it still fits within the satire of those with power. Not that they have power compared to Colbert, or are actually getting anything accomplished, in that sense maybe they don't have what we typically consider to be power, but they are still actively working to maintain their position of privilege over other people, based on race and nationality.

[Reterr]

17. Yup-like that lame thread "ultimatum to the Democrats"

It revels in the powerlessness of average people. If people want to rant on DU against this criminal administration and Democrats they dislike God bless them. Yeah, we are pretty powerless overall against these people, especially with an apathetic or smug populce. If the rants are solace, go for it I say.

So far the "loony left" has been wayyy more right about the Bushies, this war etc. than "conservative" Democrats. The libertarians and moderates are reluctantly crawling back to the Dem party and still mocking the "anti-war crowd" and "conspiracy theorists" :eyes:. Yeah I knew some "conservative" Democrats-I remember you guys supporting Bush's war and bitching about France and doing that whole dance. Gee, yet still you are the practical, clever ones, in your own estimation at least.

[NYCGirl]

18. Really? I thought that thread "makes us chuckle about our foibles" as Ms. Ivins

says.

And who says liberals have no sense of humor?

I'm not looking forward to Jon Stewart turning his comedy aim on the Democratic congress — there'll be a lot of shirt rending and teeth gnashing around here!

[Ms. Clio]

19. But they are the powerful now, so I personally won't mind at all

Should be very interesting, actually.

[Reterr]

20. That thread was mean-spirited-that would be the difference

(Specially given the source).

[nam78_two]

21. You are just "satire-impaired"

And you smell bad :P.

Satire and humor are pretty subjective too and our biases come into play. To be honest, I might have thought that thread funny if it had been written by a poster I knew to be a hard-core, anti-war staunch liberal, but as it was...not so much.

[Morgana LaFey]

22. And THIS is why there is NO parity between anti-male

"jokes" or gender-based slurs and anti-female jokes and gender-based slurs. None.

[nam78_two]

23. True enough.nt

[tabasco]

25. Molly just keeps getting better and better.

She's a peach!