Mideast pinheadism alert
OK, you guys at a certain major southeastern newspaper: If "Laugh Attack" is about to become a regular feature, let's try to keep a better eye on it. As in last week's example:
Laugh attack
Humorists' comments on politics and public affairs:
"The bad news is Iran is capable of making a nuclear bomb. The good news is they have to drop it from a camel."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Drop it from a camel! Isn't that great? You hardly want to mention that the Iranians might, oh, drop it from one of the F-4s we sold 'em back when. Or mount it to a medium-range ballistic missile. Or stick it on one of the new torpedoes you guys were so breathlessly reporting about this month (hey, great idea if anybody you want to impress happens to have a lot of expensive shipping concentrated just across the creek).
Which leads, one supposes, to an obvious question: Can't you take a joke? To which one is likely to respond: Sure. I'd kind of prefer that it was, oh, original or funny or something. ("India has a nuclear bomb! But they have to drop it from a sacred cow!") And, well, maybe not overtly racist.
Yeah, that's the problem. Stupid and racist. Kind of a bad place to be for a paper that's on its moral high horse about the Jerseyoid pond scum over at Duke, innit?
Laugh attack
Humorists' comments on politics and public affairs:
"The bad news is Iran is capable of making a nuclear bomb. The good news is they have to drop it from a camel."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Drop it from a camel! Isn't that great? You hardly want to mention that the Iranians might, oh, drop it from one of the F-4s we sold 'em back when. Or mount it to a medium-range ballistic missile. Or stick it on one of the new torpedoes you guys were so breathlessly reporting about this month (hey, great idea if anybody you want to impress happens to have a lot of expensive shipping concentrated just across the creek).
Which leads, one supposes, to an obvious question: Can't you take a joke? To which one is likely to respond: Sure. I'd kind of prefer that it was, oh, original or funny or something. ("India has a nuclear bomb! But they have to drop it from a sacred cow!") And, well, maybe not overtly racist.
Yeah, that's the problem. Stupid and racist. Kind of a bad place to be for a paper that's on its moral high horse about the Jerseyoid pond scum over at Duke, innit?
posted by fev at 10:24 PM
3 Comments:
From the larger cultural sense, Persians (Iranians) dislike Arabs, so I'm not sure which race you're referring to.
...unless you mean to say much of the world is ignorant about race and culture in the Middle East. OK, agreed.
I wonder if Persian humorists think Americans ride Jersey cows. Some Missourians asked me if I rode a horse to school when they learned I was from Texas.
Does Iran's president count as a humorist? He has some interesting things to say about the Jews.
I'm not sure about generalizations on the order of "Persians dislike Arabs," and I don't see what it has to do with the idea that people from that neck of the woods tend to be subsumed under a single set of camel jokes regardless of their ethnolinguistic heritage.
I don't count Ahmadinejad as a humorist (and any hints on what part of left field that question comes from would be welcome). I think he's kind of scary, in the way that provincial populists can be when they end up with power and a bully pulpit on short notice. But I've been hearing camel jokes for some decades now, and they have yet to shed any light on what makes Iran tick -- whether you think the Third Republic is over or not.
Post a Comment
<< Home