i'm replying to this one from the rosa parks thread in this thread.
You had me at hello. I think the best comment on this matter was elucidated in the Prussian Blue thread, regarding the "marketplace of ideas." I believe in anyone -- even a bigot's -- right to say whatever he or she wants. I think the only way to successfuly quell an idea is reductio ad absurdum. Every other attempt to stifle a belief or meme will merely result in it getting a case of martyrdom. To destroy an idea you must give it its fifteen minutes of fame and watch it wither from overexposure. This is where I feel irony should be directed, not to cartoon-embossed t-shirts on yowling hipsters with black plastic framed glasses dancing to cheap synth music and drinking cheaper beer.
Humor is a weapon. When you say I'm funny nine times out of ten, that's because i'm trying to KILL YOU. A 90% hit rate ain't bad.
i think it needs to be mentioned that i'm a horrible subgenius, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke cuts both ways. my sense of humor is periodic like haley's comet. of course, i read achewood and think it is funny.
i'm not advocating the revocation of anyone's free speech or free thought, to the contrary i want those i have irreconcilable differences with to speak up and be identified, so i'll know when to run.
i'm not referring to "i like cool ranch doritoes" vs "i like original" type differences. you can carry on about flavor versus crunch until you are blue in the face provided i can ignore the fuck out of you at my earliest convenience. and given that i have been known to go on at _signifigant_ length about the virtues of, i dunno, cool ranch doritoes i know and embrace that that knife (the knife of ignoring the fuck out of) cuts both ways.
no, what i'm referring to are differences of opinion to the cut of: "i think you should die" versus "i'm quite content to keep breathing". or sometimes it's not even me in the argument, at which maybe it's more accurately "i think you should die" versus "no, i know you should die".
there's a right to believe whatever you want to, know matter how wrong it is. and there's a right to act on it that stops at about the point that my rights to act on what i think is right starts.
or something. free speech, yes, good.
so, here we have 2 young girls that sing white supremacist folk songs. yippee-kay-yay and pip pip cheerio.
so, it's not funny, but it can be laughed at because:
1- it should be mocked, so as to counter it's argument
2- otherwise i might cry
3- it's absurd, and my alternative is to pop a blood vessel.
but in the case of the prussian blue girls hypothetically dancing on the grave of rosa parks, what you were making light of wasn't them doing so but the concept of them doing so because it would show just how absurd they truly are?
but to me it's not a funny thought, it's scary as shit because the act of them doing such a thing would probably inspire a level of violence that while they may not personally advocate because there is a good chance that, as folk singers, they do not personally understand, those that handle them or those that handle those that handle them DO advocate and wish upon the world.
of course, they might just get arrested for desocration of grave yard property and the world might have a good chuckle at the white supremecist folk singers going off to jail.
i dunno.
and i agree with you and AW, mockery is a great tool. at least i intellectually agree with you, in practice it's a periodic hit or miss as to whether my sense of humor is in the state or not.
when my "haha" is on vacation, though, i fear that laughing it off is in fact dismissing it as not worth worrying about, and when you don't worry about shit because you don't think it's worth worrying about is about the time it turns out that was something you really should have worried about and it bites you in the ass really hard.
shit, i need to lighten up.