Apr 15th, 20092009-04-15T22:10:04ZM jS, Y | By Nunzia Rider | Read more in: Politics
Exchange between CNN’s Anderson Cooper and David Gergen last night:
GERGEN: Well, Republicans are pretty much in disarray. They — they — the one thing they agree on is that they — they’re warning about the deficits, that there’s too much spending. And I think they will — I think they will be dragged kicking and screaming to any more intervention of the kind of Ali’s talking about.
But they have not yet come up with a compelling alternative, one that has gained popular recognition. So…
COOPER: Tea-bagging. They have got tea-bagging.
GERGEN: Well, they have got the tea-bagging. But there was an interesting Politico survey that was out today that said that, you know, the president — the trust level in the president on economic issues is extremely high. And, you know, and everybody else in the administration is well below him. But the Republicans are a little below that. So, Republicans have got a way — they still haven’t found their voice, Anderson. They’re still — this happens to a minority party after it’s lost a couple of bad elections, but they’re searching for their voice.
COOPER: It’s hard to talk when you’re tea-bagging.
Vulgarity is only funny when it is uncommon and unexpected (and not often then.) It’s like cooking with asafoetida.
Good old C.S. Lewis had it bang to rights when he said:
“Humour is for them the all-consoling and … the all-excusing, grace of life… it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is “mean”; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner … he is no longer “mean” but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful—unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand … jokes do not help towards a man’s damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. … Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as “Puritanical” or as betraying a “lack of humour”.
But flippancy is the best … it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it.
If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against [God] that I know… It is a thousand miles away from joy, it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it…”
I first read that passage forty years ago, it was written about 70 years ago, yet it sounds like he’s just written it, after listening to some of today’s talk radio.
GERGEN: Well, Republicans are pretty much in disarray. They — they — the one thing they agree on is that they — they’re warning about the deficits, that there’s too much spending. And I think they will — I think they will be dragged kicking and screaming to any more intervention of the kind of Ali’s talking about.
COOPER: Tea-bagging. They have got tea-bagging.
Subscribe by RSS feed
Follow on Twitter
Got Kindle?
The word we want is “vulgar.”
Vulgarity is only funny when it is uncommon and unexpected (and not often then.) It’s like cooking with asafoetida.
Good old C.S. Lewis had it bang to rights when he said:
I first read that passage forty years ago, it was written about 70 years ago, yet it sounds like he’s just written it, after listening to some of today’s talk radio.
Noni
[Reply]