Humor under present day conditions is but a distraction and serves to reinforce the stranglehold of the corporate pirate class. Do any of you find anything funny about what's going on today? Until reality is shifted to such a degree that those who drink our blood and profit from our sweat are made historically obsolete, "comedy" is part of our oppressor's arsenal. Laugh? Not me. I'll fight to laugh in a better time, thank you very much.

Kerry, If you're serious, I have to disagree.

In the next few years if the supporters of the 'pirate class' find they're not mocked anymore they won't decide 'Oh, now we have to give up because the opposition has gotten serious'.

Quite the contrary -when people stop mocking them that's when they will start wearing uniforms to the grocery store.

I'm quite serious, Henry. Present day "mocking" is mere kneeling before the throne. We're laughing on their terms, not ours. For all our supposed "freedom", it's they who own and control the means of mass communication. In fact, they should, in their class interest, encourage these "satire" shows. It makes it seem like there's a real and living dissident population, as opposed to spectator-slaves to the dominant narrative. The more we laugh, the deeper we drown.

I have deep dislike for television programming and this stuff reminds me why. I recall watching what I call feel-good programs -- for example a typical feel-good program would have a white main character that would one way or another come into contact with typically a black person who was in some kind of trouble. At first the minority person would not trust the white guy but the white guy would help this troubled soul with heartfelt sincerity and in the end win the undying gratitude of said troubled soul. Thus all racism has been eradicated and the viewer could then retire to bed with the cockles of his heart warmed to the nth degree knowing he had done all he could to erase racism.

I find it extremely difficult to believe that television whose main purpose is to sell us useless garbage via commercials and propaganda via what passes for news broadcasts has become the champion of the downtrodden.

I'm in agreement with Rob. That needn't necessarily be a knock on people who write, or have written, for television. Some of them are brilliant, compassionate and insightful. The medium leeches most of that out. I have to work to see it in a way I don't have to with their writing.

I'm in some slight disagreement with Kerry. Even under present day conditions, humor can help fend off demoralization. But not from television, not from radio and rarely from any mainstream publication.

>> I'll fight to laugh in a better time,

Some will laugh to fight for a better time. This blog does it every day.

Paraphrasing Kurt Vonnegut, "Some things you've got to laugh about or cry about - and cleaning up after laughing takes less time."

And while I'm free associating, I'm reminded of a grim joke from the Vietnam era:

What's funnier than a necklace of Viet Cong ears?

A pile of VC corpses with their ears cut off.

Believe it or not, I've cleaned this up - the original was -

What's funnier than a barrel of dead gook babies?

A barrel of dead gook babies with pins in their eyes.

I admit, these don't seem as funny to me now as they did then - maybe because I use fewer recreational drugs now, or maybe for some other reason.

Anyway, as Terence wrote millennia ago, "nothing human is alien to me" - which is NOT the same thing as "give free reign to ALL your impulses" - but finding humor in the absurdity, stupidity, and self-deception of those who rule need not be counter-evolutionary in its effect.

J. Alva Scruggs,

Those are some good insights and I feel I should add that my post was not a criticism of Dennis Perrin whose blog I read daily because it is one of the best bogs out there which reflects the fact that Dennis is a great human being.

Kerry-
There's a story of two Greeks: One looked at the works of man's folly and could not stop crying; The other saw the same thing and could not stop laughing. I'm trying to strike a balance.
It's funny (funny ironic, not funny ha ha) that you say you won't laugh again until our corporate masters get the justice they deserve (or something). They want you to be miserable. Before Rumsfeld was killing Iraqi children he was pitching antidepressants at Searle.

Speaking of antidepressants here is a depressing article on antidepressants and other related raw sewage humanity spews into the oceans.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1006-04.htm

Published on October 6, 2006 by the Inter Press Service
Marine Scientists Report Massive "Dead Zones"
by Stephen Leahy

Rising tides of untreated sewage and plastic debris are seriously threatening marine life and habitat around the globe, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned in a report Wednesday. The number of ocean "dead zones" has grown from 150 in 2004 to about 200 today, said Nick Nuttall, a UNEP spokesperson.

More than one half of wastewater entering the Mediterranean Sea is untreated, as is 60 percent of the wastewater discharged into the Caspian Sea, the UNEP report found.

Unlike the United States and countries in the European Union, Canada has no national standards for sewage treatment for cities. Montreal dumps billions of litres of untreated sewage into the St. Lawrence River, while the postcard-perfect tourist city of Victoria, British Columbia dumps all of its waste directly into the Pacific Ocean.

Such waste can contain high levels of toxic chemicals, heavy metals and excreted pharmaceuticals. The latter pose risks that are only beginning to be understood. Emerging research shows negative impacts on marine life from residues of birth control and antidepressant drugs like Prozac even at extremely low concentrations of less than one part per billion.

* * *

This kind of makes you want to go out for some seafood or a dip in the ocean eh?

Say, what is that smell?

Also it is of interest that plankton in the oceans breaks down carbon dioxide acting like a giant air filter so if the plankton dies off it would probably make global warming worse.

I guess the good news is with all of that excreted Prozac flying around the environment we should all die happy.