An alarmist, not a hypochondriac

Woody Allen has a gift for intelligent humor.

So when he writes to clear any misconception of who he really is--an alarmist, not a hypochondriac--it's worth a read. 

Allen confesses to also having "an animal fear of dying":

I sometimes imagine that death might be more tolerable if I passed away in my sleep, although the reality is, no form of dying is acceptable to me with the possible exception of being kicked to death by a pair of scantily clad cocktail waitresses.

But, to be a misunderstood alarmist, a hypochondriac and somebody who is pathologically fearful of dying, is better than to be a Republican, concludes Allen.

A modest proposal: avoid homosexuals

In 1729 Jonathan Swift composed a satirical essay in the Juvenalian vein. It was called A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.

Swift lashed out against the prevalent Irish policy that led to impoverishment, starvation and famine in the British colony of Ireland. But the lashing out was veiled in heavy sarcasm; cannibalism--a suggestion that the Irish eat their children so they didn't have to feed them--was the Swiftian solution to the problem of poverty in Ireland.

The video entitled The Homosexual Menace is in the Swiftian mode. An egghead of a viewer might just not get the satire and might literally take the video to be an attack on homosexuality.

I had thought that the Swiftian satire was dead. Good to know that it's alive and well.

Intertextual humor

In The Amazing Spider-Man there is this moment. Spider-Man Peter warns the city mayor that the city is threatened by a predatory lizard (the villain in the movie is half human and half lizard).

The mayor looks at Peter incredulously, and says, "Who do you think I am? The mayor of Tokyo?"

A moment of intertextual humor; the joke is lost on those who aren't familiar with the Japanese monster movie mania. 

However there is more: I am familiar with Japanese monster movies, but I wouldn't be aware of the humor if I didn't catch a glimpse of the same in a scene from Persepolis.

In Persepolis, young Marjane and her grandmother go to a movie theater in Tehran to see Godzilla. Tehran at this time is being bombed by Iraqi warplanes. There is mayhem on screen and real mayhem off screen, outside.

When they walk out of the movie, the grandmother, unimpressed by the celluloid mayhem tells her granddaughter about the "Japanese" and their "crazy" love for mindless monstrosities."

That's when I caught on to the joke--a joke at the expense of a part of Japanese cultural preferences.

Stuart Smalley

I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me.


---Stuart Smalley on "Saturday Night Live" 


...there, I've been meaning to put the Smalley saying for some time now!

Heart of Marriage Equality-Ness

When Allen Ginsberg wrote sardonically about the "Communist scare" in America in the 1960s, in his poem, America: An Open Letter, he unearthed the hypocrisy underlying the fear-mongering.

What if the communists invade America and America becomes a nation of dreaded Communist values? Momentarily Ginsberg slips into the shoes of the anti-Communists and says, "Oh no, when America becomes a Communist nation, god forbid how the poor Native Americans would be free to have equal opportunity to education and how the "Niggers" would be de-negroized and rendered equal citizens along side the white privileged class!"

That was mock-empathy at its best.

Cartoonist Brian Mcfadden does a swell job with a similar kind of mock empathy in his "The Strip". He slips into the "fears" of those who want to deny marriage equality rights to gays and lesbians in America, and emulates their paranoia in light of President Obama's recent declaration that he is "for" marriage equality.