My Favorite Humor

I was watching John Oliver’s New York Stand-up last week and saw Marc Maron who reminded me of the late, great, George Carlin when he was ranting about how the future belonged to China. I was awestruck at one part of his set. Here it is as best as i could transcribe it.

Now, obviously, the future is Chinese economically. I think some of you know that. Most of our national debt is to China. They own this country on paper. Theoretically, they could just close us down.

I believe that we are all really just outsourced Chinese labor and our job is to eat and buy things at a lower price, but rationalizing it, because lets be honest, this is a consumer based economy in America, that is, all we manufacture here is need and appetite. We are the world’s mouth. They make things in other countries and they’re like, “Send it to America. They’ll eat it.” They’re actually thinking about changing the slogan of the United States from “America: Land of the free, home of the brave” to “America: All you can eat”.

This got some pretty big laughs and some applause which is amazing considering the implications of what he is saying. It is pretty funny to metaphorically because it has some truth to it, but it has sinister undertones. What are the long term prospects for a country which is based in consumerism and need? What happens to a country when innovation and entrepreneurship are diminished? Are we living in the decline of the United States? In my opinion, these are some pretty scary questions.

My favorite comedy is the kind of comedy that disarms you and off balances you in such a way that it is funny and profound/sad at the same time. It is hard to articulate which is why i have had this post in draft status for about two months.

Another example of this, perhaps my favorite, is when Stephen Colbert did a skit about Wikiality where the premise was that reality is whatever the wiki (Wikipedia) said it is. It was really funny, but pretty terrifying at the same time.

Living as a middle class white dude in the middle of suburbia in North Dakota, there are two worlds. There is the world of first hand experience and the second world which is created and exists inside mass media. We are exposed to the second world through books, magazines, internet, etc. I can use the internet to view street corners in any large city in the world using google maps (except Buenos Aires for some reason). Is that real? Just like Plato’s allegory of the cave, we only get to see shadows of reality which have been selected, groomed, and prepared for us. The thing that is scary is that people put the same level of belief both of these worlds. While this has been the case for decades with traditional mass media, the internet brings it to a new level. Given the dynamic and revisionary nature of the Internet, that implies that substantial portion of people’s reality is dynamic and revisionary. We are talking some real Orwellian stuff here.

Rehashing these ideas could fill books, but somehow Colbert was able to abstract the essence of this conundrum into a skit on a late night show which lasted only a few minutes and it was hilarious. There is a simple and elegant beauty in that which i really appreciate.

If anyone has any other examples of this, please leave a comment.

March 30, 2010 Posted in: Uncategorized