Humor and presidents and aging and…
Now that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has passed, this might be the best time to state that this stuff is undignified and bothers me whoever does it, Democrat or Republican. I’m all for presidential humor, but it used to be a class act. Whatever JFK did in his private life, his jokes were actually funny, and very very tasteful. Same for FDR.
But I suppose that only marks me even further as the old fuddy-dud I have become.
And speaking of age (we were speaking of age, weren’t we?), John Hawkins has a post on what it’s like to turn forty.
I’ve got a reflection on what it’s like to turn—well, whatever it is I’m about to turn: you don’t remember what it’s like to turn forty.
Although, actually, it’s not too dissimilar from turning forty as Hawkins describes that process:
At 40, you actually start to see the trajectory of your life from the present day, all the way to the grave and you start asking yourself some hard questions. Did I pick the right career? Do I want to stay on the same path from now until I die? Am I ever going to fulfill those childhood dreams? What legacy am I going to leave to the world when I’m gone? Am I missing out on anything?…You start to realize that health is a finite resource. So is opportunity. So is energy. So is time.
Except now it’s getting serious.
Well, to me at least you do not strike me at all as fuddy or duddy or old. So there.
At least not as far as this online persona is involved. Who knows what lurks behind the apple.
Answers to Hawkins’s questions: No. No, but you probably will. No. Not much. Yes, get over it.
🙂
a better thing woudl remember that today was the fall of saigon…
and that the next few years would be years that over 4 million people would be murdered by conflicts and actionst that came after.
from millions in vietnam… to another 2 million in cambodia…
its a liberal anniversary… and the start of a new term in our vocabulary
Boat people is a term that usually refers to refugees, illegal immigrants, or asylum seekers who emigrate in numbers in boats that are sometimes old and crudely made. The term came into common use during the late 1970s with the mass departure of Vietnamese refugees from Communist-controlled Vietnam, following the Vietnam War.
There were untold miseries, rapes and murders on the South China Sea committed by Thai pirates who preyed on the refugees who had sold all their possessions and carried gold with them on the trips.
Camps were set up in Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. According to stories told by the Vietnamese refugees, the conditions at the camps were poor. Women and children were often raped and beaten. Very little of the aid money donated primarily by the United States actually got to the refugees. Refugees at Thai camps were maltreated and many were brutally bullied by the Thai guards. Some 77% of refugee boats leaving in 1981 were attacked by Thais.[5] 863 Vietnamese were known to be raped, 763 people physically attacked and killed, and 489 people abducted.
Most of the refugees came from the former South Vietnam. However, soon after the first wave between 1975—1978, North Vietnamese from seaside cities such as Haiphong started to escape and land in Hong Kong.
stalins men raped jewishwomen in the nazi camps… so the ending of schindlers list was not the real ending… next time you see it, remember the thing they are still slient about.
The countries that accepted most of the Indochinese refugees were:
The United States – 823,000
Australia and Canada – 137,000 each
France – 96,000
Germany – 40,000
The United Kingdom – 19,000
Japan – 11,000
Far too much humor is really just vitriol cloaked in winks and clown noses. I’ve been tired of it for more than 20 years, and I’m only 36. It’s part of why I don’t watch much TV any more. (I only watch occasional shows on my computer, and usually I find something to regret anyway.)
Give me gentle, uplifting humor any day. Not just because it’s more befitting social discourse, but because it’s better for the soul. (Maybe the same thing.)
You don’t do Mort Sahl shtick with an A-list audience that includes Kim Kardashian, Lindsey Lohan, and Sofia Vergara.
I’m with you, Tesh. The older I get, the less sarcastic I get. In the long run, square always beats cool.
Answers to Hawkins’s questions at 80+:
It was the right career, but many others would also have been right.
Yes, same path–same answer as I would have given at 20, 40, 60.
Even at 20 I realized I had to make choices, that I had too many dreams to fulfill them all. But I have fulfilled some.
Legacy? I have no idea. I’ll leave that to others to judge.
Missing out on things? Of course. There is simply no time to do everything and some things are incompatible with other things.
He is right. From the beginning of life there are limits to time, energy, opportunity, and even health. But, as Goethe said, ‘The master is first revealed when he works within limits’.
Perhaps a key to answering those questions at any age is accepting Goethe’s wisdom and recognizing and accepting the limits we all have.
Clown President-In-Name-Only is crass, arrogant and not funny. Gross bathroom toilet flushes are for adolescent boys and it is still yuk! Can’t wait till this chicago thug, barry soetolo hussein obama is thrown out of the White House on his skinny half black a__!
Except now it’s getting serious.
Yeah, like what I want to be when I grow up.
I agree, that this has become about as tired and insincere as those Hollywood love-fest award shows, where they all pretend to humble artists and that it is very serious business.
The most memorable WHCD for me was when Laura Bush spoke instead of George, and she gently mocked him and his administration (with her lovely voice and killer delivery), using all of the cliche jokes about W (he’s dumb, he goes to bed early), etc. She managed to make the audience laugh (because these were the jokes they’d been making about W), as well as mock them for doing so for the last 6yrs.
Even Cedric the Entertainer admitted he had been upstaged by Laura.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQv0v3Xme0I
I think in the last 15 years I’ve seen the notion that everything is a joke really take over. It’s embodied in Bill Maher and Jon Stewart- nothing is sacred or important. Laughing at life all the way to the unimportant end, I guess. It really masks an insecurity or fear in the people who view life this way. I’m not totally sure what I’m trying to say. But there’s something there.
Jim Nicholas Says it just about perfectly for me. Except I haven’t read Goethe, or, come to think of it, Pascal. But I did have a midwestern farmer-salesman grandfather who told story after story, all of which spoke to our condition, humorously. Many of neo-neocon’s reminiscences have a like quality, though the provenances couldn’t be more different!
I’m 64 and remember blowing out all those candles on my 40th. My wife asked me what I wished for and I replied I wanted to be as physically fit at 50 as I feel today. When 50 rolled around I felt I had as much energy and the same physical abilities as at 40. At 60 I could not say the same. Time waits for no one. The body can not keep up the pace. But I’m ever curious, life is never boring, and I want to live long enough to hold a great grandchild in my arms.
Who could ask for more? http://tinyurl.com/7tepram
Aging isn’t so bad.
And to quote the infamous Les Brown..”I ain’t who i wanna be and i ain’t who i’m gonna be. But thank God i’m not who i was”.
At 40 I was too busy to contemplate anything except how to balance two jobs, remodeling our house, skiing and climbing mountains.
All of Hawkins questions did not occur to me until I was retired, but even then many activities kept me from looking too deeply at such. Today, 19 years into retirement, the answers are pretty much known.
“Did I pick the right career?” Yep!
“Do I want to stay on the same path from now until I die?” Is there a choice?
“Am I ever going to fulfill those childhood dreams?” Nope!
“What legacy am I going to leave to the world when I’m gone?” Legacy, legacy, what’s that?
“Am I missing out on anything?” Oh yeah!
“You start to realize that health is a finite resource.” Duh?
“So is opportunity.” I bumped into opportunity many times, politely excused myself and walked the other way.
“So is energy.” Drill, drill, drill! Oh you mean human energy. Sorry, can’t help.
“So is time.” Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think!
Asking those questions at 40 may well set one up for male menopause or a mid-life crisis. Better to keep moving – something might be gaining on you.
In some ways, I was way ahead of the ’40 club’. Dying a couple of times in my 20’s… zeroed things in. I didn’t have the… wisdom, say… to deal with it. But I knew, in a hard/solid way, that life and all was quite finite. So I won’t go through the rough stages of wonder and doubt, again. I simply get to finally enjoy whatever is left of life for me to see. I ‘dun graduated. Oh… there are regrets, some hopes, but… in perspective. I am surprised, nearly every day, when I wake up… that I woke up. Sometimes, often, even if I have to push the thought a bit… I am pleased about it, too. Here is a little ditty that puts it as I see it. Hellsyeah.
I hope you get over your… worries, concerns… baggage… and find yourself to where you can just enjoy the length of the ride that is left to you. It’s… not all bad. *smiles*
Ten top reasons why the humour is not humour:
10: There’s no clean end on the turd.
9. We’re all having fun with European money.
8. Did you hear the the one about the Jew making tea? Hebrew it.
7. My best friend works. Get it.
6. Sky rocket in flight! Shit, did you light that at me.
5. If Iran oil runs out, their meth won’t. Love ya bitch.
4.
Finish up
Classy guests..Kim K…Lindsey…Joe BiteMe…Oy.
Bottom line is that The Boy King is tin eared & absolutely humorless. He neither ‘gets’ the joke nor can he tell the joke. Sad and says plenty.
40’s were great…50’s, same as 40s…60s..Whew, NOT the same. I enjoy–thank God–excellent physical health but, trust me, the 60s ain’t the ‘yootful 50s. However, as my 93-year old Aunt Lena writes in her monthly letters to us:”Aw, Kids, just to be 80 again.” Perspective is good.
3. She ran calling Occupier
2. Jamex Caulfield, Infrared systems analyist
1. x-ray star under your car, phone, child.
Our culture has descended into childishness.
I dunno, I’d suspect that a hockey mom, fresh after a bath, probably can taste delicious, too, and is one hell of a lot more fun than a pit bull after a nibble.
And, in case the exact nature of that joke was in any sense unclear:
I believe that all hockey moms should beware of cunning linguists.
Actually, I believe ALL women should beware of them, but hockey moms in particular.
>> Our culture has descended into childishness.
I forget which movie it was, IIRC, it’s Gerrit Graham, probably “Phantom of the Paradise”, in which he maniacally intones,
Few people could deliver that line better than Gerrit Graham…
I R A Darth Aggie Says:
April 30th, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Except now it’s getting serious.
Yeah, like what I want to be when I grow up.
Every time I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up, life took me in an expected direction, rendering my decision all but useless. After the fifth (or maybe it was the sixth) drastic career change, I came to believe that deciding what one wants to be when one grows up is an activity best left to children.
“Except now it’s getting serious.”
Missed that yesterday. Yes indeed, I know that feeling.
Most of the current humor sounds like whistling while walking at midnight trough a cemetery. The only reason for such attitude and behavior is to hide from oneself fear of death, an universal curse of atheists.
where is the REASONABLE HUXLEY?
The one who said, hey, there is no way that they are copying the past and merging two factions..
Obama’s New Campaign Slogan “Forward!”
Is a Hitler (Jugend) Youth Marching Tune
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l_z_pHUKajc
(And actually it was the paper of the SDP the communists who competed against hitler)
this, a comment from someone else (not me), on the OWS… (of which they just caught some Ayers wanabees in cleveland who were buying explosive to blow up a bridge.
it seems like i am not the only one who knows the rules of the game, methods, ends and so on…
as i said, you dont leave the scaffolding up once your done. and if you know this history, you would know what would happen to these neer do wells… they are eliminated to prevent the counter revolution which is the natural outcome when they realize they have been had and then reverse course.
by then, its too late…
and it may be too late already…
Shoa II…
Greenie ideology = Blood and soil
Obamacare = Acton 4
SBA & affirmative action = removal of non volk from employment, mancession… etc
Volkswagen = Chevy Volt
Brown shirts = OWS
I Can keep going till there is about 50 items or more on this list of parallels.
Vorwé¤rts nach osten!!!
(forwart do the east) finland
Vorwé¤rts nach Osten with English subtitles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIwgFsduH6I
never again?
how? if you dont remember?
Erich Honecker
was a German socialist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well after Willi Stoph’s relinquishment of that post in 1976.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Honecker
Famous quotes: “Always forwards, never backwards.” (Original: Vorwé¤rts immer, ré¼ckwé¤rts nimmer) (early 1980s)
now…
anyone want to compare his symbology?
LEON TROTSKY or Grandeur and Misery of Power http://www.ditext.com/nomad/trotsky.html
вперёд на Берлин!“ (to Berlin!)
vpered phonetically
Socialist League Vpered (Forward!)
Socialist League Vpered is a radical left-wing political organisation in Russia. It is the Russian section of the reunified Fourth International.
Fourth International
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reunified_Fourth_International
bet almost no one knows this stuff to this detail… which is why they are walking either into athe wolfs mouth, the bears mouth, or some hybrid creature created after the war in east germany
After 1963
3.1 Eighth World Congress: anti-imperialist focus
3.2 Ninth World Congress: Vietnam solidarity
3.3 Tenth World Congress: guerrilla debate
3.4 Eleventh World Congress: end of factionalism
3.5 Twelfth World Congress: SWP rejects Trotskyism
3.6 Thirteenth World Congress: ‘New World Order’
3.7 Fourteenth World Congress: regroupment
3.8 Fifteenth World Congress: transformation
3.9 Sixteenth World Congress: ecosocialism
but why bother to read what they a re doing, just wait till the newspapers, the tv, and the OWS people tell you. right?
no need to read…
in ignorance we are wise.
The Thirteenth World Congress, in February 1991, was one of the most ambitious, addressing a systematic change in the global balance of forces. Its resolutions spanned the ‘New World Order’, European integration, feminism and the crisis of the Latin American left
and now its too long…
and there is soooo much more..
I just found this via Instapundit. It’s about spending money on durable goods, memories being very durable. This sort of ties in with my feelings on aging. I have such a store of memories to keep me going when my body starts to give out.
Sorry, I forgot the link.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/memory-as-a-consumer-durable/256327/
All socialist or communist movements in today Russia are marginal. In Moscow they gather at their rallies no more than dozens participants. This is fashionable in some circles, but overwhelming majority of people fully immune to this type of ideas.
without the legal pressure from above (the iron fist) the majority of people do not fall for most of it, they just ignore it, pretend and live their lives. in the system in the past it was impossible to know how many actually believed or subscribed to it. especially in later years compared to years in the earlier times when they had things to compare to and the serious deprivations of war.
but as then is now, what the people do is irrelevant. whether a crowd of 100,000 in the street or not, doesn’t matter in this case. which in essence was the real transformation. the realization that it was not necessary to actually have such a big weighty apparatus, as the people were impotent either way.
this is most evident in the contrast between immigrants and their contemporaries back home (and only looking at recent ones). the immigrants who have come here, according to the millionaire next door, are one of the highest earning large population groups.
capable, well educated, erudite, they could succeed… (though with today’s socialist adjustments to the demographic make up of the body politic. not so much).
but what happens if they do REALLY well back home sergey? a friend did with his electronics company, but then why is he here in the US writing software?
the truth is that if you take a good look at who the thugs are and who is in the halls of power, most of the key positions are all taken by the same old same old. they may not have pictures on the wall and overtly show what they believe, but whatever it is, they believe something and are still collectively organized (though what tools are available to act on are different)
Khodorkovsky?
Khodorkovsky worked his way up the Communist apparatus during the Soviet years, and began several businesses during the era of glasnost and perestroika. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he accumulated wealth through the development of Siberian oil fields as the head of Yukos, one of the largest Russian companies to emerge from the privatization of state assets during the 1990s.
Think he didnt have help from his prior career?
care to go through forbes list and see their history and compare them to similar people in other areas?
the people there are STILL waiting…