Whether you believe so or not David, humourous writing *is*
difficult, and beyond the skill sets of many professional writers,
let alone amateur ones, and if the simple addition of a smiley
helps anyone to get a humourous point across without causing
offence to anyone with any native language, then I fail to see
what the difficulty is with that.
Arfa, I appreciate your attempt to intelligently and considerately smooth
over this fracas. But I neither started it, nor made it worse. The latter
was the fault of people who open their mouths before thinking -- something I
am occasionally guilty of, myself. You can spot these people by the hissing
noise as air enters their empty heads.
The difficulty, Arfa, is that I don't like having to explain my humor. Call
that unreasonable, even call that arrogant or even irresponsible, but humor
that needs explanation is not humor. I enjoy subtlety, and the pleasure of
sudden recognition. I would prefer to eat cream pies than throw them.
People conveniently forget that "you moron" was in (humorous?) respsonse to
an obscenity in the preceding post, and directed at that poster. Apparently,
it's okay for other people to say such things seriously, but I'm raked over
the coals when I do it in jestingly in response.
As for the members of the Algonquin Round Table (who apparently called
themselves The Vicious Circle)... these people were (largely) literary
humorists (Benchley, Parker, Kaufman, et al.) who wrote material that was
presumed to be intentionally funny. UseNet posts lack that context, and I
refuse to provide it with emoticons. It should also be noted that some of
these people were pretty vicious (Dorothy Parker, in particular) and
delighted in putting down others, even if only by trying to be more clever.
(Parker even said "The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes
and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths
showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring
them.... There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day
of the wisecrack, so there didn't have to be any truth.")
None of you will believe this, but I have a self-deprecating sense of humor.
I used to belong to a social club in Seattle, and sat on its board of
directors. Whenever I poked fun at myself, the then-president would use it
as an excuse to dump on me. (I never asked why.) Around the third time this
happened, the other board members went for his throat, and he stopped.
Am I a chrome-plated jerk? I used to be, and I /think/ I've mostly outgrown
it. But I'm not embarrassed calling most people wit-less, because it's true
of Americans. We're seeing this right now, in the fracas over health-care
legislation. The problem isn't that there are legitimate differences over
how or even whether the health-care system should be modified, but the fact
that most Americans are unwilling to sit down and carefully consider all
sides of an issue. You cannot have a democracy in which the citizens refuse
to think! It's this knee-jerk, politically partisan reaction to everything
(from both left and right) that will eventually destroy American government
and society. We are well-along the path that Ronald Reagan set us on 30
years ago. But then, it's what Americans want, and so-richly deserve.
In closing (thank God!)... We all have to decide what sort of persons we
want to be, then make an effort to be them. I've reached the point where
it's time to stop being clever (at least among people I don't know) and
stick with being nice. I'm to here to learn, and to make constructive
suggestions. And nothing else.
I'm sure some people will have something nasty and mean-spirited to say
about this.
