Double Flee A

Dennis Miller

This man is being hired by Fox because he's a republican, and that's the only kind of people Fox likes working for them. The name Dennis Miller was passing through my mind today when I remembered something I'd seen a while back that would illustrate a point well.

There once was published on the internet a list of the top 100 funniest jokes, which I read because I like funny jokes. I also get pleasure out of jokes because there is a deeper level to them; all jokes beg to be deconstructed. Maybe that's why I don't hear them as much as I used to, deconstruction for better or worse has become a national pastime, and no one likes being the subject of that kind of scrutiny.

According to this list, two of the funniest jokes were made up or at least told, by Dennis Miller. And now, I present them to you are in all their glory.

1) I worked some gigs in the Deep South…Alabama…You talk about Darwin’s waiting room. There are guys in Alabama who are their own father.
2) I had a cab driver in Paris. The man smelled like a guy eating cheese while getting a permanent inside the septic tank of a slaughterhouse.

So is he funny? Somebody thinks he is. A lot of somebodies. There are millions of people in this country for whom these hackneyed stereotypes are a lightning bolt to the funny bone. "Guess whut! Foreigners stank! HAW HAW!" These are also the same people who love Fox news. Because in the end, everything comes down to stereotypes for them.

Fox and radical right wing news junkies are notorious for their mediated belief system that has nothing to do with reality except a few names. I don't even have to go into it, it's so obvious. It takes a lot of energy to stifle the simplest of questions. What's the deal with the missing WMDs? Who cares! We're winning the wore on tear!

The list shows me that stupid/vicious stereotypes are rewarded, as was Jew-baiting in 1930s Germany. And who am I to say that those jokes aren't funny, because how do you objectively consider what's funny? The jokes are right there on the list, as official as can be. Hey, did you hear the one about the nigger who was so lazy and stupid that he couldn't even read his welfare check! He wasn't white, I can tell you that! Ha ha ha! Oh my god Dennis stop you're killing me!

But sterotypes have nothing to do with intending to be hurtful, it's just primitive and primitive happens to be hurtful, like a pet alligator that eats your baby. It's not mean, it's just a reptile! The dumber you are, the more primitive your perceptions of us and them. If they wear turbans, they're them. If we laugh at turban people, we're us. Go, us! Excellent strategy for tribalism, guys. And who are the uncivilized ones?

Once you see, as I have, that the guys who are doing almost all the heart catheterizations are wops and raghead forgeigners and the patients are all fat white guys, you start thinking twice about the jokes and their actual utility. Dennis Miller did prefabricated jokes as an NFL commentator before even football fans tired of him, and the only place down from there is where he's headed now. Bon voyage, dickweed.

Dennis Miller will make maybe a million dollars this year doing material that isn't worthy of even my low standards. Which I guess is a way of saying my standards, low as they are, are worth more to me than a million dollars.

posted by dale @ 1:45 PM