Strangling the Moose - Democratic Underground

yoyossarian

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Tue Jun-16-09 01:48 PM
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Strangling the Moose

Yesterday, I posted a satire on this whole Letterman/Palin debacle, wherein I offered up a brand-new euphemism for masturbation, to wit: Strangling The Moose.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5853542">Sarah Palin Support Thread (and Misplaced Righteous Indignation Bin!)

Here is an excerpt:

In stark contrast, Sarah Palin is the first female governor of Alaska and the youngest person elected governor of that state. Her extreme youth is apparent in her current ridiculous posturings of outrage and feigned deep indignation and injury concerning a mild joke made by Letterman about one of her daughters (NOT the 14-yr-old), as well as other recent imbecilic gaffes and ass-hat antics, such as accepting the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 2008, despite the fact that the only real notable qualification she possessed for such high office was the mythic (and yet-unsubstantiated, though widely believed) story of her having strangled a moose with her bare hands, on a mere whim, when she was not yet out of high school.

Some critics believe that the 2008 GOP VP nomination was in fact just an elaborate sophomoric prank gone horribly awry, played upon Palin by well-intended but very, very drunk junior members of Harvard's infamous Skull & Bones Society; but others insist that the nomination was in fact genuine from the git-go. Conservative pundits and friends point to the fact that, in 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant, then finished third in the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant, at which time she won a college scholarship and the "Miss Congeniality" award. They also repeat the moose-strangling incident as further proof that Sarah Palin was chosen by the GOP for both her pretty face AND her demonstrated maniacal ruthlessness towards other living beings on this planet (there remains the remote possibility that "strangling the moose" is merely a euphemism).

You may have your own favorite euphemism for this time-honored activity: Whacking the Dog, Choking the Chicken, Roughing Up the Suspect, Beating the Red-Headed Stepchild, Besieging the Purple Tower. The list is seeming-endless, and new ones are being added every day here in DumbErica, Masturbation Capital of the World.

After all, what else is there to do in this vacuous barren landscape? Our culture is in such rapid decline on so many fronts, following the horrible last 8 years of insanity--and even now, conservatives everywhere have continued this forced decline unabated, meticulously deflating ALL progressive impetus toward any and all liberal goals regarding human rights, environmental safety, sane energy policy, basic fiscal responsibility...

Of course, this is to be expected; this is what conservatives DO. They soil their own nests, prey upon their neighbors, drive deep divisions between every possible segment of society in order to better rule and subjugate them, judge everyone but themselves as damned for all eternity; these crazed power-monkeys basically drive blind while praying to Jesus to guide them on their merry way...

And CENSOR every voice of reason or intelligence... because this is very very necessary, this censoring; how else can one do all this stuff and get away with it, if one does NOT consistently shout down every voice that openly questions their "values", "reason", "logic" and true motives, and offers more intelligent options for living?

In the ol' days of constant darkness and religious persecution, it was the Holy Fathers who sanctioned what was and wasn't allowed to be spoken or openly discussed. Today, it is the PC Police.

Political Correctness shuts down every conversation of real merit. This overarching concern for social niceties and the fuzzy-warm "feelings" of people who live their lives by impulse rather than reason is one of the most effective means of censorship the right-wing has EVER conceived.

PC drives deep wedges between EVERY social class, effectively dividing the ENTIRE house of thinking, rational, empathic beings left upon Earth into tiny little groups of yammering imbeciles who cannot stop squabbling amongst themselves long enough to mount any real defense against the onslaught of corporate and religious fascism that is fast sinking this country into oblivion.

And this is particularly noxious when aimed at humor and satire, IMHO... because humor is a safety valve that allows people to air their frustrations in truly HARMLESS ways, while at the same time fostering SOME level of actual communication of these frustrations between warring factions. In other words, it fosters some degree of UNDERSTANDING, for those who have ANY wish to understand the position of the "other" side.

Sexism is a good case in point. We DO, after all, live within a dualism of male and female, with a great degree of variety and overlap and paradox subsumed within this basic him/her division. This undeniable fact is no one's fault, not even Darwin's; it is the very world we live in.

The answer to the age-old war between male and female is NOT silent, miserable forbearance. It is NOT the utter eradication of the dirty joke from every column and obelisk. There is no answer; all we can do is to try to communicate our fears, frustrations and best intentions to the best of our ability, over and over again, as we move through our lives. And sometimes humor is a good ice-breaker and an excellent window into the other world of our opposite's viewpoints.

If Letterman is not funny, then who else isn't? Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Monty Python? Yes indeed, all of these people are just NOT funny! HUMOR is not funny. Just ask Nora Dunn, a "humorist" who single-handedly destroyed the career of one of the funniest cats working back in the 80's. Very un-PC, very "sexist", VERY entertaining. Andrew Dice Clay presented a caricature of machismo unmatched in the history of humor, and he was crucified for making most men, and quite a few women, laugh--while, oddly, Sam Kinison was given a total pass, despite an act that started out funny, but became increasingly, disgustingly xenophobic until his final curtain fell and he became victim to his own startlingly naked self-loathing and unchecked appetite for self-destruction.

I LOVED George Carlin... but his own decline was similarly sad; he went from being one of the most erudite and wise and of-the-moment social critics, to an angry and xenophobic old man who seemed, near the end, to be doing his best to find delight in the suffering of others, and the decline of human civilization generally.

Which, I believe, was as much an act as Dice's macho; he was trying very hard to hold up a mirror to us, to show us what we were becoming, and to shield his own feelings of utter futility in the face of what must've appeared to him as his own utter failure to bring light and hope and a little fun to this still very-dark world, despite 50-some years of fearless and intelligent effort.

But he DID bring light, and he DID warm and nurture this world, seeding it with great truths in the form of brilliant little jokes and observations. He just must've felt really tired at the end.

Humorist and Firesign Theatre alumnus Philip Proctor once said, "The American humorist is a man in pain." I very much doubt that he meant ANY offense to women in this statement, but I'm sure there are many on these boards who will find great fault with such imprecise language.

And here is the GREATEST paradox about humor, and something I find really quite funny:
Actually, jokes are NOT harmless; they possess great potential to do GREAT DAMAGE to the status quo, to all the forces of evil and entropy that suppress laughter and divide us all and TRULY delight in the suffering of the many for the power and privilege of the very very few. This is why the right-wing works so hard to silence the clowns; parody and humor are REAL weapons that do REAL damage to their cold and humorless ambitions.

Sarah Palin is not the injured party in this debate. It is SHE, and her many totally wrong-headed and ignorant and pseudo-religious right-wing fascist policies, now masked and hiding chuckling behind a shield of faux-offended feminist ideology, that are truly wrong, ugly, indefensible, and SHOULD be deeply offensive to every thinking American.

So to all those who feel that censoring humor is a good idea, all those who would kill the messenger for the immediate expediency of sparing the overly-sensitive a bit of discomfort, I can only say that you are, to my view, intent upon the destruction of ALL open debate, ALL open communication and freedom of expression yet-remaining in this sad and pathetic and self-obsessed country. You are strangling the moose, nothing more nor less, and the moose is you; it is your own hard-won freedom, and best hopes for your children's future.

Which is, to my mind, the saddest joke of all.

Editor's Note: Yoyossarian is the current moniker for Danielle Xaviera Stone, a published artist, writer, humorist, filmmaker and social critic who once posted on these boards under the name dxstone--but who lost that name, and the over 1000 posts attached to it, several years ago when a series of moves and intractable difficulties caused her to lose the flow and thread and password info necessary to continue as such. She wants you to know this because she's not the newcomer she may seem to be. She is the proprietor of President Evil Online, an anti-Bush website which she ran for the first 5 years of this decade before losing that domain name; the site is now archived in her newer site steponnopets.com. She is also a male-to-female transsexual, and proud of it--though she fully understands that this information will cause many among you, including scads and scads of gay people, to completely disregard any and all lucid points she may have just made, in favor of simply ruminating upon her looks, sexual escapades and the like. She is resigned to continuing to try to seed the universe with light, despite these and other difficulties she faces currently, including complete and perfect nonemployability for the past 4 years, despite her many demonstrated skills, talents and gifts... and because she has been threatened and assaulted in the past, and has had bottles and bricks thrown at her head and a knife held to her neck, she KNOWS that being kidded and laughed at is infinitely preferable to being murdered by her critics.

Danielle, about 9 months ago

One of Danielle's favorite images
(Everybody has to have a dream!)

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Laugh City!

President Evil Online has risen from the grave!