LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Since I'm here at the doorstep of Disney World for a couple of business conferences (shit, I've become that guy who goes to "business conferences"), clearly I've got nothing to do but watch TV in between writing about which company might be interested in buying which other company in the future.
So I figured I'd share some things with my faithful blog readers.
No, wait. Stay. I'm going to share things I saw on TV, nothing from the conferences.
Whew. Almost lost you there.
Following are my two favorite funny moments from this weekend so far. Let's see if you notice a theme.
1. Amy Poehler reported (from Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" desk) about a plan to manage the pigeon population in the Staten Island ferry station by feeding the birds birth control pills. The punchline: "This, after the plan to distribute abstinence pamphlets proved unsuccessful."
2. At the conclusion of The Simpsons annual Treehouse of Horrors episode -- which included a Heck House to teach Bart and his friends a lesson about sin -- Ned Flanders says goodnight with the line: "I just want to say that for watching this network, you’re all going to hell. And that includes FX, Fox Sports and our newest devil’s portal, The Wall Street Journal. Welcome to the club."
I laughed hard at both of those, which felt good. But it also reminded me of why I never fully enjoy watching TV with my dad, a Baptist minister. Don't get me wrong: I love my dad and he's one of the most reasonable Southern Baptist ministers I can imagine knowing.
Nevertheless, I find I often enjoy jokes the most when they're at the expense of Christian conservatives -- ridiculing their over-the-top puritanical morality and dogmatic assurance that they're right and everyone whose beliefs are 1% different from theirs is eternally damned. I'm confident my dad would be disappointed by how hard I laugh at these jokes.
Further complicating matters, I think I might still be a Christian conservative myself. I suppose I still share many of my dad's same old-fashioned morals and religious beliefs. The biggest difference, I guess, is that I don't assume everyone else does or should share these values and beliefs.
Then again, I think I could probably laugh just as hard at the absurdities of over-the-top liberals. It's just that all the TV writers prefer to take jabs at evangelical Christians. Maybe I'll have to become a comedy writer and make a niche of joking about ultra-humanism and blind devotion to every new statistic or scientific study that hits the newsstands. Hm, this strategy is going to need some work, I think.
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2 comments:
I agree -- extremism in any form is at least a little bit funny. It's considerably less funny when said extremism results in death and destruction, but on some level, you have to laugh at the thought processes some people must follow.
I appreciate people who aren't afraid to laugh at their own religion.
And agreed once more. Good post. I should have watched Treehouse of Horrors instead of the crappy football game I took in. That bit about the pigeons: priceless. The abstinence vs. education debate is a comedy gold mine, not to mention an exercise in absurdity.
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