Category: Humor

A Waste of a Good Hyphen

A reader doesn't get the point of my earlier entry:

Use-Mention Confusion

Dennis Miller:  "Melissa Harris-Perry is a waste of a good hyphen."

So let me explain it.  Miller is a brilliant conservative comedian who appears regularly on The O'Reilly Factor.  If you catch every one of Miller's allusions and can follow his rap you are very sharp indeed.  He has contempt for flaming leftists like Harris-Perry. Realizing that the Left's Alinskyite tactics need to be turned against them, and that mockery and derision can be very effective political weapons, he took a nasty but brilliant jab at her in the above-quoted line.

What makes the jab comical is Miller's willful confusion of the use and mention of expressions, one class of which is the proper name. One USES the name 'Melissa Harris-Perry' to refer to the person in question.  This person, the bearer of the name, is not a name or any type of expression.  The person in question eats and drinks and fulminates; no name eats and drinks and fulminates. But if I point out that 'Melissa Harris-Perry' is a hyphenated expression, I MENTION the expression; I am talking about it, not about its referent or bearer.  When I say that the name is hyphenated I say something obviously true; if I say or imply  that the woman in question is hyphenated, then I say or imply something that is either necessarily false or else incoherent (because involving a Rylean category mistake) and thus lacking a truth value.  Either way I am not saying anything true let alone obviously true.

But what makes Miller's jab funny?  What in general makes a joke funny?  This question belongs to the philosophy of humor, and I can tell you that it is no joke.  (That itself is a joke, a meta-joke.)  There are three or four going theories of humor.  One of them, the Incongruity Theory, fits many instances of humor.  Suppose you ask me what time it is and I reply:  You mean now?  If I say this in the right way you will laugh.  (If you don't, then, like Achmed the Terrorist, I kill you!) Now what make the joke funny?  It is an instance of incongruity, but I will leave the details for you to work out.  And the same goes for the joke in parentheses.

It is the same with the Miller joke.  Everybody understands implicitly that a name is not the same as its bearer, that some names are hyphenated, and that no human being is hyphenated.  Normal people understand facts like these even if they have never explicitly formulated them.  What Miller does to achieve his comic effect is to violate this implicit understanding.  It is the incongruity of Miller's jab with our normal implicit understanding that generates the humorousness of the situation.

But WHY should it have this effect?  Why should incongruity be perceived by us as funny?  Perhaps I can get away with saying that this is just the way things are.  Explanations must end somewhere.

Am I a pedant or what?

But I am not done.    

There is also a moral question.  Isn't there something morally shabby about mocking a person's name and making jokes at his expense? Some years back I was taken aback when Michael Reagan referred to George Stephanopolous on the air as George Step-on-all-of-us.  A gratuitous cheap-shot, I thought.

But given how willfully stupid and destructive Harris-Perry is, and given that politics is war by another name, is there not a case for using the Left's Alinksyite tactics against them?  (Is this a rhetorical question or am I really asking?  I'm not sure myself.)

Here is a bit of evidence that Harris-Perry really is a a willfully stupid, destructive race-baiter.  There is another in the first entry referenced below.

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The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook

You probably knew that Elizabeth Warren, aka Fauxcahontas, contributed recipes to the cookbook, Pow Wow Chow. You might even know that some have alleged that these recipes were plagiarized by the Indian maiden.  But I'll bet you don't know that Jean-Paul Sartre worked on a cookbook.  Another reason why you need to read my blog.

Here is a 'taste':

We have recently been lucky enough to discover several previously lost diaries of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stuck in between the cushions of our office sofa. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Aparently Sartre, before discovering philosophy, had hoped to write "a cookbook that will put to rest all notions of flavor forever.'' The diaries are excerpted here for your perusal.

October 3

Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.

October 4

Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.

October 6

I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of a cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.

October 7

Today I again modified my omelet recipe. While my previous attempts had expressed my own bitterness, they communicated only illness to the eater. In an attempt to reach the bourgeoisie, I taped two fried eggs over my eyes and walked the streets of Paris for an hour. I ran into Camus at the Select. He called me a "pathetic dork" and told me to "go home and wash my face." Angered, I poured a bowl of bouillabaisse into his lap. He became enraged, and, seizing a straw wrapped in paper, tore off one end of the wrapper and blew through the straw. propelling the wrapper into my eye. "Ow! You dick!" I cried. I leaped up, cursing and holding my eye, and fled.

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“He Who Hesitates is Lost”

As you know,  Yogi Berra, master of the malapropism, died in September.  In the Berra spirit, I cooked up the following during last night's troubled sleep:

Said by me to Berra in the presence of Peter:  He who hesitates is lost.

Berra:  You mean Peter?

What is Berra failing to understand?

(I would continue with this, but I am presently under assault by some nasty flu bug.  And last night's whisky cure did no good at all.

If I said to Wittgenstein, "I feel like shit warmed-over," he would shoot back: "You have no idea what shit feels like, fresh-cooked or warmed-over."

He was one serious dude.  

On Seinfeld

I confess to being a fan of this TV series many of whose episodes are now over 20 years old.  I have seen every episode numerous times.  I am not a student of the series as I am a student of the great Twilight Zone series, but then numerous episodes of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, belonging as it does to the  Golden Age of television, really are worthy of study.

What do I like about Seinfeld?  Perhaps it is the utterly zany quality of the Jewish humor.  Here is some of it in Yiddish (with subtitles).

And the political incorrectness I like.  But things have changed in America, so much so that Jerry Seinfeld nowadays refuses to perform before college audiences.

Indeed, it must be jarring for a boomer like Seinfeld, who went to college in the early 70s, when students were debating real issues freely, to confront today’s college campuses, where students often invent issues about which to be aggrieved, many times on behalf of other parties, and then have to find "free speech zones" in which to discuss them.

Consider the uproar over a statue of a man talking to a woman at a Texas college, which some decided was a depiction of "mansplaining," or a man patronizingly explaining something to a woman. Paul Tadlock, the 79-year-old sculptor, said the piece — done for 20 years before its offense was "discovered" — merely depicted his daughter, a student at the time, talking to a friend.

Then there were the students at UC-Berkeley, who called for "an occupation of syllabi in the social sciences and humanities," which sounds serious. Rodrigo Kazuo and Meg Perret felt aggrieved that a classical philosophy course had the audacity to cover actual thought leaders from classical philosophy, including Plato and Aristotle — because they all happened to be white men.

And earlier this year a male student at Portland, Oregon’s Reed College was removed from the discussion portion of his freshman humanities class for questioning the statistics on college sexual assaults and challenging whether or not there is such a thing as a "rape culture."

Why on earth would a comedian like Seinfeld, whose career has focused on humorously pointing out absurdities bring his act to such an utterly humorless and incorrigibly politically correct setting?

By the way, ever notice the similarity between these two guys?

Newman Leiter-537x350

Like Being the Chief Rabbi in Mecca

I heard David Brooks on C-Span 2 last night.  He uncorked a very funny line. "I am the conservative at The New York Times, which is like being the chief rabbi in Mecca."

By the way, it was a mention by Brooks in his latest book that got my friend Lupu onto Soloveitchik.  Now I am reading the good rabbi.  I have finished The Lonely Man of Faith and I've started on Halakhic Man.  Impressive and important for those of us exercised by the Athenian-Hierosolymanic dialectic.

In other humor news, Heather Wilhelm reports, via Chelsea Clinton, that the Clinton family motto is, wait for it:

“We have a saying in my family—it’s always better to get caught trying (rather than not try at all).”

Wilhelm comments:

Full disclosure: When I first read that sentence, I laughed out loud. Next, I read it two more times, just to make sure it was not some glorious figment of my imagination. “Get caught trying?” Who makes this their family motto? Concerned that I was missing the popular resurgence of this wise old adage—a saying that ranks right up there with “There’s more than one way to obliterate an old email server” and “If the silverware is missing, Sandy Berger’s pants are a-jangling”—I decided to Google “get caught trying.” If you’re looking for lots of advice on how to do things like hide an affair from your spouse, illegally sneak over the border, or fight off a wild crow that is trying to eat your lunch, I suggest you do the same. 

Here’s the thing: If you “get caught” doing something, it implies that you are doing something secretive, underhanded, or out-and-out bad. What kind of family, outside of the Corleone crime syndicate, instinctively associates “trying” with doing something surreptitious, or an action where one can get “caught”? Moreover, is there any one-liner in the history of the world—with the exception, of course, of “It depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is”—that better sums up the Clinton ethos?

What Miss Wilhelm fails to realize, however, is the signal impetus Bill Cinton gave to a renewed assault upon the question of the meaning of Being, die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein, a question occluded and forgotten (Seinsvergessenheit!) in political precincts until Bubba re-ignited it with his penetrating inquiry into the manifold meanings of 'is.'

Colin McGinn on Brigand Lighter

Wondering what had become of Colin McGinn, I poked around and came across this parody by him of somebody he variously refers to as Brigand Lighter, Brendan Lightweight, Barry Litebeer, and Professor Litesmear.  Is he referring to some actual person?  The post is dated 1 April 2015 which suggests that Professor McGinn might just be fooling around.

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Philosophy Bakes No Bread, but Man does not Live by Bread Alone

This from a reader:

I wanted to bring to your attention a passage I came across in Nicholas Rescher’s Philosophical Standardism (Pittsburgh, 1994):

“The old saying is perfectly true: Philosophy bakes no bread. But it is also no less true that we do not live by bread alone. The physical side of our nature that impels us to eat, drink, and be merry is just one of its sides. Homo sapiens requires nourishment for the mind as urgently as nourishment for the body. We seek knowledge not only because we wish, but because we must. The need for information, for knowledge to nourish the mind, is ever bit as critical as the need for food to nourish the body.” (p. 67)

I was struck by what I believed was the distinctively Vallicellan retort, “But it is also no less true that we do not live by bread alone.” I’m curious: Is this a well-known retort among philosophers? If not, did you get that from Rescher, he from you, or is this just an instance of great minds thinking alike?

None of the above. Here is what I wrote in 2012:

To the philistine's "Philosophy bakes no bread" you should not respond "Yes it does," for such responses are patently lame. You should say, "Man does not live by bread alone," or "Not everything is pursued as a means to something else," or "A university is not a trade school."  You should not acquiesce in the philistine's values and assumptions, but go on the attack and question his values and assumptions.  Put him on the spot.  Play the Socratic gadfly.  If a philistine wants to know how much you got paid for writing an article for a professional journal, say, "Do you really think that only what one is paid to do is worth doing?"

I wouldn't say that the not-by-bread-alone retort is standard among philosophers,  especially not now when Christianity is on the wane and one cannot assume that philosophers have read the New Testament.  Professor Rescher, of course, knows the verse at Matthew 4:4.

I didn't get the retort from Rescher: Philosophical Standardism is not a book of his that I have read.  The retort occurred to me independently as I am sure it has occurred independently to many of a certain age and upbringing.

And of course Rescher did not get the line from me since his book was published in 1994 long before the blogosphere.

And it is not a case of great minds thinking alike since neither of our minds are great.  It is more like above-average minds thinking alike, though I concede his to be more above-average than mine.

Is there anyone in philosophy more prolific than Rescher?  Here is a list of just his books.   Forty years ago I heard the joke about the Nicholas Rescher Book-of-the-Month Club.  And he is still happily scribbling away.  Here is another Rescher joke:

A student goes to visit Professor Rescher. Secretary informs her that the good doctor is not available because he is writing a book. Student replies, "I'll wait."