[Vision2020] Explaining humor: was anti-Semitism

[Douglas]

Dear visionaries,

First, lest there be any more misunderstanding, I will do my level best to 
have this post be simple and straight, no goofing around.

Humor works by means of startling incongruity (although there are mysteries 
beyond even this). Thus, when I and Christ Church were accused of racism, I 
undertook to defend our good name. I set it up by indicating that I was 
about to show our racial diversity, and went on to do just that (formally). 
But the races I mentioned were Scots, Irish, English, all from the British 
Isles. This was a joke at our expense. I was pretending to look like an 
oblivious racist, of just the type we are accused of being. Tom took the 
joke at face value, thus missing it.

Wayne Fox did not get my reference to replacing the Nazis with the Israeli 
Likkud party. There is a difference between an ethnic joke ("Three rabbis 
went into a bar . . .") and a joke that involves ethnicity. The point I was 
making is that history happened the way it did, and not some other way. If 
we can start erasing Trotsky from the photos, and Confederates from the 
Southern armies, then why stop there? Thus I put Hispanic representation 
into the hordes of Attila the Hun, and proposed replacing the Nazis with 
the Israeli Likkud party. This was done for the sake of the startling 
incongruity. The first was done on the basis of an anachronistic 
incongruity, the latter on the basis of ideological incongruity. The Nazis 
and the Likkud are mortal enemies, and switching them would make hash out 
of history.

Making hash out of history this way is absurd to me, but not, apparently, 
to everyone.

Cordially,

Douglas Wilson, who is, by the way, happily married to the 
great-granddaughter of Rabbi Cohen, and with a grandson whose other 
grandfather is Jewish, and lots of other cool stuff like that.






At 04:46 PM 5/23/2003 +0000, you wrote:
>Doug WIlson stated:
>
>"Check it out before you make accusations. We have all kinds -- Scots, Irish,
>English, you name it."
>
>Wow!  That is a very diverse group.  You have the white and the super 
>white.  I
>am so proud.
>
>Tom Hansen
>Moscow,
>Idaho
>
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