The NSA Apparently Has Zero Sense of Humor But Some Libertarians Do

 

On the drive home this evening I heard a brief report on NPR focusing on Dan McCall, the fellow who designed this coffee mug. He is the principal in a law suit against the NSA which is trying to prevent him from using this facsimile of their Official Seal to poke fun at the agency. McCall seems to be a bit of another no-hoper libertarian - he also makes admiring posters of F.A. Hayek and Luwig von Mies and Ron Paul - but unlike any of those three, he is a funny libertarian. You can find McCall's we page here. And I appreciate his being an irritant to the spooks.

Anger & Humor in Politics - Thinking About Paul Klee

“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”
- Paul Klee

Destroyed Labyrinth (1939) - Paul Klee

In an essay entitled "Anger: The Diary" (1999), philosopher Elizabeth Spelman suggests a distinction between the ways that humor and anger operate in politics. Humor - making fun of the powerful - disarms them; while, by contrast, when the oppressed, exploited or downtrodden express anger toward the powerful, they themselves are empowered. (Spelman also very nicely shows how emotions like anger are thoroughly entangled with reason. To be effective, for instance, anger must find its appropriate target and that process requires reasoning of s fairly sophisticated sort.)

In any case, this preview by Phillip Hensher in The Guardian of an upcoming Tate Modern exhibition of Paul Klee's work, which connects its humor to its politics, brought Spelman to mind. Hensher notes: "A small anthology could be put together of Klee's satirical jibes at power, emperors, soldiers and dictators." And those jibes, according to Hensher, deflate the powerful. As he explains:

He is the artist I love best in the world: I love his modesty and his resourcefulness, and his willingness to combat oppression and violence with laughter. His work reflects the idea of Milan Kundera, that the machinery of power works by imposing forgetfulness; that the way the individual can fight back is through laughter. At the time, nothing could have seemed more fragile and pointless a gesture against the armies of Hitler than a painting of fish, gawping at each other, by a Dessau art professor. But nothing remains of Hitler's power, and the structures he built are mostly dust. What certainly does remain is a little, tender picture of a garden; a sheet of luminous colours; music transformed into an image.

All that may be true of Klee. But Hensher's premise is that Kundera's assessment of our options in the face of tyrants and despots is persuasive. And that, as I've intimated here in the past, is questionable not simply as a matter of philosophical analysis, but of historical experience as well.

Twittering Machine (1922) - Paul Klee

 

Conqueror (1930) - Paul Klee

Philosophy Joke

This really is a hoot.

Gezi Park - Reminders for Political Theorists

A couple of reports on Gezi Park that offer important reminders for political theorists. The first from the BBC addressed the uses of humor in politics. Here there is a paper by Elizabeth Spelman ("Anger the Diary") that contrasts the distinct impact of anger, which empowers the aggrieved, and humor, which deflates the pretensions of the powerful.  And, of course, this argument subverts the dichotomy between rationality and the emotions (see, generally, Amelie Rorty) - the connections between rationality and emotions are various.  The second - here - is from Michael Kimmelman at The New York Times who underscores (among other things) both Hannah Arendt's claim that the exercise of freedom presupposes public space and Jim Scott's quasi-anarchist arguments about resistance to regimentation of (among other things) space.

Cookie-Monster

I am off to the public market but thought I would pass along this bit of humor. It is making the rounds on Facebook.

Mistaken Identity

Op-Ed Columnist

Who Is James Johnson?

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: June 16, 2011

I noticed this headline on this column on the Op-Ed page at The New York Times today and I wondered "Who's asking?" Then I realized that it was another person Brooks is interested in. And then I realized is that what Brooks is really interested in is obfuscation. He wants to shift primary blame for the ongoing financial catastrophe onto the government. No way the private sector could bear any responsibility. He notes in passing toward the end of his indictment of Fannie Mae, that: "The Wall Street-Industry-Regulator-Lobbyist tangle is even more deeply enmeshed." Just so. But where, then, is the outrage at the speculators on Wall Street and the ways they bought influence and regulatory 'reform?' Brooks doesn't evince any whatsoever. Yet he is simply repeating a recurrent theme in the right-wing narrative of the political-economic collapse. The primary problem, unfortunately, is not that the government aimed to help get people into sound housing. The problem is that politicians - at the behest of the financial industry and its cronies - eliminated restraint on the speculation in securities. Brooks knows better. He only need to read another of his colleagues at The Times (or other commentators) to see that the case for blaming the government or the working class is perhaps less persuasive than he lets on.

Obama Goes Nucular

Obama’s Obscure Pronunciation of ‘Nuclear’ Breaks With Tradition

by Andy Borowitz

Posted on Apr 4, 2010

WASHINGTON—In what some are calling the boldest move of his presidency, Barack Obama broke with a time-honored tradition observed by several U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush, by pronouncing the word nuclear as it appears in the dictionary.

Announcing a new weapons pact with Russia, Obama repeatedly pronounced the word nuclear in a way that has rarely been used by a U.S. president since Jimmy Carter was in the White House.

But according to Davis Logsdon, a professor of international relations at the University of Minnesota, Obama’s pronunciation of nuclear may have been key to the diplomatic breakthrough: “The Russians have heard presidents pronounce it “nucular” for so long, they may have thought he was offering something new.”

Obama’s obscure pronunciation of nuclear drew harsh reactions from members of the tea party movement, who see the president’s obsession with correct English usage as an attempt to make the nation more European. A sign at a recent tea-bagger rally read, “Obama Wants to Disconnect Your Granma [sic] and Correct Your Gramar [sic].”

Elsewhere, Sarah Palin campaigned for John McCain today in a bid to shore up his support among morons.

© 2010 Creators Syndicate.

Compassion Indeed!

Finally, the NGOs and Humanitarian outfits come clean! The actual point of their activities, as reported in The Onion, is to 'save' distressed children in various exotic locations as a jobs program for photographers.

Making Fun of Bigots is Really Good for Democracy

From Unsought Input via No Caption Needed .