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Muslim Humor
By Jim Harper
It is with delight this week that I see social media pouring derision on mainstream media’s depiction of the world. Specifically, the withering mockery given to Newsweek‘s “Muslim Rage” cover.
Gawker helped catalyze things by publishing some early Twitter send-ups of the Muslim rage concept—”Wrestling is fake? #MuslimRage”—and its own spoof: “13 Powerful Images of Muslim Rage.”
My personal favorite came from hijab-wearing ?@LibyaLiberty, who Tweeted:
I’m having such a good hair day. No one even knows. #MuslimRage
It is not automatic to recognize the personality of souls in other cultures and countries. In a Tweet posted September 12th (now apparently taken down) outgoing Village Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega said, “Islam needs to get a [expletive] sense of humor.” I don’t know what one means by anthropomorphizing a religion, but many individual Muslims demonstrably already have one.
AP Photo
On the Wall Street Journal Professional site, Bret Stephens writes about the derision U.S. culture can pour on minority religions other than Islam without eliciting much stir at all, official or otherwise. The unfairness is notable, and it’s worth talking about whether government-issued statements about the bizarre “Innocence of Muslims” video were called for and whether they struck the right notes.
But Stephens says something that has a quality similar to Ortega’s Tweet and Newsweek‘s cover, dismissing the individuality of the one billion-plus Muslims around the world who are not rioting, attacking embassies, or doing anything of the sort.
“[T]o watch the images coming out of Benghazi, Cairo, Tunis and Sana’a,” Stephens writes, “is to witness some significant portion of a civilization being transformed into Travis Bickle.” (Travis Bickle was the misfit anti-hero in Martin Scorcese’s movie Taxi Driver, who delivered a young prostitute from New York City back to her mid-western family. Political people remember him as the inspiration for would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley.)
“Significant portion”? How many Muslims constitute a “significant portion” of the overall number? What infinitesimal percentage of a group so large is “significant”? Stephens might have said “tiny minority” and been more accurate. His implication—hopefully unintended—is that an entire culture is massing at the border of ours, preparing—oh, who knows what—our undoing.
I believe it’s received wisdom in libertarian circles to reject the collectivist mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Any believer in individual rights, liberties, and responsibilities should suffer sharp pangs of cognitive dissonance to think of group conflict along the lines I’m reading into Stephens.
So I’m enjoying seeing Muslims express themselves as individuals, putting the lie to their caricature in the mainstream media as a raging undifferentiated mass with spittle on their beards. Especially the women.
Muslim Humor is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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Humor • First Draft: Lord of the Fed
Humor • History Lesson
History Lesson
http://www.grandich.com/2012/06/history-lesson/
Posted: 14 Jun 2012 06:09 AM PDT
Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.
The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer
and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the
beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the
catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:
1 . Liberals
2. Conservatives.
Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of
agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so
while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented,
they just stayed close to the brewery. That’s how villages were formed.
Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while
they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the
Conservative movement…
Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off
the conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQ’s and doing the sewing,
fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.
Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. They became known as girlie-men. Some note worthy liberal achievements include the
domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the
concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that
conservatives provided and became the ultimate “gimme faction”.
Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most
powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the
jackass for obvious reasons.
Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white
wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well
done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare.. Another
interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher
testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury
attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are
liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn’t
fair to make the pitcher also bat.
Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud or Miller. They eat red meat
and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big game hunters, rodeo
cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, paramedics, medical
doctors, police officers, engineers, corporate executives, athletes, members
of the military, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively.
Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work
for a living.
Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and
decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more
enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in
Europe when conservatives were coming to America .. They crept in after the
Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for
nothing.
Here ends today’s lesson in world history.
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Sat Jun 16, 2012 3:49 am
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Humor • Facebook Stock Certificate
http://media.dcentertainment.com/sites/ … ficate.jpg
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Wed May 16, 2012 12:59 pm
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Humor • Growth Simplified For Germans
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8006/7007 … e2c7_z.jpg
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Wed May 09, 2012 12:43 pm
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Humor • 38 WAYS TO WIN AN ARGUMENT
1st April 2012 by Stucky in Economy
arguments
Funny stuff here, but only because it is SO true!
I have used every one of these strategies. Especially the last one. And so has Jim … every day!!
Originally written by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860),a brilliant German philosopher, in “The Art of Controversy”.
=========================================================== =
1. Exaggerate your opponent’s proposition. The more general your opponent’s statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it. The more restricted and narrow his or her propositions remain, the easier they are to defend by him or her.
2. Assign different meanings of your opponent’s words .
3. Ignore your opponent’s proposition. Discuss it in some quite different sense, and then refute it. Attack something different than that which was asserted.
4. Hide your conclusion from your opponent till the end. Mingle your premises here and there in your talk. Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order.
5. Use your opponent’s beliefs against him. If the opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage.
6. Confuse the issue by changing your opponent’s words or even entire ideas.
7. State your proposition and then ask them many questions. By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted. Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the opponent’s admissions.
8. Make your opponent angry. An angry person is less capable of using judgment or even knowing where his advantage lies.
9. Use your opponent’s answers to your questions to reach different or even opposite conclusions.
10. If your opponent answers all your questions negatively ask him to concede the opposite of your premises. This will confuse the opponent as to which point you are actually making.
11. If the opponent grants you the truth, refrain from asking him to agree to your conclusion. Later, if you are losing, introduce your conclusion as already settled and admitted fact.
12. Intentionally left blank to piss of SSS.
13. Bullshit your opponent. If he answered several of your questions without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow.
14. If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment. Instead, submit for your opponent’s acceptance or rejection some true proposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it. Should the opponent reject it because he or she suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject a true proposition. Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your own for the moment. You can either try to prove your original proposition or maintain that your original proposition is proved by what the opponent accepted.
15. When your opponent puts forth a proposition, always declare it is inconsistent with his other statements.
16. If your opponent presses you with a counter proof, find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent’s new idea.
17. If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to its conclusion! Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.
18. Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his or her argument, and you have nothing much to say, try to make the argument less specific.
19. Left blank on purpose to piss of llpoh.
20. When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial, meet the opponent with a counter argument that is just as superficial, and so dispose of him or her. For it is with victory that your are concerned, and not with truth.
21. If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.
22. Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating his or her statements. By contracting your opponent you may drive him into extending the statement beyond its natural limit. When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the orginal statement your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than you intended, redefine your statement’s limits.
23. State a false syllogism. Your opponent makes a proposition and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you force from the proposition other propositions that are not intended and that appear absurd. It then appears the opponent’s proposition gave rise to these inconsistencies, and so appears to be indirectly refuted.
24. If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary. Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the opponent’s proposition.
25. A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent’s arguments against him or herself.
26. Should your opponent surprise you by becoming particularly angry at an argument, you MUST urge it with all the more zeal!! Not only will this make the opponent angry, it may be presumed that you put your finger on the weak side of his case. Your opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.
27. This trick is chiefly practicable in a dispute if there is an audience who is not an expert on the subject. You make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience. This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes the opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs. If the opponent must make a long, complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen.
28. If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion. You can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had bearing on the matter in dispose.
29. Make an appeal to authority rather than reason. If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case. If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance. Authorities that your opponent fails to understand are those which he generally admires the most. You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have invented entirely yourself.
30. If you know that you have no reply to an argument that your opponent advances, you may, by a fine stroke of irony, declare yourself to be judge and winner.
31. A quick way of getting rid of an opponent’s assertion, or throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious category.
32. You may admit your opponent’s premises but always deny the conclusion.
33. When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter question, or tries to change the subject, it is a sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without knowing it. You have as it were, reduced the opponent to silence. You must, therefore, urge the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.
34. If you are losing, instead of working on an opponent’s intellect, work on his or her motive. Denigrate, mock, and call out his motives as self-serving. Your impending loss will be forgotten as he is reduced to defending himself.
35. Bullshit your opponent. You can easily impose upon him some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.
36. Should your opponent be in the right but, choose a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position.
37. Become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand. “Asshole”, “Pussy”, and “Blow Me” are extremely popular here on TBP. In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether . This is good if you are losing. It is a very popular trick, because everyone can do it. Even Reverse Engineer. lol
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=32425
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sun Apr 01, 2012 8:52 am
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