Wednesday, January 26, 2005

are you familiar w Jonathan Schwarz of Tiny Revolution.Com?

he's incredibly funny-- if I could be 1/10th as funny I'd be hilarious.
Schwarz has had a series of posts on the current social security debate which are all great-- for example:

1."Diarrhea" Polled Badly, So Now The President Refers To It As "Freedom"

"It used to be that everyone -- Republicans, Democrats and the press -- used the same word for what Bush wants to do with Social Security. That word was "privatization." And if you privatized Social Security, everyone would end up with a "private account."

...Today Luntz explained that because the president has changed terminology, the media must change too. If they don't -- if they continue using "privatization" or "private accounts" -- they are showing a disgusting left wing bias.

I agree. The press MUST call everything on earth exactly what the president chooses to call it. So if "private accounts" start to poll badly too and the president switches again, then the press must also immediately switch."


2.If It's All The Same To You, I Prefer My Consciousness Un-Seared


and

3.Frank Luntz's Descent Into Madness Continues

from 2004:
he explains the name of the blog on april 23rd

(the archives are by the month so you'll have to scroll down a bit. I really like the Orwell quotes. The links are as per Schwarz):

"It's a reference to something George Orwell wrote in a 1945 essay called "Funny but not Vulgar":

'A thing is funny when — in some way that is not actually offensive or frightening — it upsets the established order. Every joke is a tiny revolution.'

If you're interested in the intersection of comedy and politics, you should read the whole thing; it's still very relevant.
Here's another excerpt:

'It would seem that you cannot be funny without being vulgar, that is, vulgar by the standards of the people at whom English humorous writing in our own day seems mostly to be aimed. For it is not only sex that is "vulgar." So are death, childbirth and poverty... and respect for the intellect and strong political feeling, if not actually vulgar, are looked upon as being in doubtful taste. You cannot be really funny if your main aim is to flatter the comfortable classes: it means leaving out too much. To be funny, indeed, you have got to be serious.' "

(but if you fail to keep scrolling down to april 22nd you'll miss his plan for world peace.)

other hits include his review of Heart of Darkness(?!), here.


Schwarz is one of several people I mean to add to the blogroll, including Under the Same Sun, Arvin Hill, Xymphora, Th' Moderate Voice, Mykeru, Conceptual Guerilla,and many more. I will do this soon, honest. I just hate fiddling with th' html and I keep putting it off. Also, I'm still a bit leery of blogrolling.com, as I've noticed that sites w it tend to take an awfully long time to load. (If you're a blogger and have any thoughts on your experiences with blogrolling or other services(?) that may do the same thing, feel free to leave me a note, I'd be happy to hear from you.)