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They are jokes.
Like all jokes, some people with little sence of humour dont find them funny. Thats up to them. But if you look back, some do find them funny.
I bought a smile to some faces. That makes me happy.Happier than you anyway!!!
…if they are jokes then I am delighted to find they have passed me by and whilst on the subject of whether one is happy or not, I always think that those who make such comments about the misfortunes of others always strike me as being in fact, totally devoid of humour themselves, if they have to resort to this sort of thing to get through the day.
I have to admit to feeling slightly emotionally detatched from the disaster until tonight. The news is so full of disasters that it’s impossible to get too upset every time something awful happens. However, the news tonight was heartbreaking..somehow the gap between sympathy and empathy has been breached….the woman who has just given birth to a child having lost her 6 year old son, and the parents who couldn’t get the bodies of their children out to bury them so had to cremate them where they were. It has suddenly, to me, become a real tragedy happening to real people. And it’s happening now, this very minute as we’re watching our tellys and having our cups of tea. And even if we make a donation nothing seems to be getting to these people fast enough. Hell; they haven’t even got water to drink.
People are dying every second in Africa of Aids, starvation and so forth.
The cameras aren’t there so its not news. Its still happening but you have all seemed to have forgotten about them and got onto the media band wagon.
£31 million to date for the "relief fund".
The people who are 200 yards from the base where all the relief goods are being stored cannot even get water.
This situation needs more than money.I was sent a joke from a friend of mine last night and it said this.
Two Planes full of Scousers have just left John Lennon Airport, Apparently their going over to help out with the looting.
Now i did laugh quite loud at this although maybe Scousers who like a joke aslong its not aimed at them will probably launch a tirade and hold a protest march in the city about it.
Regarding the Haiti and the belief in God, It is a situation like now where the Haitians need their faith as for some it is the only thing they have left in the world and it is the one thing which nobody can take away from them.
I think that last paragraph just about sums up what the rest of us have been trying to say for the past five pages; profound stuff.
How sad that the situation in Haiti has, once again, brought out the anti-American in so many. No surprises there I suppose, but hardly warranted.
Roads, docks, kaput; an airport the size of a small English provincial airport also damged. Blimey – it was always going to take many days to get things going on any scale. Finding desperate people still in need of help was always going to be an easy call for lazy journalists who’ve no comprehension of logistics. Yet the anti-americans blame them for not acheiving miracles, when other governments can do relatively f* all.
(Except it would appear, the Israelis, whose aid and rescue force I believe was the first effective base set up. (No mention of this on the BBC – no surprises there either).ps. Liked the joke about the scousers.
Religion – and blind faith – is maybe a comfort. But it’s a comfort based on a lie.
To be fair to the journalists, they probably realise that it’s the personal stories that make people like myself relate more to whats happening, and dip into their pockets a bit more. It’s a pity that it usually takes a situation like this to make people find out more about the background to whats happened .
I never mean to offend. I know how it feels to be offended and I dont like it.
When all is said and done we’re dealing with the right to be offenSIVE versus the right not to be offenDED – doubtless as sacrosanct to those of either standpoint and ultimately probably irreconcilable. I know which stance I prefer to take, professionally and personally. Others will take the other. So it goes.
Now I care about him and his family, more than those in Haiti.
If thats wrong, then you can shoot me down.
That’s not wrong at all – it’s simply that those you care comparatively less about didn’t, to my and by the looks of it a few other minds, necessarily deserve the comments they got here just on account of that simple actuality of meaning less to you.
I saw him yesterday. I took him the obligatory grapes plus a video of the "Fall guy".
Humour again! It made him smile. It made my day seeing him smile.
…and that’s not unamusing by any stretch of the imagination! It’s making light of a bad situation that could have been worse, but above all it’s consensual; perfectly aimed at the target it was meant at, received in kind, and easy to appreciate universally even outwith your own family / friend network – all comments which couldn’t necessarily have been applied to the Haiti comments. Therein, I think, may lie a lot of the difference.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
The very thought of Auschwitz makes any joke unfunny in most peoples minds but people still tell them because the passage of time renders everything fair game.
You and I and the woman next door may not want to even hear the jokes but most people couldn’t care less because as sad as Auschwitz was, it didn’t affect them directly.
Impasse reached on the broader point, I fear, as I cannot picture a time however many years hence in which any sort of gag on that subject matter will seem any more appropriate. Either one accepts that the sheer magnitude of its awfulness will forever transcend humour entirely, or one doesn’t. I do.
And it’s not necessarily alone in that regard. Almost forty-five years on, attempting a Moors Murderers gag in many areas of Greater Manchester still elicits one reaction and one only.
Example: Chris Moyles was pulled up by the BBC about a year ago for cracking some joke about Auschwitz and on the same show was taking the mickey out of some gay singer. The BBC quickly apologised to listeners for his remarks on Auschwitz.
They did so even although they receive no complaints at the time about the Auschwitz jokes but got 5 listeners kicking up hell about the gay joke.
Possibly a problematic example in as much as some producers at Auntie Beeb haven’t exactly demonstrated themselves to be the most editorially judicious in recent times!
I’d sooner that an apology for both outbursts had been issued, and hope that issuing of all apologies remains informed by the intrinsic inappropriateness of any given comment, rather than as a reaction to how much of a response it elicits in its immediate aftermath.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
People are dying every second in Africa of Aids, starvation and so forth.
The cameras aren’t there so its not news. Its still happening but you have all seemed to have forgotten about them and got onto the media band wagon.I don’t know if that’s entirely accurate. Charities aren’t wholly susceptible to some sort of tree theory ("if the cameras aren’t there, does it still exist?"), otherwise more of them would go belly up for lack of sustained media coverage of their geographic campaign area.
In addition, and maybe tied in with the above, the ever-increasing proliferation of Direct Debit arrangements for charities probably applies a greater degree of "locking down" (for want of a better expression) of donors to causes longer-term than hitherto.
On that basis, I’d be more minded to regard the Haiti donations to date as "as well as" rather than "instead of" donations. Having heard BBC Radio Five Live’s launch of Sports Relief this evening, I’m reminded again that this more ad hoc manner of donation doesn’t just survive in the event of disasters.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
I truly think jokes about tragedies are just part of the human coping mechanism. I hope I will never be in a situation like so many Haitians are at the moment, but I also know at some of the very low points in my life, where, on a few occasions I have come close to ending it all, it is often looking at a situation through "a sick and twisted" perspective that raised the smile that spurred me to try and get on track again.
IMHO, the Haiti disaster is a disaster and not a tragedy per se. There are of course millions of tragedies in that disaster. But the earthquakes were disasters and the human stories are tragedies. One way homo sapiens seem to cope with disasters is to face the emotions of tragedy head-on. And of course that can run the full gamut of human emotions from sorrow and grief to humor that may be dark.
Dark humor tends to come from the way people perceive one another and not a reaction to a terrible event. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and the tragic relationship between Albert and Harold Steptoe and punctuated by desperation and black humor as they try to go through their lives.
As for God, even he has to obey the rules of the universe and tectonic plate shift happens regardless of whether God, Allah, Wotan, Thor or the Flying Spaghetti Monster are real or not.
What I find far more unpalatable than a little black humor is firstly the way people like Pat Robertson respond, yet again, telling his followers this has something to do with not worshipping God the way he sees fit. But equally as odious are the (largely) secular people who think that any comment other than object horror (that is rightly deserved here) should be verboten.
Sadly, here in the USA, I know many people who are sympathetic and will help financially but do not want ANY of the islanders here at any cost. In fact, here in the south, I have heard it said, even today, If they do come here, they should be caged as they are little more than diseased wild animals anyway.
And it is not just crazy rednecks who are saying this, either. I do not agree with the above view point but US policy of immigration (something I have direct experience of) is a debate for another time.
Craig.
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Isn’t a basic tenet of most religions that we all ‘move on’ to a better place, therefore there’d be no incongruity in happenings in Haiti for a true believer?
ps I’m not suggesting there is a God; I wouldn’t know – but neither would those who claim the opposite.
Isn’t a basic tenet of most religions that we all ‘move on’ to a better place,
Which is all part of the con to hook you in – no pun intended by they prey on bacic insecurities to attract followers – all the more effective if you are having a cr@p time of it – which is why a large number of followers are attracted when they are at their lowest.
Assuming, of course, the brainwashing when they were children had not worked.
On which note I strongly believe the indoctrination of children to follow a paricular religious belief should be treated as child cruelty, no different than any other form of psychological abuse.
Teach comparative beliefs as part of the secondary curriculem and then allow people to decide if they want to be followers when they are old enough.
Oh dear; I’m going to sound like a crazy mad woman here but, when I was younger I used to think that when I was gone that would be it; end of, and that older people found God and afterlives because they were afraid of death and it was a comfort. But something in my phsyche is changing, and it isn’t from coming from fear. I feel that, as we get older the line between this world and another gets hazy, and then disappears altogether. Where that takes us I’ve no idea…I’ve always believed that we are our genes, and will always ‘be’ whilst people with them are around. I was born about the time that my grandad, who worked with horses, died. The family always said that my love of horses had been passed on from him. [but, perhaps it’s my early ‘indoctrination’ affecting me, just as lapsed Catholics seem to revert back to that faith when they get older, perhaps those of us with a Cof E upbringing do the same!]. Perhaps we just exist in other peoples minds and thoughts. Or cyberspace…….
Interesting post Mo.
Indeed in a literal sense se do "live on" after death in that our molecules and atoms are "recycled".
As for my mortality it is not something that worries me -if I drop dead in five minutes time or 40 years time it doesn’t particularly worry me (although if I am still around in 40 years time I probably will not be that impressed) – at the end of the day when I die I am dead and I will know nothing about it.
I have done almost everything I wanted to do in my life so qué sera sera.
Almost forty-five years on, attempting a Moors Murderers gag in many areas of Greater Manchester still elicits one reaction and one only.
As it happens, i know a pretty good one (not that offensive really)
I strongly believe the indoctrination of children to follow a paricular religious belief should be treated as child cruelty, no different than any other form of psychological abuse.
Indeed
I normally give religious groups who come cold-calling short shrift with a curt ‘goodbye’ and door firmly shut in face but recall an occasion when a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses came knocking accompanied by a small, well-scrubbed, rather-too-smartly-dressed child.
Annoyed me intensely and I launched into a one-way shouting match very much along the ‘indoctrination’ and ‘abuse’ lines you write
Needless to say they were totally impervious to my words: the adults smiled vacuously, the poor child stared blankly, and they wandered off to annoy a neighbour
At least they haven’t been back
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