Response to Drewe's Post #1

I think that Drewe clearly has an understanding of what Carlin is doing in his act. Pointing out the audience’s own insecurities with language is a way of making the audience both extremely tense because of the taboo nature of the discussion and also extremely relieved that someone is pointing out an obvious flaw with the fact that this is in fact taboo. While Drewe has summarized Carlin’s argument well, Drewe has failed to explain the type of humor used and why it is so effective. My own argument as to why Carlin is so effective is that his entire act releases societal tension. Imagine a stereotypical sixty year-old librarian with her hair in a tight bun spontaneously laughing at the release offered by Carlin’s act. The reason this act is so successful is because it takes our social contract (as it pertains to language) and throws it completely out the window. It allows people to experience unbridled language, without having to deal with societal norms. The argument here is that this type of restriction is useless. By making fun of it and using naughty language, Carlin desensitizes the audience, joke by joke. This continued assault, done properly, plays directly into the Freudian theory of humor being the mention of the taboo. Where other comedians often use humor without argument, Carlin clearly has an argument. The interesting part about this entry and Carlin’s routine is that while the audience laughs and realizes the fallacy of euphemisms, as soon as the audience members return to a different environment they revert to the old social contract to behave in an appropriate manner, Thus, Carlin’s argument is unsuccessful as an argument. Still, as a piece of humor, it is hilarious.

Do We Need Guns to Protect the Third Amendment?

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/third_amendment_rights_group

This piece from the Onion addresses the political issue of Second Amendment rights through parody. By using the Third Amendment, an amendment of which nobody has had anything controversial to say about in two hundred years, the author is poking fun at the ferocity with which people fight over the Second Amendment.
The similarities between the rhetoric of the “NAQA” and the “NRA” is immediately striking. Firstly, the NAQA group holds an annual gala, with a president and a keynote address. This level of organization and pomp is something the NRA is known for. In a play on the slogan, “hands off of our guns,” the article quotes NAQA’s president as saying, “Hands off our cottages, livery stables, and haylofts. The article also notes that the groups slogan, “Keep the fat hands of soldiers out of America’s larders,” as well as the grassroots movements to protect the Third Amendment. This once again bears a striking resemblance to the efforts and slogans of gun proponents.
Additionally, the article makes a number of logical leaps, which support NAQA’s platform, but are a stretch to the average Joe. The article makes allusion to the Engblom v. Carey case, which is an actual case from 1982. The court held in that case that indeed, Engblom’s Third Amendment rights were violated. Nonetheless, nobody outside of the legal field or perhaps even constitutional scholars would have even heard of this case. By highlighting it as “a chilling reminder of how even an established 200-year-old right hangs by a slender thread,” the author is continuing to make a complete an utter mockery of the seriousness with which people take the gun debate.
The end of the article loses its appearance as even remotely serious when protesters stand vigil outside of the house of a Navy seaman’s family gathering and it is noted that the former president of NAQA left to head a different and equally useless organization.
The point of this article seems to be to amuse, but to amuse along a political line that most everybody would recognize. By using the Second Amendment debate as the framework for its parody, the article can simply substitute ridiculous Third Amendment examples to get cheap, but somewhat clever laughs. I don’t think the author is taking a stance on either side of the Second Amendment debate, but rather using it just to make people laugh. It creates an unusual humor, one that is quite interesting when an author takes a topic people have very strong opinions on and parodies it with a topic that nobody cares about. The fact that the parodied issue is an uncomfortable one makes the reader a little uncomfortable throughout the article but as usual with Onion articles, the realization that no serious political point is being made releases tension and makes us laugh – or at least according to the tension-release theory of humor.