[lit-ideas] Re: T'AINT FUNNY, MCGEE

  • From: "Steve Chilson" <stevechilson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 09 Dec 2006 09:05:15 +0000

On Sat, 9 Dec 2006 00:02:21 -0600, "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
said:
> 
> John Cleese, as Basil Fawlty, plays a bigoted, vicious, mean-spirited, 
> sexist, sycophant.  He hates his life, he hates his wife, he hates his 
> workers, he hates women, he hates his customers, he hates everyone and 
> everyone but himself and in every program he is brought low by his blind 
> ambitions, bigotries and human failures.

Does Fawlty Towers really have to be explained?  

Where does Lawrence stand on this?  We haven't heard from him in awhile.
 Is John Cleese a limp-wristed liberal and thus no matter what he does,
it isn't funny, but a sick pandering to terrorists?

  That is where the humor lies in 
> every program.  Everyone else in the show proves themselves much more 
> adroit, adept, and admirable than Basil Fawlty, but he, being Basil,
> never 
> recognizes that.  He is the joke brunt of every program and never knows
> it. 
> And we find it funny.  Why?  Well, I submit, because we all recognize
> parts 
> of ourselves in him.  Each and everyone of us has a Basil Fawlty inside
> us. 
> Hate him though we may, he is partly us.  What can you do then but laugh? 
> Even you, you say, do that.
> 
> 
> 
> > I assume by freewheeling judgments you think it's fine to hit ('spank')
> > children and it's someone's right to take drugs when pregnant and all the
> > rest of it.
> 
> Your assumptions are wrong.  What have I ever said to suggest that?  Only 
> your freewheeling judgments could have posited such.  Pay attention.
> 
> 
> >  Personally, I can't figure out why it's domestic violence if
> > the wife gets hit but it's not domestic violence when a child gets hit.
> 
> Personally, I can't figure out why either is not considered assault and 
> battery.
> 
> Mike Geary
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
  Steve Chilson
  stevechilson@xxxxxxxxxxx

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