Godzilla in Clown Shoes

Last night's tweets;

Mental blitzkrieg fills Nordstrom's with diapers.
Cocoanut gauze falls from the cartoon girl.
Stapling thieves cut odd paperwork capers.
Beneath discount summer wear's a dull pearl.

One of the first things I read after I woke up to-day was this Huffington Post article about Red Letter Media's YouTube review of Attack of the Clones, continuing the story of Mr. Plinkett, the elderly psychopath who narrated the famous Phantom Menace review. I watched the Episode II review on Sunday, and I thought it was good, though not quite as insightful or funny as the first review.

Anyway, I found myself sort of fascinated by the reader comments on the Huffington Post story about it. Several people referred to the video as misogynist while one person talked about how the creepiness of the old man is typical of Star Wars fanboys. I used to marvel at how utterly without a sense of humour conservatives can be, but the past couple years have offered me plenty of examples of liberals for whom humour seems to be like a Lovecraftian, impossible colour or geometric shape that can only inspire a mild madness.

Let me see if I can break it down for some folks. Let me see if I can address this in terms simple enough without shivering in disgust. Okay;

Just because someone tells a joke about something doesn't mean they endorse it. Just because someone speaks, dresses, or acts a certain way on video doesn't mean they speak, act, or dress that way in life. Some people, referred to as "actors" will actually pretend to be other people, sometimes people with a sense of morality different from their own.

Fuck, I can't do it. I just don't have the benevolence. I'm already picturing these folks burning actors at the stake for casting glamours.

I suppose, granting a complicated system of doubts, I can say the salient issue here is whether or not it's okay to make jokes about really bad things. I guess one could then go into debates about the cathartic value of humour, or about how taboo subjects introduced unexpectedly with a certain logic provoke giggles precisely because they're inappropriate. To be honest, I find myself inclined to think people who claim not to understand this intuitively are doing so because of some perhaps subconscious psychological agenda, some commitment to an idea that fears to permit any shades of grey to an issue lest it lead to more careful contemplation. So I guess it's hard for me to be diplomatic about this one.