Brilliant pundit and brillianter author Andrew Klavan has a great piece in the City Journal. I’ll include a few excerpts to whet your appetite, but this is one you need to read all the way through to appreciate. (And, for the record, I found the joke very funny.)
“Well, I was walking on the beach,” says the man with an orange for a head. “I found an old lamp in the sand and took it home. When I polished the lamp, a genie came out and offered me three wishes in return for setting him free…”
Anyone who has written for the movies has encountered producers or studio executives who have read, perhaps, Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces or Robert McKee’s Story or Christopher Booker’s Seven Basic Plots or something like them… One famous director, who has made several terrific films, even has a chart on his wall showing precisely where the hero of a story must meet certain obstacles, reach the nadir of his adventure, begin his rise to redemption, and so on… But continually to construct your stories according to their universal frameworks is ultimately to guarantee creations that are blandly commercial at best and empty, cynical, and stale at worst…
…study after study shows that faith, self-reliance, and chastity make human beings happier and healthier. Yet not only do we abandon these behaviors individually out of personal folly and weakness; we dismantle them as a society by intention and design, preaching and modeling lifestyles to our young that are almost guaranteed to make them sad and sick and dependent… the earth, as if beneficent, has poured millions of years’ worth of energy into the fossils of its dead creatures, presenting us with the Promethean gift of fuels that elevate us beyond the imaginations of our ancestors. Our response? We nurture a superstitious dread of oil and coal and promulgate pseudoscientific disaster scenarios meant to teach panic and to quench the very fire of our freedom…
I don’t get it.
I get it, but I don’t think it’s the funniest thing I ever heard. Maybe that explains why Klavan is famous and I’m not.
Great article, in any case.
Has there ever been a Scandanavian comedian,Lars?
Victor Borge was a pretty funny Dane (though the fact that he was Jewish might explain that). Louie Anderson is Scandinavian, I think. Ludvig Holberg, a Norwegian who wrote in Danish, was a classic comic playwright.
Exactly.
I like the last paragraph in particular. It presents the oxymoron that is mankind. Wish for something good and when you get it, you’re afraid to use it. Of course if man had not fallen in the garden of Eden, the world and all it contains would not have been cursed and all things would be perfect. God gave man a choice to love or hate Him. He wants our love out of free choice, not because He has to force our worship.
And the word, “Islam” translates to, “submit.”
I saw this in a side bar when I clicked through to something Instapundit linked to. It perfectly demonstrates the last paragraphs point:
“We’re sick of all these so-called relationship experts telling ladies the way to snag a man is to keep it in your pants, er, skirt. Listen, you prisses, not only are we way too old to be virgins, but we sure as hell are glad we’re not! Holding out for some kind of commitment only makes a gal feel like her vag is her primary value, not herself. Lame! And what about our desires? Doesn’t that matter? Frankly, you have to test-drive some cars before you know which one you wanna buy, if you know what we mean. No matter what kind of sex you’re into, there are certain experiences we think every woman needs to have before she settles down.”
They not only want to encourage promiscuity but actually angrily shame women into taking their advice. It’s like they can’t even conceive of a world where self-control is of any value. And I love the idea that no matter what the experts say, no matter how many studies show that “try before you buy” isn’t working to make stable relationships, they know best because they have desires and we all know that those never lead us wrong. The list they make is silly too (I didn’t post that). I don’t think they get that experiencing all that doesn’t add to their value either. Sexual compatibility is not the pinnacle of relationships. Sex is important in a marriage, but any differences can be worked through by a couple who are mature enough work on it. In fact, I would go so far to say that working through those difference instead of looking for easy perfection is an indicator of how mature a person is. Ugh. Well, at least they’re efficient. I’ve rarely seen so much anti-biblical advice in so few words.
Yeah, I’m not sure I get it either.
That’s a funny joke! I emailed it to my parents, and I got an email back in response that just read “BOOOOOO!”
I e-mailed it to my folks too. Over 24 hours and no reply. My hunch is my dad will like it and my mother will not get it and think it dumb.