For the record, there are two ways to have a celebrity endorse a cause. The wrong way:
What a turd of a commercial. Who wants to wait 15 years for a cure? Possibly people whose disease takes longer than 15 years to kill them. GRRR.
The right way:
I really only posted on this subject so that that link so I could post a link to an article on Fark entitled, "Rush Limbaugh says Michael J Fox exaggerates his symptoms in commercials. Michael J Fox shakes his fists... accidentally" Is it wrong to laugh at that? Yes, I know if you have to ask, you probably already know the answer. It is wrong to laugh at another's misfortune. Limbaugh is still an asshole. I find laughable the notion that a collection of cells no larger than the head of a pin is causing this much of an uproar. An embryo is not a human. If experimenting on small collections of cells shows promise in curing cancer, spinal cord injuries and diseases of the brain, then go right ahead.
Updated (10/26/2006 8:22 AM): To correct my idiotic grammar.
6 comments:
I guess science, like everything else in this world, should be instant.
Since the embryos are not children yet, they can't say "it's for the children" so they have to say "it's for the low income woman". You know because she will do anything for a buck.
I guess science, like everything else in this world, should be instant.
Since the embryos are not children yet, they can't say "it's for the children" so they have to say "it's for the low income woman". You know because she will do anything for a buck.
Okay before start this, let me preface this by saying what Rush Limbaugh said was in incredibly poor taste, insensitive, and most importantly, unfunny.
But I have to respectfully disagree with you on the assertion that it is *never* okay to make fun of another person's misfortunes. That's just outright false. If that were the case, pretty much the library of civilization's humor would be reduced to Marmaduke and the Family Circus. Waving your finger and poo-pooing someone with some hyperbolic Sunday-school style rule like "It's *never* okay to do x" completely removes our ability to intelligently apply context to situations.
For instance: One time, I was in a liquor store in Ann Arbor, and someone had left the door open to the staircase that descended to the wine cellar. Plastered on the inside of the door were all sorts of lost media relics from Ann Arbor's counter-culture. One small poster that stood out to me was a crude stencil of President Reagan with the words "America's Favorite Vegetable" below it. And guess what? I laughed. Because it was funny. And there was a dark and complex level of humor that required knowlege of CONTEXT to understand.
I have a friend at work who has a dark little tirade about strip clubs, and some hypothetical situation about how he would be picked by the stripper with obvious mental disabilities. This is usually accompanied by descriptions of her bike helmet and an absolutely hilarious mush-mouth retard impression that goes something to the effect of "Ooanna dancf?"
Prat falls, pies in the face, kicks to the groin, hunchbacks, pokes to the eyes, bad teeth, mental deficiencies, accidental death, suicide, Princess Di, feeding tubes, cancer, large asses, AIDS, addiction to pain medication, and, yes, Parkinsons...the LIST GOES ON. These things are not entirely funny, but they do carry with them a context that can be bent to the will of the human capacity for humor.
High brow, low brow -- funny is funny, and a great deal of our ability to cope with the unceasing tide of shit that life deals us stems from the derision of the misfortunes of others with the stipulation of a proper context. What Limbaugh said failed on every level of my humor litmus test, but not because of some fake, immutable law of what is okay and not okay to make fun of.
So what could be funny about Michael J. Fox rocking back and forth in a chair talking about stem cells? Certainly not the fact he's probably going to die of Parkinsons. Nor the pain he's going through. Nor the toll this disease has taken on his family. Nor the accusation that he's faking it. MAYBE the hypothetical outtakes that could have resulted in the making of the McCaskel commerical. I'll leave the details as an exercise to the reader.
I will accept the rebuke and also admit that I'm the cow-orker that first thought up the retarded stripper. Tell me that's not funny. You are right never is too strong a word and any sentence that uses it should probably be questioned immediately. I would like to point out that I didn't use the word never. I used the word wrong and I think I meant it in terms of definition number seven on this page. You will also note that I was asking if it was wrong for me to laugh at the joke in the headline on Fark. I'd argue that by the definition I cited I'm still within the correct usage without falling into the trap of using absolutes.
Is it okay yet?
Is what OK?
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