"We will not be able to recover the vision and understanding of God's grandeur until we recover an understanding of ourselves as creatures who have been made to know such grandeur. This must begin with the recovery of the idea that as beings made in God's image, we are fundamentally moral beings, not consumers, that the satisfaction of our psychological needs pales in significance when compared with the enduring value of doing what is right. Religious consumers want to have a spirituality for the same reason that they want to drive a stylish and expensive auto. Costly obedience is as foreign to them in matters spiritual as self-denial is in matters material. In a culture filled with such people, restoring weight to God is going to involve much more than simply getting some doctrine straight; it's going to entail a complete reconstruction of the modern self-absorbed pastiche personality."
- David Wells
Thursday, July 24, 2008
This isn't a political post. I just thought this was funny. The last three points are below:
He called his own grandmother a racist. We all have racist grandmothers, but we don't brag about it to everyone. I like to imagine that his granny wasn't that bad and that Obama was just super-sensitive. Like she would tell him it was bedtime and he'd yell, "Oh, I have to go to bed because I'm black!" Or she'd tell him to clean up his room and he'd start yelling, "Oh, clean my room, huh? My people stopped obeying the white woman 100 years ago, Grammy!" Then they'd both laugh and she'd whip him."Mei Mei was going to be a lot less fun than Susie was." - heh heh.
His name is weird. The unfunny people beat us to the Osama/Obama bit, which really could have been mined. But Obama also dropped the "Barry" nickname in college. Do you remember those classmates who suddenly found their culture and had to share it with you like they were on the ninth step of AA? You just wanted to trudge through "Portrait of a Lady," but they felt compelled to sit you down in the dorm hallway and explain how they're no longer Susie, they're Mei Mei now. Then they recounted their whole journey of identity by using a lot of words that made it clear that Mei Mei was going to be a lot less fun than Susie was.
His platitudes need deconstruction. "We are the people we've been waiting for"? Actually, I'm pretty sure we're the people who put all our money in Yahoo and then bought a house to flip and now are hocking everything we have. We're the people China has been waiting for.
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Comments on "How To Make Fun of Obama":
3. Quaid
- 07/24/2008 8:52 am CDT
If you only read Bill's excerpt, stop, go back and read the whole thing. That was hilarious.
Unfortunately, the written medium is a different ball of wax than the late-night comedy circuit. I think the late-nighter who can successfully begin making fun of BO on a regular basis will find their ratings creeping upwards. People love to laugh about the people they love - if it's good.
4. salguod
- 07/24/2008 11:43 am CDT
This line is great:
comedians have appeared on every news outlet to whine about how hard it is to make fun of Barack Obama. Really? They have an arsenal of jokes to use against a 71-year-old ex-POW cancer survivor and Obama is too touchy a subject?
5. Milly
- 07/24/2008 9:38 pm CDT
I'm still not finished making fun of Bush. I'm soooo last year. :-(
I'm not ready to decide who to make fun of yet.
6. Quaid
- 07/25/2008 9:00 am CDT
The point is that we should be able to make fun of both of them . . . Right?
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Joel Stein is great and that is very funny.