Ain't too proud to blog: and it's all your fault I screen my phone calls

I thought we had made it out of this one without the jokes....I guess some things never change.

I posted my exscuse this morning as to my reasoning for not posting after visiting backwash. Liked the panty comment. That was funny as hell. ;]

¤ ¤ credit: Heath | 03.19.02 at 03:52 AM | link-

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I am so utterly sickened and disturbed that people turn a tragedy with over 3,000 lives lost and out city and country under attack for some cute little jokes. It seriously makes me violently ill since I live in New York and I live a mile from Ground Zero. It also makes me ill (on an unrelated topic) to see shoe designers selling American chic for a mere $700: Calvin Klein and Manolo Blahnik shoes - so we need a world tragedy for people to act patriotic? :(

¤ ¤ credit: felicia | 03.19.02 at 06:45 AM | link-

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Remember that Public Enemy song "911 is a joke"? I ran across that one last night and I just could not download it even though I used to like that one.

¤ ¤ credit: JE | 03.19.02 at 10:10 AM | link-

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I'm guessing saying stuff like;

"Crash and burned into the Pentagon" means you had an inevitable run in with authority and failed?

"I got the boxcutters in" means you slipped stuff past security.

"I was Al-Quaeda'd" means you got tracked down and wiped off the face of the Earth for being scum.

But does "bad" still mean good? ¤ ¤ credit: D | 03.19.02 at 10:18 AM | link-

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You know what? Whenever something becomes topical and we are inundated with it through the media, you will probably find that terminology related to the topical event will filter into our conversation as slang. This is so especially at the teen ager level, where there is a drive to speak differently, to think radically, etc. I don't think its anything to worry about, to obsess about, I don't think they are trying to be funny or rude, they're just being normal teen agers.

If anything, I think you should be thankful. It speaks volumes to the resilience of the human spirit, when they start to use those terms in that manner. It says to me that the terrorists can try their best, or their worst as the case may be, they can never hope to kill the spirit of those teen agers, or to defeat the American culture. Y'all are above such attacks.
Hope you understand what I said... I'm not sure if I did myself. :-) ¤ ¤ credit: Mad Bull | 03.19.02 at 11:10 AM | link-

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I Completely and utterly disagree -- I am not quite sure the victim's families of the world trade center would really feel that way -- that these "jokes" are a display of the human spirit. It is purely ignorance and disrespect to those that have lost their lives. I am glad a world crisis is being labeled as "topical" -- I perceived it to be a national tragedy. I find nothing funny by having a distinct smell hover over New York City for weeks after the attacks and to see crumbled buildings by where I live -- which are the center of these jokes. I find it blatantly pathetic and sick that these jokes are even made.

¤ ¤ credit: felicia | 03.19.02 at 11:41 AM | link-

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Felicia, you are viewing things from a perspective of loss. It is natural for you to be hurt by 9/11 jokes. The majority of the world, though, did not actually suffer that loss.

As we're hanging out on websites, thousands of real people are dying horrible deaths. Some are due to "natural" disasters, and some caused by other people. If each of us held onto the anger and pain for each of those tragedies, we would become paralyzed.

Instead, we deal with uncomfortable situations by finding humor in it. For every joke made on the Tonight Show, morning radio, or around the water cooler at work there is usually a very real tragedy that continues to affect very real people.

Think of all the jokes about OJ, or shark attacks, or Shandra Levy, or even the ones written on bombs dropped on Afghanistan. Think about terms like "going postal".

There are real deaths attached to the gallows humor, but it is the way humans heal and move on with life. While you have a right to mourn for your loss, you cannot expect the world to stop, or to feel the loss as keenly as you do.

¤ ¤ credit: wKen | 03.19.02 at 12:51 PM | link-

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Oh, I forget, it was a New York loss, a New York tragedy, a New York attack, a New York war not a world tragedy and an attack on democracy and the freedoms of our country. Only New Yorkers should feel loss. So sorry my apologies....No, the world shouldn't stop or feel any loss...this was just another day in New York. Save it.

I'll remember to pass on a joke while I pass the firefighter's house and see how they deal with it. Give me a break. There is nothing funny about joking about people's deaths -- only people that have nothing better to do with their time and their lives then to draw pathetic humor.

I am over this conversation since there is NO other argument.

¤ ¤ credit: felicia | 03.19.02 at 02:19 PM | link-

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Felicia, I hate to say it like this because it's cliche...but "kids will be kids"... When I was in the third grade the Pope got shot. As they were reading the story on the news, I laughed. My mom was horrified thinking I was laughing because he had almost been killed. But I was laughing because the hat was silly. At that point, I was grounded in order for me to learn respect -- and received a History lesson on who he was and why I should respect him. (And my family is Southern Baptist.)

While I am shocked and horrified at the slang, I also realize that most of these kids either don't realize and/or weren't raised any better. If I heard one of my children uttering one of the phrases in the article -- I'd have to resist my temptation to knock them into next week, and instead sit down and try to explain to them why what they are saying is "wrong" and isn't funny.

Before 9-11, two of the worst "recent" events in American history were Kennedy's assasination and the Challenger explosion. Both are now the subject of jokes in this country. In fact, I remember as a child the following joke going around my school, which is completely horrifying and tasteless:

Q: What color were Christa McAuliffe's eyes?

A: Blue. One blew east. One blew west.

They are only acting by example set for them and allowed of them, IMHO. And it's our responsibility as parents and future parents to show them through History exactly why this is not appropriate.

¤ ¤ credit: robyn | 03.19.02 at 02:24 PM | link-

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Language is a forever changing record of the culture that speaks it. Phrases that we rarely examine, such as "rule of thumb" or "turn a blind eye" have their origins in real historical occurences. The events of 9/11 had a very dramatic impact on the lives and perceptions of many people, and using linguistic cues that are tied to those events does provide a sort of conceptual shortcut for communication.

Contrary to the opinion that felicia seems determined to cling to until death, people can acknowledge what happened on September 11 as a tragedy and get on with their lives.

People die horribly at a ferocious rate pretty much everywhere that isn't North America and Europe. Whether you realize it or not our language is peppered with slang references to apalling massacres outside of our immediate cultural surroundings. Why aren't strident harpies relentlessly wailing about those incidents? In my experience it's because those are exactly the sort of people who ignore the suffering of others but can't imagine how others can ignore their suffering.

¤ ¤ credit: jamese | 03.19.02 at 03:40 PM | link-

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From a personal point of view it's not something that I can laugh at yet. Not sure if it ever will be. It was just too large a tragedy for me to find any kind of humour in it. The loss of the world's (or MY world's) innocence is something we're never getting back. The fact that this happened in downtown NYC means it could happen where I live too. It was way too close to home for me. I have a wicked sense of humour, but not about tragedy on a scale like this. EVER.

¤ ¤ credit: Joanne | 03.19.02 at 04:30 PM | link-

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I generally see where each of you are coming from on most of the points that have been given thus far... but, wKen has a very good point with the whole people die everywhere, all of the time, scenario. The world is full of contradictory causes; malaria v. AIDS, terrorism v. "protection" of the "American" way, etc... The NY Trade Center attacks are a tragedy, but so are soooo many other instances that I am sure felicia, you have made jokes about in the past. The key for our entire nation, is to not get so mixed up in the negative emotion and the idea of "loss of American innocence", but to come together in a time of support. Which by the way, we ALL did, and are still doing quite fervently. I intended to only log on to make the comment of: WOW! A Heathers reference! But what all of you said warranted a more heartfelt posting.

¤ ¤ credit: Susan | 03.19.02 at 11:55 PM | link-

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I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't suggesting we should all throw a barbeque and swap WTC jokes. The events of September 11 themselves are, to my mind, always going to be tragedies that will be remembered with sadness. But using language derived from those events, in my opinion, does not in and of itself trivialize the dead and the grief of the survivors. Although few would argue with the statement that the Nazi regime committed appalling crimes for which they should forever be reviled, most laugh at the Soup Nazi character on Seinfeld. We're not laughing at "the final solution", we're laughing at the incongruous but appropriate use of "nazi" as a metaphor.

¤ ¤ credit: jamese | 03.20.02 at 12:39 PM | link-

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Jamese, did you just invoke "Godwin's Law" in my blog?

¤ ¤ credit: robyn | 03.20.02 at 12:54 PM | link-

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it says that Godwin's Law only applies to usenet... and since this isn't a newsgroup, well...

¤ ¤ credit: mikey | 03.20.02 at 07:19 PM | link-

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That definition is actually aaaages old, created back when Usenet was one of the only Internet mass-communication tools. It applies 'net-wide now. ;-)

¤ ¤ credit: robyn | 03.20.02 at 07:54 PM | link-

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