He Thinks He Is Funny, But We Are Not Laughing
Michelle Malkin found this piece from Joel Stein this morning. This piece was originally published in the New Yorker.
Dude, we totally know what you're thinking. That you'll have to wake up early. That we'll make you run all day with heavy stuff on your back. That you have to be drug-free, know how to read, and rank the U.S. as one of your top five favorite countries. Wrong, wrong, and wrong! And whatever else you're thinking? Wrong!
The Army is actually a whole lot of fun. Picture this: You get up—ten, eleven, whatever's good for you. Then we have brunch. Pancakes, waffles, French toast, some grease if the night before was a rough one. Sugar cereals. Then, at 1200 hours—just kidding! nobody here uses that number thing anymore—around noonish we hit the Xbox for a few hours of Halo and all-you-can-eat Cool Ranch Doritos. It's combat training without breaking a sweat. After a quick nap, we pack in some more training by watching a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie marathon. Then a dinner of chipped beef on toast, dehydrated mashed pota- Again, totally joking! We're having Taco Bell every night, all night, washed down by some of the best that Milwaukee has to offer.
As for uniforms, could that G.I. Joe crap have been any dorkier? Our new fatigues are super-comfy zebra-print pajama pants and a T-shirt from Nazareth's Hair of the Dog tour. How freaking intimidating is that going to be to other countries?
A lot of you may have seen movies or heard stories about mean drill sergeants. No more. Not only do the new Suggestion Sergeants use phrases like “Do you mind counting off?” and “Drop and give me twenty whenever you get a minute” but they actually encourage you to yell at them. That's right, you—who we're guessing have never even been able to tell an A.T.M. machine what to do—will now be telling a decorated seventy-five-year-old Korean War vet that you'll unscrew his head and shit down his neck. How sweet is that?
You may have also read—read! psych!—you may have heard some Morning Zoo d.j.s say something about base closings. That's because we're consolidating into one huge training base that we're calling Fort Vegas. And what happens in Fort Vegas goes straight up on http://www.army.mil/fortvegas/poolsidecam for all your civilian friends to drool over. Who's bragging about their precious high-school diplomas now?
We've also realized that the title “Private” is demeaning. It makes you sound shy and socially awkward and unable to function in society. That's not you, no matter what your guidance counsellor told you. Now, while we can't hand out “General” or “Supreme Allied Commander” right away, we can offer you a whole bunch of options. Through a special arrangement with LucasFilm, you can enter the armed forces as, for example, Sith Lord Wojoski or Jar Jar Sanderson. We even have an exciting design-your-own-rank program. One of our best new recruits is Neutral Evil Half-Elf Druid McCallister. And you know what? If McCallister believes his “Little Mermaid” poncho is a cloak of invisibility, we believe it makes him invisible, too. That's where we're at right now.
When you look at female soldiers, we know what you're worried about: the “L” word. Lynndie, as in England. We assure you, our female recruits don't look like that. In fact, there's this one who looks like a cross between Pam Anderson and Gisele Bündchen, only with bigger breasts. Picture that with a cigarette in her mouth, holding a leash! I don't think the international community would be complaining. Plus, we hear she just broke up with her boyfriend. Now she's just looking for someone who is down to earth and isn't a jerk and will watch sports with her. We can introduce you.
Some of you might still be thinking that though the Army sounds neat, you're not so keen on getting killed overseas in some country you couldn't find on a map, if for some reason you accidentally clicked on a map. No worries. We've been fighting for three years now, and—get this—we've racked up so many points that we've got tons of bonus lives. You could actually die in two or three suicide bombings and be totally fine.
And James Lileks weighs in on Joel Stein.
And then there’s Joel Stein. I should note that I usually don’t write about other “humorists” because it’s such a subjective genre. My work, I’m sure, leaves many people with a permanent Buster Keaton expression. Some people tell me to read such and such, guaranteeing I will sunder my abdominal walls with convulsive mirth, but it often turns out to be that curious sort of humorous writing that’s never actually funny. It has the structure and appearance of humor, but it’s a honeycomb without honey. Having judged a few humorous writing contests, I can attest that this sort of stylist is common in the small-town weeklies. They don’t often make it up to the majors. It’s truly rare for a C-grade humorist to fail upwards nowadays, moving one from national gig to the other, making a series of sweaty attempts to connect with an audience that has no clear idea why this oddly charmless fellow has been given another gilt-edged soapbox.
But it happens.
Picking on an average Joel Stein column is like arranging your old Powerball tickets in chronological order; it’s something to do, but the effort seems misplaced. As far as I can tell he seems a nice enough fellow, certainly not full of boiling bile - rather, he has the certainty you often find in 17 year olds whose Social Studies teacher just assigned a Howard Zinn book for the class. He put his foot in it this week, however, and Mr. Hewitt’s flensing revealed a rather silly, callow fellow. Better to listen to it than read it; you get the full effect.
Well, he’s guaranteed himself a big atta-boy from everyone who’s ever been inconvenienced by one of those interminable military processions that clog our streets every day. And he’s contradicted his entire column to boot – he has no problem with other people who support the war or the troops, no sir; he’s just Mr. Private Citizen who prefers to go his own lonely way. But NO PARADES, because Joel does not think there should be parades. In the spirit of compromise, he also declines to spit on soldiers, so you can’t say he’s completely unreasonable.
A tip for Mr. Stein from someone who also does the self-deprecation-via-self-aggrandizment schtick:
The goal is to make yourself appear endearingly clueless.
So, Mr. Stein's two pieces--the one from yesterday and the one cited above--are supposed to be humorous? Am I understanding that correctly? Well, as you can guess, I am not laughing. I find both pieces unamusing, even taken lightly, and I find both to be more than elementary in their approach. No offense, but James is correct. He does remind me a great deal of a slacker 17 year-old know-nothing that has little to offer the world, whether it is the world in general or the world of failing journalism.
In short, and according to the Stanford Alumni magazine that interviewed him, Joel Stein is a dork. Well, maybe not a dork, but he is clearly clueless. He might consider himself intelligent, but I question where he believes it comes from. The New Yorker piece is pure pap as he equates the men and women serving in the military to little nerds that have little to do during the day other than playing video games. And what is truly sad is that he even equates their training to a first-person shooter game. Pathetic.
I may have never experienced boot camp, but I know far more than Mr. Stein when it comes to the military. Likewise, Thomas has shown that he has more knowledge regarding the military, and he too has never served. Our knowledge comes from the research and reading that we have done on a regular basis. It takes only a little time to educate oneself what the military is about, and what the soldiers go through. Indeed Mr. Stein stepped in it, and he deserves every nasty e-mail from the public that he receives.
A piece of advice for Mr. Stein the next time he finds himself so hilarious that he feels he needs to write it down and submit the drivel as a column: You are a hack humorist that could not even fathom what humor really is. Take the time to research you subject before makig an ass out of yourself, and raising the ire of the reading public. You can save yourself a hefty drug bill from the cases of Excedrin you may end up buying.
The Bunny ;)
Michelle Malkin found this piece from Joel Stein this morning. This piece was originally published in the New Yorker.
Dude, we totally know what you're thinking. That you'll have to wake up early. That we'll make you run all day with heavy stuff on your back. That you have to be drug-free, know how to read, and rank the U.S. as one of your top five favorite countries. Wrong, wrong, and wrong! And whatever else you're thinking? Wrong!
The Army is actually a whole lot of fun. Picture this: You get up—ten, eleven, whatever's good for you. Then we have brunch. Pancakes, waffles, French toast, some grease if the night before was a rough one. Sugar cereals. Then, at 1200 hours—just kidding! nobody here uses that number thing anymore—around noonish we hit the Xbox for a few hours of Halo and all-you-can-eat Cool Ranch Doritos. It's combat training without breaking a sweat. After a quick nap, we pack in some more training by watching a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie marathon. Then a dinner of chipped beef on toast, dehydrated mashed pota- Again, totally joking! We're having Taco Bell every night, all night, washed down by some of the best that Milwaukee has to offer.
As for uniforms, could that G.I. Joe crap have been any dorkier? Our new fatigues are super-comfy zebra-print pajama pants and a T-shirt from Nazareth's Hair of the Dog tour. How freaking intimidating is that going to be to other countries?
A lot of you may have seen movies or heard stories about mean drill sergeants. No more. Not only do the new Suggestion Sergeants use phrases like “Do you mind counting off?” and “Drop and give me twenty whenever you get a minute” but they actually encourage you to yell at them. That's right, you—who we're guessing have never even been able to tell an A.T.M. machine what to do—will now be telling a decorated seventy-five-year-old Korean War vet that you'll unscrew his head and shit down his neck. How sweet is that?
You may have also read—read! psych!—you may have heard some Morning Zoo d.j.s say something about base closings. That's because we're consolidating into one huge training base that we're calling Fort Vegas. And what happens in Fort Vegas goes straight up on http://www.army.mil/fortvegas/poolsidecam for all your civilian friends to drool over. Who's bragging about their precious high-school diplomas now?
We've also realized that the title “Private” is demeaning. It makes you sound shy and socially awkward and unable to function in society. That's not you, no matter what your guidance counsellor told you. Now, while we can't hand out “General” or “Supreme Allied Commander” right away, we can offer you a whole bunch of options. Through a special arrangement with LucasFilm, you can enter the armed forces as, for example, Sith Lord Wojoski or Jar Jar Sanderson. We even have an exciting design-your-own-rank program. One of our best new recruits is Neutral Evil Half-Elf Druid McCallister. And you know what? If McCallister believes his “Little Mermaid” poncho is a cloak of invisibility, we believe it makes him invisible, too. That's where we're at right now.
When you look at female soldiers, we know what you're worried about: the “L” word. Lynndie, as in England. We assure you, our female recruits don't look like that. In fact, there's this one who looks like a cross between Pam Anderson and Gisele Bündchen, only with bigger breasts. Picture that with a cigarette in her mouth, holding a leash! I don't think the international community would be complaining. Plus, we hear she just broke up with her boyfriend. Now she's just looking for someone who is down to earth and isn't a jerk and will watch sports with her. We can introduce you.
Some of you might still be thinking that though the Army sounds neat, you're not so keen on getting killed overseas in some country you couldn't find on a map, if for some reason you accidentally clicked on a map. No worries. We've been fighting for three years now, and—get this—we've racked up so many points that we've got tons of bonus lives. You could actually die in two or three suicide bombings and be totally fine.
And James Lileks weighs in on Joel Stein.
And then there’s Joel Stein. I should note that I usually don’t write about other “humorists” because it’s such a subjective genre. My work, I’m sure, leaves many people with a permanent Buster Keaton expression. Some people tell me to read such and such, guaranteeing I will sunder my abdominal walls with convulsive mirth, but it often turns out to be that curious sort of humorous writing that’s never actually funny. It has the structure and appearance of humor, but it’s a honeycomb without honey. Having judged a few humorous writing contests, I can attest that this sort of stylist is common in the small-town weeklies. They don’t often make it up to the majors. It’s truly rare for a C-grade humorist to fail upwards nowadays, moving one from national gig to the other, making a series of sweaty attempts to connect with an audience that has no clear idea why this oddly charmless fellow has been given another gilt-edged soapbox.
But it happens.
Picking on an average Joel Stein column is like arranging your old Powerball tickets in chronological order; it’s something to do, but the effort seems misplaced. As far as I can tell he seems a nice enough fellow, certainly not full of boiling bile - rather, he has the certainty you often find in 17 year olds whose Social Studies teacher just assigned a Howard Zinn book for the class. He put his foot in it this week, however, and Mr. Hewitt’s flensing revealed a rather silly, callow fellow. Better to listen to it than read it; you get the full effect.
Well, he’s guaranteed himself a big atta-boy from everyone who’s ever been inconvenienced by one of those interminable military processions that clog our streets every day. And he’s contradicted his entire column to boot – he has no problem with other people who support the war or the troops, no sir; he’s just Mr. Private Citizen who prefers to go his own lonely way. But NO PARADES, because Joel does not think there should be parades. In the spirit of compromise, he also declines to spit on soldiers, so you can’t say he’s completely unreasonable.
A tip for Mr. Stein from someone who also does the self-deprecation-via-self-aggrandizment schtick:
The goal is to make yourself appear endearingly clueless.
So, Mr. Stein's two pieces--the one from yesterday and the one cited above--are supposed to be humorous? Am I understanding that correctly? Well, as you can guess, I am not laughing. I find both pieces unamusing, even taken lightly, and I find both to be more than elementary in their approach. No offense, but James is correct. He does remind me a great deal of a slacker 17 year-old know-nothing that has little to offer the world, whether it is the world in general or the world of failing journalism.
In short, and according to the Stanford Alumni magazine that interviewed him, Joel Stein is a dork. Well, maybe not a dork, but he is clearly clueless. He might consider himself intelligent, but I question where he believes it comes from. The New Yorker piece is pure pap as he equates the men and women serving in the military to little nerds that have little to do during the day other than playing video games. And what is truly sad is that he even equates their training to a first-person shooter game. Pathetic.
I may have never experienced boot camp, but I know far more than Mr. Stein when it comes to the military. Likewise, Thomas has shown that he has more knowledge regarding the military, and he too has never served. Our knowledge comes from the research and reading that we have done on a regular basis. It takes only a little time to educate oneself what the military is about, and what the soldiers go through. Indeed Mr. Stein stepped in it, and he deserves every nasty e-mail from the public that he receives.
A piece of advice for Mr. Stein the next time he finds himself so hilarious that he feels he needs to write it down and submit the drivel as a column: You are a hack humorist that could not even fathom what humor really is. Take the time to research you subject before makig an ass out of yourself, and raising the ire of the reading public. You can save yourself a hefty drug bill from the cases of Excedrin you may end up buying.
The Bunny ;)
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 11:47 AM
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