Month: April 2022

Florida’s Governor DeSantis says he is punishing the Disney corporation for speaking out against the his “Don’t Say Gay Bill”, a bill aimed at preventing  kindergarteners to 3rd graders from being taught anything relating to LGBTQ. 

Of course everyone knows these kids aren’t old enough to give a DeSantis about LGBTQ.  So, what’s the real reason for taking away Disney’s authority over its park? And what’s the real reason for making sure no-one says “Gay” in kindergarten to 3rd grade classrooms?

To gin up Trumpers!  

In running against Trump in 2024, he needs to win over Trumpers. The way to do that is to out-Trump Trump. And the way to out-Trump Trump is to scare Trumper parents into thinking their kids are in danger of becoming… LBGTQ! And the way to do that is by telling them LGBTQ is a teachable event, not a hormonal one.  After all, there’s nothing about it in the Bible, right? 

So, scaring parents is good. But out-Trumping Trump by smacking Disney upside the head is even better. DeSantis’ thumping one of the biggest media corporations in the country is bound to scare other media corporations into political compliance, something Trump was never able to do. Yeah DeSantis!

Well…maybe not.

Maybe DeSantis is also ginning up moderates of both parties who see his “Don’t Say Gay” bill as the political stunt it is. 

And maybe, when Orange and Osceola citizens have to shoulder Disney’s billion dollar bond debt, not to mention every day municipal costs (fire, water, sewer, police, etc…) – up to $2200 per household -they’ll get ginned up too – against DeSantis.

On the other hand, that can’t happen until 2023, well after DeSantis wins the  2022 election for Governor of Florida. By which time he will be well on his way to a White House bid.

Right?

The source of most humor is pain. Someone trips over a banana peel, flips head over teakettle, and we crack up. Why? Because he had no idea it was coming. We laugh at someone else’s pain, even if it’s just embarrassment.

You know what was funny about Chris Rock’s joke about Will Smith’s wife, actress Jada Koren Pinkett Smith, being bald?  Not much, really. (Next time, don’t forget the banana peel Chris.)

What was funny is what happened immediately afterward: Will Smith marched onstage and slapped Chris Rock, spiking his career… Will Smith’s, not Chris Rock’s. Chris’ career is soaring, now.  Will Smith just lost a bunch of contracts, which is funny – in an ironic way of course.

See that’s the basis of humor – someone gets hurt, screwed, or upended totally unexpectedly.  

Guys, particularly, like physical humor. That’s why the Three Stooges get laughs today, almost 100 years after they first made audiences laugh. 

My first grade teacher always said, “Use your words, Henry” And I did. But I got a lot more laughs when I tripped over my untied shoe lace or caught a baseball with my face than when I screwed up a math problem.

Women usually get laughs with their words.  They are more sophisticated I guess (I’m a guy, so Mars and Venus).

Humor isn’t always funny.  Like when I flunked Statistics 101. There was nothing funny about having to repeat the dullest course in all of schooldom… schooldumb.

Humor has also traditionally been a way to of trying to deal with very unfunny stuff. 

When I was still in my formative years, a TV comedy named “Hogan’s Heroes” made fun of a German WWII prisoner of war camp or “stalag”. Its first season was 20 years after the end of WWII, enough time, I guess, to erase the horror of real Nazi stalags. Actor John Banner became arguably the most famous character in the cast with just one line, “I know nu-uh-thing!!!” Although the show was a hit, some of the WWII vets I knew had a hard time with it.

“Mash”, a war comedy about the Korean War was launched 20 years after that war. But because its audience was still experiencing the Viet Nam War, its humor often recognized the stupidity, futility, and immorality of war instead of erasing it.

I wonder if 20 years is Hollywood’s magic number for dealing with the horrors of war. I kind of doubt it’s the magic number for many others.

I think it will take a lot longer than 20 years to erase the horrors of the war Russia is raging on Ukraine. Like many of my generation, the images from Ukraine feel like color renderings of photographs from WWI and WWII. 

The places, the faces: identical. Putin, Hitler: identical. The US then and now: we can only hope.

Which brings me back to the Will Smith-Chris Rock fluff-up. Chris Rock’s joke was funny to him because he thought Jada Koren Pinkett Smith had shaved her head to look cool. It wasn’t to Will Smith who knew the real reason: a skin disease. 

But you know what’s really funny about the whole thing? The media spent nearly as much time on that story as the Ukraine story. Ok… not funny…at least for 20 years or so.