Poet's Eye reprise--Jocularity Strap

[izeveryboyin]

Lrod, your candor is key to the readability of your work. If I didn't admire the sheer audacity of say whatever is on your mind on a regular basis, I probably wouldn't like a lot of it. But this is where we are similar, I think. I don't always agree with your technique, but I do agree that you sometimes have to shock people to make them talk. Although I don't how socially important an issue like sense of humor is, but it sure got you a helluva lot of replies. You remember the New Yorker cover with Barack and Michelle of course. That's your writing style I think. If people can get over the initial gasp and OMG of it all, they can find a really fine-tuned humor and intelligence... however masked. Now, having said all that I must say that this was incredibly offensive, in all the best ways. And yet I still love you, just like I do the New Yorker.

D, insult sandwiches are a tool of satirist everywhere... though I must confess his are somewhat over-used. But I think it's all conditional. When I read something he writes and get offended I try to think about it objectively (after I rip it apart, of course), because a lot of the stuff he writes that I find humorous or witty are typically geared towards a demographic that doesn't include me, and maybe that says something about the way I think. Maybe if I had been a guy reading this I'd have raised a beer in his honor and typed praises instead of criticisms. Or maybe he was just being an asshole. I just read my initial comment to the column and it was a lot more angry, I think. But as I have gotten older, I have realized that taking men too seriously has always been to my detriment, because nine times out of ten, they don't ever mean what they say (the good or the bad). So that being said, whether he's trying to get us to think or whether he's just being an asshole, well, I'm not sure. Let's hope for the former and expect the latter. Oh wait, we've done that already. LOL.

--k