Stepping Stone to the Presidency

[nancylebov]

An interview with Kinky Friedman, who's running for governor of Texas. I recommend reading this because it's funny. I'm not including a sample because I think the jokes work better if they're read as part of the whole piece, but trust me on this--Kinky tells jokes rather than joke-like objects.

Link thanks to libertarianhawk.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

"Funny" is an objective thing. I was amused by most of the quotes from him, and he's apparently generally considered a pretty good entertainer.

On the other hand, he might still be a nasty lunatic. Why do you think so?

[madfilkentist]

He has said he would declare martial law to keep wetbacks out:

Friedman has called for 10,000 troops on the border and said he wants them armed to stop illegal immigration. Asked whether he would declare martial law in border cities to give troops law enforcement authority, he said yes.

Granted, these days that just makes him a typical Texas politician. But that's not mutually exclusive with being a nasty lunatic.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

OK, you're right. He's dangerous, though I'm not sure where I draw the line on lunatic.

He's still funny on other subjects.

As some slight consolation, Penzeys (seller of excellent spices) is soft on immigration.

It's not that Penzeys has political influence, but I'm so sick of how normal Americans feel about immigration that when I saw Penzeys had an article about immigration, I was braced to hate them too. It was a pleasant surprise when the article turned out to be pro immigration.

[redbird]

I suspect you mean "subjective" here.

In any case, the distinction is between whether Friedman is, at least sometimes, a funny writer/stand-up comedian, and whether his candidacy is funny, and whether voting for him would be a good idea (three separate things, I think, of which the third is probably the most important to Texans right now).

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

No, I meant objective. I can tell whether I'm amused. Admittedly, not all laughs are spontaneous, but I can tell if one of mine is spontaneous.

What amuses people is idiosyncratic, but I believe that whether they're amused or not is a matter of truth.

[redbird]

Ah. That makes sense: it's a different angle on "objective" than I was thinking of.

I'm used to saying that whether something is funny is subjective, because it is so idiosyncratic: what I find funny you may not, and what I find funny today I might not have yesterday or tomorrow. It's not a repeatable property like temperature or, for that matter, color. (If I define "blue" as "within this range of wavelengths" and "funny" as "makes the hearer/observer laugh," we can get pretty good agreement on whether a particular book cover is blue, much better than on whether the book inside is funny.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

It's a non-standard angle on "objective". However, I think that's why bigotry tends to fall faster in entertainment and sports than in a lot of other fields. It's easier to tell whether someone has entertained you than whether they're a good bank president. I also suspect people care more about whether they're entertained than they care about almost anything else.

[libertarianhawk.livejournal.com]

Personally the biggest factor in #3 is how badly he'd upset both sets of career politicians in Austin. Closest I can come to a true "none of the above" vote.