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

[madfilkentist]

Kinky Friedman isn't funny. He's a nasty lunatic.

[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).

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I tried to think about whether or not he was funny, as something completely independent of his candidacy. This is harder for people with a strong personal connection to Texas politics, and easier for someone who thinks everyone in Texas might as well go to hell (and the personal distinctions within the handbasket aren't very important.) I read the entire interview, and did not see any jokes I considered funny. I did not even see even see anything I could recognize as a joke. No shortage of nastiness, though.

[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.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Here are some bits I liked:

(He's 61, though "I read at a 63-year-old level.")

He fundamentally understands how absurd it is to spend two years of your life begging people to love you, to secure a job in which half the population at any given time will hate you. I get the sense it's made him an action junkie, though he insists if he loses, he'll "retire in a petulant snit" to a life of quiet contemplation.

"Common sense, common honesty--that's all it takes. That's all I've got. And sometimes I'm not sure about common sense."

I admit they weren't as funny the second time around. On the second pass, the hostility level seemed kind of high, though not to the point where I was especially offended.

I think I like one-liners--I heard a Robin Williams interview on NPR recently, and the only part I thought was funny was "What if Bob Hope were entertaining the troups in Iraq" bit.

[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.