0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Will Rogers once observed that “Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.” No one ever personified Rogers’ rule as much as University of California, Irvine instructor Matt Goldman, who cracked everyone up this week by joking about celebrating the anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk by alluding to the possible assassination of independent journalist Nick Shirley.Today is the anniversary of the murder of Kirk. In anticipation, Goldman posted a picture of Shirley with the line “Someone can do the funniest thing just before the Kirkiversary.” It was a response to an Instagram post by the Harvard Republican Club promoting a speech by Shirley.Goldman reportedly has long found the deaths of disfavored people to be a real knee-slapper, allegedly mocking the deaths of Henry Kissinger and others. Indeed, Goldman takes Gallows humor to a particularly dark place in American politics. ...
Growing up, most Americans shared an infallible civic idea: pluralism— the belief that people can coexist peacefully despite differences in opinions, lifestyles, and beliefs. It wasn’t just a cultural preference; it was woven into our founding documents. Many of us grew up with family stories of ancestors who fled the Old World for the New to escape religious persecution. That history shaped a national expectation: people could and should live together in harmony, even when their beliefs diverged. ...For most of our history, political differences were expected — often heated, sometimes passionate — but rarely grounds for ending a friendship or freezing out a sibling. We debated issues with the understanding that if we had walked in another’s shoes, we might share their views.But sometime in this century, something changed. We stopped agreeing to disagree. Americans began turning on one another not because of race or religion, but because of political disagreement. For many, pluralism no longer applies to politics. ...
Author
Topic: “The Funniest Thing”: Academic Jokes About Celebrating the “Kirkiversary” by Assassinating Nick Shir (Read 242 times)
