Mark STeyn On Being Funny About War, Pestilence And Disease

MARK Steyn on a columnist’s job:
I don’t know why you’d want to be a columnist if you did not appreciate the humor in life. That doesn’t mean being hyper-partisan. You also want to see the comedy in your own side. I don’t like indignation - I don’t think it’s useful. It’s important to be funny about serious things.

The funny writers should be funny about war, famine, pestilence and disease, because it’s an important weapon in discussing those subjects. Someone asked the Ayotollah Khomeini about Islam’s attitude toward jokes, and he said, ‘There are no jokes in Islam.’ We should use jokes to our advantage. Find the comedy in a situation, because that is a good way to change people’s minds on it.

Anorak

Posted: 17th, March 2008 | In: Anorak In New York, Twitterings Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink