what's the maher-ter?

Next week we'll be discussing (actually, I hope we'll be debating) the arguments Bill Maher makes in When You Ride Alone, You Ride With Bin Laden, so for Tuesday's class, please read to page 85. Resist the urge to be a passive, I'll-let-someone-else-do-the-talking-in-class kind of scoundrel--um, I mean kind of reader. Instead, try to engage with what Maher has to say about post-9/11 American culture--its weaknesses, its hypocrisies, its strengths--with an alert and open mind. Come to class ready to mix it up with your seminar-mates about at least three of his arguments.

To get you in the mood, I want you to try out a Maher-style rant called "New Rules" for your blog post. Maher shares his "New Rules" at the end of his HBO show "Real Time With Bill Maher," and they're basically the New Laws Of The Universe that Maher would enact to make the world a better place to live. You can see examples here, here, and here. The format should look something like this (taken from a transcript of Maher's "New Rules"), and it can be as long or as short as you like:

New Rule: Mitt Romney–must stop using the state of Massachusetts as a punchline unless he prefaces it with, "You know, the state that is so horribly liberal I chose to live and raise my family there for the last 30 years." You don't hear Bush shitting on Texas or Cheney making fun of Transylvania.

You don't have to mimic Maher's politics, just his style, and you can post on everything from daily annoyances to political gripes to other people's bad fashion sense. Post as many rules as you like, but try to come up with at least one.

(Can't think of a "New Rule"? Okay, do a little research and explain to us the proper use of a dash. One good place to look might be The Chicago Manual of Style. If someone beats you to the dash, explain to us the proper use of the colon. Yes, I mean the punctuation mark.)

slurs and satire

(please submit your posts to the other blog!)

Alright, folks. Building on Thursday's discussion, please address your blog post to one of the following topics:

1. This film short, Tokyo Breakfast, was featured on a part of The N Word: Divided We Stand that we didn't get a chance to see. What is the film satirizing? (Need help establishing critical distance from the clip? Try thinking about the analytical words that made it onto the board today like "context," "speaker," "race," "class".)

2. The "N word" played a crucial role in last night's episode of "South Park." Randy Marsh, Stan Marsh's father, made it to the bonus round of "Wheel of Fortune," but when he tried to solve the final puzzle, he made a terrible mistake (this version is longer, if also kind of creepy; you feel like you're watching television in a stranger's living room. . .um, because you kind of are). Give us an analysis of Randy's gaffe. What are the significant factors at play here? Where do you locate the irony? What do you make of the different reactions from the camera man, the studio audience, Randy's fellow townspeople, his family?

3. You've all heard of Michael Richards' infamous tirade at a Los Angeles comedy club last November, but you might not have seen it. It's pretty jarring, even if you know what to expect. For a few seconds, it appears that Richards is trying to turn outrageous, bigoted behavior into social commentary. "Alright, you see this shocks you to see what's buried beneath," he says tauntingly to the audience, as if it is their reactions and not his that are really at issue. What do you think?

4. At last Friday's Conservative Political Action Conference, Ann Coulter used the word "faggot" when talking about Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards. Later on the Fox opinion show Hannity and Colmes, Coulter claimed that "faggot" is nothing more than a "schoolyard taunt." “It isn’t offensive to gays,” she said. “It has nothing to do with gays. It’s a schoolyard taunt, meaning wuss. And unless you’re telling me that John Edwards is gay, it was not applied to a gay person." Do you agree or disagree? Why?

how to write smart and influence people

Over the weekend, I asked you to write about something in Lenny Bruce's How to Talk Dirty and Influence People that struck you as illuminating, interesting, exasperating, confusing, troubling--in short, an event, a description, an explanation (a joke, a pun, an anecdote, etc.) that really made you think. In your small group today, you had a chance to talk about the thoughts, ideas, and associations that this section of Bruce's memoir conjured up for you. Now I want you to take this process to the next stage and write a 3-4 page paper that will be due on Thursday, March 15.

Broadly speaking, I'm asking you to write a response paper. That is, I'm asking you to respond in essay-form to a text I assigned in our writing seminar. But you may notice two important differences from many response assignments. First, I'm not telling you what part of the text to respond to. I'm leaving that up to you. Second, I'm not asking you to produce a response filled with data--facts, dates, names, etc. Instead, I'm asking you to engage in a process, to question and wonder and reflect, to try to come up something that is slightly more fresh, interesting, original than what you ormally get to write. You can write a paper that closely analyzes the language/rhetoric Bruce uses in a particular section, you can make a strong but less-than-obvious point about a moment in the text (e.g. 'Someone has created the closed-circuit television network that Lenny Bruce wanted to build to connect lonely, isolated people (p. 15)--it's called the internet, and Bruce would have loved it/hated it'), or you can do something completely different. If you like, use what you brought into class today as the kernal of your paper. I'm giving you over a week to work on this paper, which is more than you'll need to. I'm trying to dissuade you from putting your writing off until next Wednesday.

Email me with any questions. Good luck!

lenny bruce is still not afraid

Everyone from Eric Bogosian to Kenneth Tynan to Mort Sahl can agree that Lenny Bruce was irreverent, controversial, ground-breaking. But what about you? What have you found in L. Bruce's autobiography that merits attention? In the spirit of that question, I want you to do two things for Tuesday's class. First, I want you to find a section of Bruce's autobiography--an event, a description, an explanation--that strikes you as illuminating, interesting, exasperating, confusing, troubling. In short, something that makes you think. Second, I want you to write a half-page to a full-page account of what that section brings into focus--or brings into collision--for you. Bring three copies of your writing to class on Tuesday. If you need a nudge to get you started, consider L. Bruce's observations on pleasure and the body. Or language and innocence. Or loneliness. Or violence and war. Or entertainment. (Or, of course, forget all of these, and dig into the book on your own.)

For Sunday's blog post, please select from the following topics:

1. Give us a Lenny Bruce-inspired, stream-of-consciousness rant about something that Cornell undergraduates should care about, dammit.

2. "I'm not exactly sure, but I think that Thank You Mask Man is sort of about. . . ."