Patterico's Pontifications

10/29/2009

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Filed under: Current Events — DRJ @ 9:15 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

A poll about nothing:

— DRJ

UPDATE: The Catholic League thinks HBO and Larry David went too far. So does CAIR:

“In a letter to HBO Chairman and CEO Bill Nelson, Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wrote:

“It is beyond tasteless to insult the religious sensibilities of billions of people in America and around the world with such a cheap and vulgar publicity stunt. Jesus, peace be upon him, is loved and revered by both Christians and Muslims. Muslims view him as one of God’s greatest messengers to mankind.
***
“We understand the drive for ratings, but no one benefits from such a crude attempt to boost the network’s bottom line by manufacturing a religious controversy. HBO should apologize.”

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: Oh, my God. Get a sense of humor, Catholic League and CAIR.

My take is here. And yes, I voted “no” in the above poll. Maybe that’s because I saw the show.

27 Responses to “Curb Your Enthusiasm”

  1. Can I make a million-dollar cash-out peeing on the Quran? Or maybe make five figures peeing on a pic of Obama? How about high four figures peeing on a pic of Che?

    John Hitchcock (3fd153)

  2. Peeing on Jesus is just plain rude.

    Jesus was, by all accounts, a nice and persecuted man. The Roman treatment of Jews back then wasn’t all that different from the way the German military treated Jews.

    It’s like peeing on Anne Frank or Elie Weisel or the Dalai Lama. Irrational and hateful. I get the joke that Christians are soooooooooooooo intolerant and uppity about their stoooooopid horrrrrrible religion that they ‘shove in your face’.

    Why not make fun of the actual people Larry dislikes? I guess he did, since the lady thought Jesus was crying. But it proves the point. If someone had done this to Anne Frank, I do not think Larry would think it was funny, and I do think it would end his career. If someone did this to Mohammad, the same. If Glenn Beck did this to the same, violence would be a real possibility.

    Larry, by thinking this would be funny, proves something about the tolerance and patience of Christians, who learned from Jesus, the guy Larry’s peeing on, to forgive and love and sacrifice for the common peace. Larry doesn’t understand this at all, and that’s terribly sad for him. Even non believers should learn Jesus’s golden rule, which is so much better than Larry’s golden rule, so to speak.

    Dustin (bb61e3)

  3. I thought it was funny. I did a post about it myself.

    It’s like peeing on Anne Frank or Elie Weisel or the Dalai Lama.

    But I can TOTALLY see him accidentally peeing on a portrait of Anne Frank in a Holocaust survivor’s house, for example. For example, he once (on the show) called his wife a “Nazi” to his manager — not knowing his manager had him on speakerphone, and that his manager’s parents, Holocaust survivors, were listening.

    The point is, David makes himself the schmuck in every episode. The more outrageously he offends people, the funnier it is.

    Patterico (64318f)

  4. They guys at my house liked it, too. (Is there a male-female divide on Larry David?) However, I’ve updated this post with links to two sources that aren’t as amused.

    DRJ (dff2ca)

  5. The more outrageously he offends people, the funnier it is.

    I can understand why people think Larry David is funny, but personally I have never taken a shine to him. I think his comedy is too repetitive. For the record, I was never a big Seinfeld fan either. The whole idea of “these people are funny because they are so annoying” wears out on me pretty quickly. I’m also not a Sascha Baron Cohen fan either, come to think of it.

    JVW (d32e06)

  6. Well, that shoots my male-female theory.

    DRJ (dff2ca)

  7. I honestly think it’s because (for better or for worse) I’m pretty similar to him.

    Patterico (64318f)

  8. Well, I watch South Park, so I’m being a hypocrite, I admit. I think it’s easy to shock in a hilarious way.

    I suspect Larry only shocks the groups that are politically correct to shock, such as Christians, right wingers, and Jews (Seinfeld, coincidentally, did an episode on how it’s OK for Jews to make fun of Jews). I thought this crossed the line in the same way it would to pee on Anne Frank. Would Larry do that too? Would it be funny? It would be an effective way to portray himself as a schmuck, I admit.

    I don’t want his speech banned… I just note that Larry is an asshole for peeing on Jesus. Being an asshole is a good way to entertain people and make tons of money. Larry’s not taking the message seriously, I realize.

    Dustin (bb61e3)

  9. I just note that Larry is an asshole for peeing on Jesus.

    Yeah, he’s always the asshole. That’s the point.

    Patterico (64318f)

  10. So the male-female theory is back on the table?

    DRJ (dff2ca)

  11. Since I never watched Curb Your Intellect or South Park or Beavus&Butthead or Simpsons or Roseanne (the teasers were enough to turn me off, semi-violently) I can consider my time less foolishly spent. I also never saw the movies “Donkey” and “Mule 2” if you catch my drift. All that bovine byproduct is beneath contempt and nothing about it is humorous. It’s all about the dregs of society laughing at all the wrong times. And it’s all beyond the pale.

    John Hitchcock (3fd153)

  12. #

    So the male-female theory is back on the table?

    Comment by DRJ — 10/29/2009 @ 10:52 pm

    I’m an outlier in many instances on that whole male/female thing, since I like romance and deep, slow-moving intellectual plots (84 Charing Cross Road, To Sir, With Love) so don’t take your theory back off the table because of me.

    John Hitchcock (3fd153)

  13. I’ve met Patterico…
    I’ve had lunch with Patterico…
    Laugh…
    I thought I’d never start!

    AD - RtR/OS! (c561b5)

  14. I know he’s not saying it’s good to pee on Jesus… he’s showing what an asshole he is to do so.

    I think he, the real man, is an asshole, anyway. He picked an easy target, and for a cliche punchline about sensitivity of Christians, was very obscene. It’s not a big deal that there’s another uncreative hack in Hollywood resorting to crudeness instead of pushing the envelope at all, or being creative. It’s just another episode of ‘bash your own race or bash white christians for being the ironic bigots!’. It would be unfair to expect much more. If he was peeing on Muhammed, HBO wouldn’t have aired it and his head would be rolling down the street. If someone who wasn’t a liberal did this, or attacked the saviors of the left, I suspect Holder would have lawyers working the case.

    So he’s left with only a few decent punching bags. I’m grateful that the PC authorities think it’s OK to make fun of your own little category, so there’s at least a little variety.

    Dustin (bb61e3)

  15. Would this be as funny if he peed on Martin Luther King? What’s the difference? The difference is that one group of people is not as fully fledged human as the rest, and Larry wants to point that out, or is OK with pointing that out in order to get a weak punchline across.

    Dustin (bb61e3)

  16. Sometimes people should be offended. It’s one thing to mock iconolaters and an entirely different thing to engage in iconoclasty. And stuff like this is the reason we don’t watch TV at my house.

    nk (df76d4)

  17. Larry David isn’t even original. South Park already showed you can depict Christ having projectile diarhea but you can’t even have Muhammed standing in a doorway. And it’s always the conservative icon that gets the shower, which is about as original and risky in Hollywood as saying all the problems today are Bush’s fault.

    And at least you included ‘who cares?’. I tried watching his show a few times based on friends recommendations but I found it predictable and relentlessly unfunny, bordering on painful.

    Give me The Larry Sanders Show any day.

    And wasn’t Larry David the tool who compared Dubya training in fighter jets to his own beer runs in the National Guard?

    harkin (f92f52)

  18. It’s easy, isn’t it, for an atheist to tell a believer to lighten up — hey, it’s only sacrilege! Common, people!

    Mike (f52a39)

  19. I don’t watch the show, don’t know who Larry David is. Even if the purpose was to make him (or his character) look stupid – the act itself and how it portrayed Catholics (and Christianity) was wrong. It’s too bad this guy (and/or show) is getting more press.

    Corwin (ea9428)

  20. Some yell “JUMP!” coming upon someone on a ledge or bridge that has issues.

    Some laugh hysterically watching an old lady fall down a set of icy concrete steps.

    Humor allows us to retrograde to our adolescence period, when the distinction between right and wrong were blurry.

    Dencouch (935f74)

  21. for the record, i personally wouldn’t urinate on Ear Leader himself if he was lying in the gutter on fire…. but that’s just me.

    as for urinating on the picture of Christ, that’s okay only if urinating on a picture of every other revered person in the pantheon of such in every belief system around the world was acceptable.

    since we all know its not, it follows that this instance is not either.

    full disclosure: i’m agnostic, and i don’t even know what show is being discussed here, let alone ever watch it. i just despise double standards.

    redc1c4 (fb8750)

  22. I have a roll of TP with Obama’s face on it and will get one with Mohammad’s. Given a public opportunity, I would challenge Larry David to take a roll of each to wipe his butt with on the show, and make it clear who’s picture is on the TP he’s using. If this is just “humor” then he’ll do it. If this is Larry taking shots at people he doesn’t like, he won’t touch the TP except to put it in a shrine to his batcrap crazy liberalism.

    PCD (1d8b6d)

  23. First, there is no such thing as a picture of Jesus. Second, the funny to me is there is an icon over the urinal, checking on circumcisions, blessing your water, or something. Third, he didn’t urinate on Jesus, it just accidentally splashed on the picture. It’s no funnier than if a Jew hung a Torah over the toilet, and some Christian started unrolling it for toilet paper. Why would a Jew hang a Torah over a toilet? The whole scene starts with something patently absurd, that people would put icons around their toilets. The outrage is the point of the humor, that some people will jump the shark, while a few will enjoy the panorama of all the jumpers. Reminds me a little of Andy Kaufman, who revelled in riling the audience with confusing and contradictory images. Too bad they left my favorite verse out of The Bible: “Jesus laughed.”.

    twolaneflash (931ca0)

  24. I think Patterico hits it on the head (#3). Also, from a religious standpoint (I’m a Christian seminarian), there are things that have religious and ethical implications – that actually matter beyond mere offense – around us all the time!! What, seriously, is the bigger affront to Christianity: a crude joke, or war, poverty, domestic and local violence, hunger, suffering? (So too: what, seriously, is the bigger affront to Islam: a bunch of cartoons, or war, poverty, etc.?)

    Yet, it’s so much easier to get all bent up out of shape over that which merely offends the sensibilities, rather than attending to that which actually matters, that which causes suffering to real people, all around us, every moment of every day.

    Tom (04f1d9)

  25. I haven’t seen the episode,but find the show very funny usually. One thing that always bothered me was using the Lords name in vain,i.e. Jesus Christ used in substitution of the F or S words; doubly offensive coming from Jews.There’s no reason to go there at all.
    I won’t watch South Park or Family Guy anymore. They crossed the line from irreverent to blasphemy. It’s okay and even refreshing to have a laugh at the cultural differences between religions. Christians believe Jesus Christ is man and God, respect should be shown to images of the divine. I can’t believe I’m on CAIR’s side of this, but give it to the Moslems, they show respect to the supernatural.

    gunnage (666cf4)

  26. …doubly offensive coming from Jews.

    Wha…??

    Tom (04f1d9)

  27. Patterico, here’s an experiment I’d like you to try.

    Set up in a busy locale downtown one of those little street shrines you see now and then. You know, a framed photograph, some flowers and candles, maybe a couple of teddy bears. The subject of the photograph to be Matthew Shepard.

    Wait until a crowd gathers, then take a 6-beer whiz on the picture. Announce to the crowd “Oh, I’m such an a*hole. Get a sense of humor, people”.

    For your lab report, compare and contrast the reaction to your stunt vs. that of Larry’s.

    Person of Choler (7bb217)


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