Yo, Reader's Digest, please adjust your humor

[elfs]

Reader's Digest "Life Is Funny" joke:

Overheard: Little girl reading a book about knights: "Mom, what's our family crest?"
Mom: "Poor people being crushed by a boot."

Can someone tell me why this is "funny," rather than trenchantly, obviously, painfully true?

Comments

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

Comedy = tragedy + time

We've apparently had enough time. -__-; Welcome to the new Normal.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Do you *want* to know the viewpoint and context from which it is funny?

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

the black comedy comes from them being unusually honest about it.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Yeah, not funny at all. You should write them and complain.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

The humor depends on how you read it. If you identify as the poor folk being crushed under the boot of Capitalism, it's gallows humor.

[kenshardik]

Wait, you read Reader's Digest?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I was stuck at a doctor's office.

[kenshardik]

Ugh. Those are the times when "Golf Digest" catches my eye....

[(Anonymous)]

It's like telling a little girl that there really is no Santa Claus. :-)

[bldrnrpdx.livejournal.com]

Because it isn't happening to you. (A guy falls down through a manhole, that's comedy, I hurt my elbow...)

[pakraticus.livejournal.com]

And if folks think it isn't happening to them?

[amythis.livejournal.com]

I think it's hilarious because it's in Reader's Digest, once one of the favorite magazines of Ronald Reagan. Context is everything. Also, most people like to think that if they'd lived in the past, they'd be the nobility, not the peasants; Cleopatra, not the slave building her monument. This mom is delightfully realistic, although perhaps she should spare her little girl's illusions a little longer.

Painfully true = funny sometimes.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Everyone here needs to have a look at Terry Jones' "Medieval Lives" and "The Secret History of Ancient Egypt" TV programs. (Mr. Jones being "the other Terry" from Monty Python.)

Turns out that a lot of our ideas of the past are, at best, wishful-thinking-history, at worst, outright revisionist-history. And, in both cases, designed to make the plebs feel better about the current state that the patricians have put them in.

The medieval peasant wasn't quite so muck-covered as we like to think. And we're ignoring (or not told) about the social contract between the lord-of-the-manor and his peasants.

As for the Egyptians: laborer's grave after laborer's grave shows expertly-healed broken bones and descent nutrition. And then there's graves themselves: near the Pharoah's pyramid, probably a position of honor. Terry Jones, in his program, describes an ancient document talking about — get this — laborers going on strike to demand more makeup. And they got it!

(FYI: Mr. Jones later reveals that "makeup" in Ancient Egypt acted as sunscreen, eye makeup as anti-glare eye protection. Smart, those ancients.)



So, Summary: No, it wasn't Oh-So-Much-Worse Back Then.