Kingdom of Priests

Kingdom of Priests

How to Write Comedy for Comedy Central

posted by David Klinghoffer | 9:30am Thursday June 11, 2009

Our first-grader, Ezra, recently boasted that his buddy Baruch taught him how to be “sarcastic.” The secret? You say the opposite of what you really think, drawing it out in a slightly lower pitched voice, while rolling your eyes up and making quote marks with your fingers right by the tips of your ears. For example, Ezra might say while wiggling his fingers like little antlers above his head, “Yea-ah, I rea-al-ly li-ike ve-eg-ge-ta-ables.” This represents the height of wit in the first grade.

So too, apparently, at Comedy Central where blogger Dennis DiClaudio takes a stab at my post on the evolutionary thinking of the suspect in the Holocaust Museum shooting, James von Brunn. I think DiClaudio has been getting comedy hints from Ezra’s pal Baruch.

He writes:

Wow. Somebody hurry up and invent an Einstein Award for Excellence in the Field of Thinking, because this Klinghoffer guy totally deserves it.

He has clearly proven that if a person “draws lessons” (otherwise known as completely misrepresenting an idea so as to create a bull—t justification for a flawed and hateful belief system) from a thing, that thing becomes completely responsible the person’s actions.

Clearly, this DiClaudio guy has a bright future ahead on Jon Stewart’s writing staff. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.


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Comments read comments(4)
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Glen Davidson

posted June 11, 2009 at 11:03 am


Yes, the original was sufficiently ridiculous that a parody of it falls flat.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592



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Brian Beckman

posted June 11, 2009 at 12:32 pm


They used to say “punning is the lowest form of humor” but I think sarcasm is. It’s cheap, cowardly, self-indulgent hostility from the weak. It’s hit-and-run. It’s pure destruction, causing the target to waste decoding time. But that’s not what I really think about it :)



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Brian Beckman

posted June 11, 2009 at 2:12 pm


Name-calling, false associations, guilt-by-association (false or not), and smearing are also unimpressive forms of rhetoric, right up there with sarcasm :)



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Joel

posted June 12, 2009 at 8:23 pm


I absolutely disagree your link between Darwin and this guy, but DiClaudio’s comeback was not funny and was barely coherent. That falls under the definately-not-worth-my-time list.



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