A little milestone was reached today at 12:15pm: the 15,000th comment on this blog. (Of course, if I could count all the spam comments, I would have reached that number long ago. Since Akismet was installed here at WordPress.com, it has caught 311,640 spams 
)
So to whom goes the honor of having posted comment #15,000? I’ll let you figure it out 
Here is a snippet:
You want to know what’s really obscene? AMC showing what is perhaps the greatest movie in the world, ever – Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles – in an edited form on television. Enough butchering to make a grown man cry.
Ever the movie buff
11 Comments
Ha! I know! I know! I was with him while he was watching it.
“No. No. No. YES! YES! No.”
I don’t comment here enough to have been in the running, but for a change, I have to agree with MB. My assistant — a black woman — had never seen the unexpurgated version of “Blazing Saddles” until I lent her my DVD. She found it riotously funny, understanding the use of a certain racist expletive for what it was: parody of the attitudes that underly its use.
And thus James achieves the unlikely, making even the extraordinarily funny quite unfunny.
I can’t decide if explaining the joke is what made his comment unfunny, or if I simply feel uncomfortable with the fact that he felt compelled to make it a specific point that his assistant is a black woman while I’m not sure what that particular detail added. In any case, I’m glad we can all find common ground in agreeing that the irreverent humor of Mel Brooks adds some much-needed levity to our lives by parodying the serious and making it hilarious.
I’ve never seen Blazing Saddles. Based on MB’s description, I was thinking it might be something I’d enjoy. Based on James’ – well, I think I’ll pass.
And thus MB demonstrates that he is, to quote another movie line — this one from “Taps” — “living proof that horse’s asses outnumber horses.”
As for you, anonymous, my comment wasn’t intended to be “funny”; it was intended to be a narrative explaining the corrosive effects of political correctness. I suppose that trying to do so to the terminally earnest was a fool’s errand, but as a litigator, I frequently cast pearls before swine to little effect.
And VJP, you needn’t change your plans on my account. The point being made was that all things in appropriate context can have their intended effect. However, if you are among the aforementioned terminally earnest, then I would advise you — by all means — to avoid “Blazing Saddles,” and comedy in all forms.
That James believes this is what makes him occasionally amusing, himself.
Vivian — Blazing Saddles is a fantastic movie.
Try a few YouTube clips.
Casting pearls before swine is an interesting way to characterize the content of your penultimate comment: that even black people can find the racial parody in Blazing Saddles entertaining.
I really didn’t earnestly believe that you meant for your comment to be amusing, I was just trying to be polite and allow for at least the possibility of doubt. It was definitely the fact that you felt like you had to point out that your assistant is a black woman that made me feel uncomfortable, as I thought it ought to be taken for granted that people across a broad spectrum of backgrounds can enjoy ridiculing white frontier racists and the Klu Klux Klan.
Why did you feel compelled to tell us you have “black friends?”
(btw Vivian, your spam filter has decided it hates “anonymous” again)
“Silence,” I certainly agree that “it ought to be taken for granted that people across a broad spectrum of backgrounds can enjoy ridiculing white frontier racists and the Klu Klux Klan.” Indeed, I suspect that it is a majority view.
However, the fact that one cannot find the unexpurgated version of “Blazing Saddles” on broadcast television (what’s next? Censoring “Roots’” use of the same word” ) demonstrates to me that this is far from the fact, however, which was the genesis of pointing out my assistant’s race for purposes of demonstrating what you “take for granted” cannot be, given the realities and pernicious effect of “political correctness.”
That wink was wholly unintended.
(fixed-vjp)