Category Archives: Humor

Wisecracks: Humor and Morality in Everyday Life

Philosopher David Shoemaker writes in his new book: * The funniness in jokes is found primarily in their logical or semantic structure. Many writers like to point to the incongruity of jokes as the source of their funniness, perhaps involving … Continue reading

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Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter (2-18-24)

01:00 Dooovid’s renunciation of humor, https://twitter.com/RebDoooovid02:00 Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=15411213:50 Dooovid: People who like me find me funny23:40 Dooovid – the most serious guy in the shul 25:00 … Continue reading

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Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States

Political scientist Dannagal Goldthwaite Young writes in this 2019 book: * In their 2014 book The Outrage Industry, Jeffrey Berry and Sarah Sobieraj chronicle the growth of a new genre of political programming through the 2000s; programming that places a … Continue reading

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Extemporaneous Blending: Conceptual Integration in Humorous Discourse from Talk Radio

Cognitive Science professor Seana Coulson writes in 2005: * When speakers produce language, listeners use that linguistic input along with background and contextual knowledge to set up simple cognitive models in mental spaces (Coulson, Semantic Leaps). Similarly, when people look … Continue reading

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When Did It Become A Bad Thing To Be Offensive?

When Jews like Lenny Bruce and Al Goldstein were on the way up in America, it was a great thing to be offensive. In the 1950s and 1960s, Jews led the fight for free speech. Now they lead the fight … Continue reading

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