{"id":29340,"date":"2022-07-08T14:08:51","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T18:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=29340"},"modified":"2022-07-08T14:09:14","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T18:09:14","slug":"why-the-anti-woke-beavis-and-butt-head-clip-is-so-hilarious-and-a-real-threat-to-white-privilege-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2022\/07\/08\/why-the-anti-woke-beavis-and-butt-head-clip-is-so-hilarious-and-a-real-threat-to-white-privilege-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Anti-Woke Beavis and Butt-Head Clip Is so Hilarious\u2014and a Real Threat to White Privilege Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1937, Boris Orman was working at a bakery in Russia when he shared a joke over tea with his colleague.<\/p>\n

\u201cStalin was out swimming, but he began to drown. A peasant who was passing by jumped in and pulled him safely to shore,\u201d the joke went, according to<\/a> British writer Jonathan Waterlow. \u201cStalin asked the peasant what he would like as a reward. Realising whom he had saved, the peasant cried out: \u2018Nothing! Just please don\u2019t tell anyone I saved you!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The joke is hardly the funniest ever told, but Orman was nevertheless one of countless Russians in the Soviet Union who received a 10-year stint in a labor camp for uttering the jibe. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, got off a bit easier. He received a mere eight-year sentence in the Gulag after Soviet authorities intercepted a letter he wrote to a friend in 1945<\/a> that made a crack about Stalin and criticized the Soviet system.<\/p>\n

One might be tempted to think the Soviets just had really bad senses of humor, but there\u2019s a reason totalitarians and authoritarians seek to suppress jokes.<\/p>\n

History shows humor is a tool that empowers. It can fortify humans during dark and deadly times<\/a>, and it can destroy an idea just as effectively as reason, though it\u2019s arguably most powerful when it\u2019s combined <\/em>with reason.<\/p>\n

The most famous such example might be Jonathan Swift\u2019s classic essay A Modest Proposal<\/a><\/em>, a masterpiece of satire that exposed the impoverished conditions of the time by saying poor Irish families could alleviate their condition by selling their excess children to rich people for food<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Combining humor with pointed social commentary is a strategy employed by countless comedians\u2014old and new\u2014including Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, Dave Chappelle, and Bill Burr.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to Mike Judge.<\/p>\n