Richard Glover Lacks Sense of Humour About Atheists
Yesterday on Richard Glover’s Drive (ABC local radio, Sydney), according to sources, Glover, who has built his considerable celebrity on unfunny puns and predictable punchlines, testily exhorted atheists to “get a sense of humour”.
How true! Your Common or Lesser Spotted Godbotherer is such a hoot, after all. Who can forget the hilarity of the Spanish Inquisition? Or the Taliban’s side-splitting public executions of women in the Kabul soccer stadium? Or al Qaeda’s laugh-a-minute comedy, 9/11 , with its follow-ups, World’s Craziest Suicide Bombings Parts I, II, III … (N) … directed by Allahu Akbar?
George W. Bush’s Iraq War II, of course, was a comedic tour de force in the grand tradition of The Great Crusades: Episodes I to IX. And that girl being stoned to death for “adultery” should have been caught on Somalia’s Funniest Home Videos! (After all, the girl being whipped for leaving home without a male escort made it onto Paki-Standup-TV, didn’t she?)
Yes, the religious are so much more relaxed and chilled out and ready to laugh. The Mohammedans, for example, were significantly more giggle-ready when they saw those atheistic Danish cartoons than any of your straight-laced, po-faced atheists would ever be if confronted with a satirical image of their own atheist god, Charles Darwin. Chuckling behind his bushy pantomime beard, Groucho Marx eyebrows and silly dress-up turban, Ayatollah Khomeini was virtually doubled-over with mirth as he delivered his sidesplitting fatwa on Salman Rushdie.
Thanks, Richard, for the depth of your wisdom, for your fair and balanced advice, and for not letting your personal opinion get in the way of your deadpan public pontifications. And for being a real chucklehead we can look up to.
[tags]religion, humor, humour, comedy, fatwa, Khomeini, Ayatollah, al Qaeda, al Qaida, 9/11, Taliban, kabul, Afghanistan, crusades, middle east, Iraq, George Bush, Rushdie, Spanish Inquisition, values, religiohs values, Australian values, Australian media, ABC, ABC radio, Richard Glover, Somalia[/tags]
Posted: 2 October, 2009 in Australian Values.
Tags: 9/11, ABC, ABC radio, Afghanistan, al Qaeda, al Qaida, australian media, Australian Values, Ayatollah, comedy, crusades, fatwa, George Bush, humor, humour, Iraq, kabul, Khomeini, Middle East, Religion, religious values, Richard Glover, Rushdie, Somalia, Spanish Inquisition, Taliban, values
Comments
Comment from roger migently
Posted: 4 October, 2009 at 1:57 am
Never let it be said that I discouraged the putting of bread on the table by any ethical means possible – or even perhaps by unethical means if the children are starving.
Glover has made a nice living and gained some success and even celebrity by his own talents, efforts and industry and that enterprise and courage are not to be sniffed at.
Indeed, he and I are not so different. We share an opinion about the best school in Sydney.
But, you know, he is not the cleverest, or the deepest, or the most iconoclastic, or the most insightful or original thinker of our age. I think although he’s not really UNintelligent, he’s so old in the head now that he just works from his formula, his “schtick”. I’m sure he’s not religious because I believe he and Jocasta have what is called a “common law marriage”. He’s probably just one of the lazy ones who thinks he’s cleverly hedged his bets by avoiding making a decision one way or the other. Trouble is, if there IS a god, being an “agnostic” sends you to Hell just a swiftly and surely as being an atheist will.
What I resent is his perpetuating an unthoughtful and in fact bloody WRONG stereotype about atheists. Some – perhaps most – of the most hilarious comedians are atheists. Being an atheist in fact means that you have to see the absurdity of it all (as well as, of course, the wonder of it all) and absurdity leads to … laughter.
Comment from laird lang
Posted: 3 October, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Lesser Spotted Godbotherer
That would be the remark of the year.
Glover has always come across to me as the Alvin Purple of his ilk, enough to make a living, not into the Adams territory.
That may be unkind, so he, calling his family rather comic names is I imagine a way of putting bread etc:.