Thoughtless for the Day

"There's no female Mozart for the same reason that there's no female Jack The Ripper."

- Camile Paglia

Is it possible that there's no female Lenny Bruce for the same reason that there's no female Carrot Top? A few weeks back, in an issue of Vanity Fair, Chris Hitchens (perhaps to get a rise out of a large segment of the population: that is to say just to be Chris Hitchens asked the question "Why aren't women funny?" Read the article and see for yourself whether or not Hitch has a point.

If Chris does has a point, it couldn't have been reinforced any better than by Laura Kipnis' attempt to debunk his thesis in a piece for Slate. As proof positive of the comedic achievements of people with two Y chromosomes, Ms. Kipris (which is a funny name - sort of ) offers up the book Him Her Him Again The End of Him by Patricia Marx (AKA "Sucko Marx". If you think that was too harsh for never having read her book, just continue on). Kipris then offers the following side-splitting examples Marx's wit:

[On William Empson] "Don't you think a better title would be Seven or Eight Types of Ambiguity?"

and

"Hypochondriacs make me sick."

The Fuck you say. Look, I love a dry, intellectuall joke as much as the next guy (but appearntly not as much as the next gal seeing as how I laughed all the way through Tristan Shandy which, coincidently, Vienna found not the least bit funny), but those are the sort of jokes that you'd expect from a freshmen at an agricultural college... for the retarded.

So, if Marx's book (Das Crapital?) has all the comic potential of a trip to a burn unit what could be the real reason why Laura Kipnis chose Him Her Him Again The End of Him when there are so many funnier books written by women (Toni Morrison's Beloved, for example) gathering dust on the shelves of her local Costco? As it turns out, Eugene Lobello, Him Her Him Again The End of Him the character whom the heroine falls for, is a "thinly disguised" version of Kipnis' real life former boyfriend. Ohhhkaaaay. We get the picture. It's a revenge piece.

Had Ms. Kipnis' scribbling had contained itself to taking a swipe at her ex-beauzo, the piece might've actually been somewhat readable; unfortunately, Laura soldiered on her indictment of Chris Hitchen's theory. Now, there are plenty of brilliantly funny women, Wanda Sykes for example, whose names you could invoke in an argument against Hitchen's premise. Surprisingly, Kipnis actually chooses to quote a funny woman: Sarah Silverman.

"I was raped by a doctor. Which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl."

It may not be Silverman's funniest joke (that honor goes to "I love you more than bees love honey / I love you more than Jews love money / I love you more than Asians love math / I love you more than Puerto Ricans hate baths") but it's pretty damn good. That's why I was so stunned that Kipnis got it wrong. Sure the little note at the end of the story says " An earlier version of this article quoted Sarah Silverman's joke about being raped by a doctor imprecise" but what it fails to tell you is that the word that Kipnis got wrong was bittersweet: the word on which the whole joke turns. Men, raise your hands if you've ever sat there wincing while a woman butchered a joke. Yeah, me too.

Let me tell you 'bout your blood, bamboo kid. It ain't Coca Cola: It's rice.

- The Clash, Straight to Hell

There's no arguing with evolution (unless you're a retarded, snake-handling, monkey-fucking fundie) which has caused men and women to develop significant differences in their brains. This isn't to say that women aren't as funny as men, it's just that men and women are funny in different ways: Compare and contrast the acrid kneecap-breaking quips of Dorothy Parker with the verbal Kamikaze attack of George Carlin and you'll begin to get an idea of how men and women are funny in different ways. Now, here's an interesting experiment: Compare and contrast the painfully unfunny Whoopee Goldberg with the human shit-stain that is Gallagherand you might come to the conclusion that, while both men and women can be funny in different ways, they seem to be unfunny in exactly the same way: by sucking goat balls.

What does it all mean? Fuck if I know. Let's groove on the comedy styling of sixty-year-old former heroin addict and convict Dr. Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda - the Hispanic Jesus (No, not "Hey Zeus" - "Gee-zuz"):