Your Momma!

Your momma is so dumb, it takes her two hours to watch “60 minutes!”

Laughing? Probably not. It might be because the joke isn’t all that clever. But it also might be that even though I don’t know your momma, saying something demeaning about her, even when it’s intended as “humor,” is insulting and hurtful.

That’s the whole point behind “The Dozens”—particularly “You momma is so . . .” jokes. It makes no difference if you know the joke teller has never met your mother; just commenting on her appearance, intelligence, or sexual proclivities is enough make you burn.

Why is that, and what does it have to do with Rush Limbaugh? (And no, I won’t go into a litany of “Your right-wing demagogue radio host is so fat . . . “ jokes.)

I suggest it’s because words do things. Words are actions, not passive containers of “truth.” If they were, “Your momma” jokes would be meaningless. If you told me, “Ted, your momma is so fat, when she jumped up in the air, the bitch got stuck,” I’d simply reply, “Actually, that isn’t the case, even on a metaphorical level. My mother was always of approximately average weight for a female of her height and age.”

But since words do things, I’d probably take a swing at you. Not because what you said was or wasn’t true, but because you had violated a basic standard of decency.

In our post-Imus phase of public discourse, that’s important to keep in mind. How many times have you heard public figures (or people you know, for that matter) write off an inappropriate comment by saying “it was just a joke?”

There are cases when this defense is appropriate, particularly if the hearers didn’t understand that it was meant as a joke. If correctly understanding the statement hinges on recognizing the humor (such as in irony or satire), explaining the humorous intent can clear things up.

But in the case of Imus and “your momma” jokes, this isn’t the case. Everyone knows the intent is to say something amusing (at least from the point of view of the speaker). The animosity doesn’t come from misunderstanding the intent, but from the words themselves.

This takes us to Rush Limbaugh, one of the practicing masters of the unfunny joke. On a recent broadcast, Limbaugh said that Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, “must’ve been a liberal,” citing Cho’s paranoid ramblings about the evils of a hedonistic culture and wealthy fellow students.

After saying “a liberal committed this act,” Limbaugh attempts to defuse any counterattack by anticipating it:

Now, the drive-bys will read on a website that I'm attacking liberalism by
comparing this guy to them. That's exactly what they do every day, ladies and
gentlemen. I'm just pointing out a fact. I am making no extrapolation; I'm just
pointing it out.

Of course, extrapolation is precisely what he’s doing, but let’s let that slide. The more important rhetorical move Limbaugh makes here is to deny he’s doing precisely what he’s doing by preemptively predicting he’ll be called out for it. By anticipating the predictable criticism he’s in for, Limbaugh wants his audience to write it off because, after all, the media is simply doing exactly what Rush said they would (as if the predictability of the response somehow invalidates it).

But Limbaugh goes even further with an unintentionally hilarious defense of his comment after Media Matters for America posted a transcript of his initial comments linking the Virginia Tech massacre to liberalism.

Claiming he had intended to reveal how willing liberals in general, and MMFA in particular, to take conservatives out of context, Limbaugh said that MMFA had fallen for his ploy “hook, line, and sinker.” He doesn’t say in what way MMFA took him “out of context,” although the clear implication is that he wasn’t being serious.

But, as with the “your momma” jokes, identifying the remarks as humorous doesn’t do a thing to diminish their offensiveness. Words do things. Using an unspeakable tragedy to score cheap political points is despicable in and of itself. It’s offensive not only to liberals, but to all those touched in any way by the events of ten days ago.

Just in case you’re of the mind that somehow framing a comment as humor, no matter how appalling, makes it okay, it pays to look at this little nugget of cognitive dissonance Limbaugh serves up:

I was making a joke about the -- I was just setting everybody up to see how this
stuff works, although I do believe that it was liberalism that got a hold of
this guy and made him hate things, professors and this sort of thing. [Emphasis
added]

So, Limbaugh was making a joke, but he wasn’t joking.

The larger issue here, and one that I’ll only touch on (I’m sure they’ll be occasion to explore it more deeply) is the extent to which this sort of humor . . . or discourse . . . or whatever . . . is motivated by (and creates) a sense of reveling in division. The point of such comments isn’t to forward an idea or make a claim, but simply to wallow in the masturbatory pleasures of self-righteous self-congratulation—congratulation for not being one of “them.”

Such use of rhetoric is hardly limited to Limbaugh or conservatives. Indeed, such rhetoric depends on “them” using similar rhetoric. Hence, we see Limbaugh’s preemptive enactment of what “they” will say about his statement; much of the purpose of making such statements is to goad the other side into reacting to them. And if you can “predict” this behavior, it gives you (an your listeners) a false sense of superiority for not being one of the mindless reactionaries that make up the ranks of those you oppose (and who, by your opposition, create your identity).

My sense is that the most productive response to this sort of rhetoric is via what Kenneth Burke calls the “comic frame,” in which we self-reflexively call attention to our own use of language, turning the tragedy of division into the comedy of play. Such an approach would defang such rhetoric without becoming entwined with its hatefulness.

How precisely one goes about that in a case like this is something I’d like to throw out to all of you in the blogosphere:

How does one critique/respond to rhetoric like Limbaugh’s without simply perpetuating the dynamic he sets up? Is it enough to point it out? Is attacking the validity of the claim worthwhile, or does that miss the big picture? And, beyond what I’ve suggested, how do we determine when a “joke” isn’t funny?