John Øyvind Welle got an "annoyingly polite" reply from NRK's Haakon Børde about his mysterious flag day claim. In a rant about all that is wrong with America, Børde wrote that Norway has a national flag day on July 4 because it's the American independence day. (It's also the Queen's birthday.) I wrote a piece where I pretended that Børde was satirical. I may have accidentally been onto something. Børde writes to John Øyvind:

1) I have great sympathy for your demands of a clearer separation between commentary and news - this is a classic demand of all journalism. 2) A poor ability to express myself obviously made it impossible for you to perceive my point about July 4 as ironic. 3) Of course it's dangerous to compare the world's richest country with 280 million inhabitants with a somewhat poor developing country with 11-12 million. If one could find parts of the US that are more comparable to Cuba in terms of population and economic structure, and parts which are a completely different world [?], the picture could become more nuanced. The point remains that despite all the weaknesses of the regime and its economic problems, which are partly caused by the embargo, Cuba has maintained a strong commitment to health and education. 4) The US is a net importer of oil. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world.

So the flag day claim was ironic - and the rest wasn't? Others will have to read what Børde wrote and tell me if I should have noticed that he was ironic about that, and whether I've overlooked anything else. I'm clearly unable to tell Børde's ironic ravings from his serious ones. This says something about me, or something about Børde. You tell me which.

It reminds me of some of the worse essays I wrote in highschool. Lack of cohesion, mixing opinion with fact, jumping between genres. He clearly reveals his political point of view. But except for that, it's simply just a bad piece of text, and it is, as you've stated, hard to tell if he has a message because of the mess.

Håkon, I give you a D-

We on the right wing have humor-Wodehouse was not a raving liberal, I believe. The left wing have satire and irony.
Mental challenge: mention a really funny left wing comedian.

I think one of the things that really separates left and right wing thinking is the facts that the right can make jokes of themselves. Self irony on the left wing, however, is a very rare bird, indeed.

Børde invokes one bit of leftist logic I've never quite followed:

1) Poor countries are impoverished because of their trade with wealthy countries, and above all because of their trade with the US.

2) All of Cuba's woes are due to the US trade embargo.

kjell: "Mental challenge: mention a really funny left wing comedian."

Al Franken, (though it depends on what you mean by left wing). And he's a political comedian. I'm sure I won't have trouble finding non-political comedians who are also left-wingers.

Hello kids Mr. Heckler here

Well, this is just too good to be true is it not? Listen guys. Please enlighten me, cause I'm a rather slow person, what constitutes a leftie? and while on the subject what's a right winger? I assume you mean
politics, yes? is that not the point of this little charade? I wrote in an earlier posting that I like this blog-and I do-even though it's a bit exasperating, but that is really due to your (inadvertly) arcane worldview.

So this is my challenge to you all: give me working definition of a leftist and a right winger, this is purely out of self interest. Until
I'm convinced itherwise I will think Ann Coulter said it best when she said: "Liberals can't just come out and say they want to take more of our money, kill babies, and discriminate on the basis of race."

Ah, the self-proposed right-wingers, so cuddly, and yet so strangely poignant and eloquent.

Hats off, I'm a pruod liberal (social issues) but liberitarian (fiscal issues) at the same time what does that make me panel?

As for the article, Wodehouse it is not. Satirical and ironical? I don't know, just seemed rubbish to me. No substance, I do find it funny though that the 4th of July remark was a quip. Seem to recall many of you bristling over that one. Put down the pointing finger people, we don't know where it's been. Feigned AMBesque sentiment is just not becoming.

Sorry Bjørn, but I don't find Al Franken too funny. It might be the generations gap, being on the wrong side of forty.
But really, if humour was equally dispensed along political lines, I have to question again: Why is there so little left wing humour? And Dario Fo doesn't count.
As a digression, another Italian, Giovanni Guareschi, dead for many years, do. And he was not left wing.

(Being on the wrong side of forty, I have the right to correct myself. Garrison Keillor is funny. Then he is really just a mainstream democrat, and self awoved Christian in the bargain.)

kjell: "Sorry Bjørn, but I don't find Al Franken too funny. It might be the generations gap, being on the wrong side of forty."

I can't answer your question if you will only accept comedians you like personally. I don't know you, and I don't know what makes you laugh. I do know that Franken is a _popular_ comedian who a lot of people thought was funny (SNL) long before he turned to politics.

Oh, and I seem to remember (though I can't back it up) that some of the Marx Brothers were involved with left-of-center causes in their time. Maybe that's more your style. It's definitely mine.

jsinger:

Børde actually writes that the economic problems for Cuba are 'partly' caused by the embargo, not that 'all of the woes of Cuba' are. There's a slight difference there, wouldn't you agree?

Not a very well-written piece that one, though.

Øyvind

"We on the right wing have humor-Wodehouse was not a raving liberal, I believe. The left wing have satire and irony.
Mental challenge: mention a really funny left wing comedian."

First off, I'm not sure why you chose Wodehouse as a champion of right-wing humour. This seems a bit odd. His books doesn't reflect very well upon the declining upper-class at the time; his heroes are more often than not self-less hyper-intelligent butlers, that lives to rescue their not-too-bright masters from the trouble they invariably get themselves into.

And if anyone ever was a paragon of satire and irony, it surely must have been Wodehouse.

As a private person his political leanings are a bit more muddled. I seem to remember he once stated that he was an apolitical individual. There's was some fuzz whether he was a nazi-supporter (bogus as far as I can tell), which certainly would put him well on the right side, but I'm not quite sure that was what you meant. His books though, surely had a left-leaning (for the time) subversive element to them.

As for funny left-wingers?

Shit, almost all of the people that has ever been involved with SNL are lefties. (An exception being Dennis Miller, but he's grown terribly stale lately.) Mostly, they're funny as hell.

Jon Stewart? No? Not even Colbert? Those guys sure as hell cracks me up at least. Here at home we have Knut Nærum, which, strange as it may sound, is a really funny communist.

(Al Franken is as funny as a doormat though.)

What's worse, the lefties got all the good musicians too!

I'd have conceded your point if you had said that _lefties in general_ aren't funny. It's hard to be funny when you're frothing all the time. :)

Øyvind: "Børde actually writes that the economic problems for Cuba are 'partly' caused by the embargo, not that 'all of the woes of Cuba' are. There's a slight difference there, wouldn't you agree?"

Actually, that has to be seen in context of his original piece, where he cherrypicks the two statistics (density of doctors, child mortality) in which Cuba has more favourable numbers than the US, to imply that Cuba is a better place in which to live.

Even if he's not blaming the embargo for 'all the woes of Cuba', it's used in a manner typically used by apologists from all over the political spectrum when pressured: "Yes, Stalin was bad, but you have to look at the way the US-instigated arms-race forced the Sovietunion to use repressive methods to survive." "Sure, Saddam was bad, but you have to look at the sanctions.." ad naseum.

It's not very impressive.

Michael Moore is a popular comedian.

"Of course it's dangerous to compare the world's richest country with 280 million inhabitants with a somewhat poor developing country with 11-12 million. If one could find parts of the US that are more comparable to Cuba in terms of population and economic structure, and parts which are a completely different world [?], the picture could become more nuanced."

This just makes me laugh. The reason why the US is one of the richest countries in the world and Cuba is one of the poorest is precisely because of its economic structure.

Compare Cuba to Puerto Rico then! Puerto Rico has a similar population and fewer natural resources. It isn't the richest place in the world, but its close ties with the US have made it much better off than Cuba.

Anonymous: "Michael Moore is a popular comedian."

Yes, and a funny one too. You don't see much of it in his movies, but try his old TV shows. Moore is funny, all right. Just not very trustworthy.

John Steward is just awesome, past and cut to see some of his interviews and sketches

http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/thedailyshowwithjonstewart/

Børde actually writes that the economic problems for Cuba are 'partly' caused by the embargo, not that 'all of the woes of Cuba' are. There's a slight difference there, wouldn't you agree?

Øyvind, you're completely missing my point. The "anti-globalization" left (which may or may not include Børde himself -- I have no idea) insists that economic links to the US are *harmful* to poor countries. That contention is completely incompatible with blaming *any* of Cuba's problems on the US embargo -- Cuba should be flourishing without McDonalds!

(And as John Welle said, the embargo is routinely invoke to excuse any and all of Castro's abuses.)

But Børde didn't say anything about that, and he only claimed that part of Cubas problems can be blamed on the embargo?

I'm a part of the 'anti-globalization' left, I guess, but I'm not even anti-globalization. Globalization can be nice thing. It's when economy becomes more important than for instance human rights or environmental problems we've got a problem. When companies are globalized we need effective global control mechanisms.

Or to just get rid of capitalism, of course :P

Øyvind

Dear John Ø.
P G Wodehouse wrote one of the funniest anti-fascist parodies ever, pre ww2, so he was not entirely apolitical.(Jeeves and the dictator, with fascist thug sir Roderick Spode versus Jeeves/Bertie Wooster).
In ww2he had the bad luck of being captured by the Germans while living in France, and rather unwisely let himself be heard on German radio. After being liberated, he went into voluntary exile in the USA, having been branded as a collaborator in Britain. He certainly wasn't. As an aside: Wodehouse was a popular author in Soviet Russia, under Stalin, though he never got a penny in royalties.
Now, this debate really started about Haakon Børde, a person not known for his sense of humor, so let us rather continue discussing him.
Better discuss Wodehouse in a another forum.

"Compare Cuba to Puerto Rico then!"

Okay.

Infant mortality rate
Puerto Rico: 8.37 deaths/1,000 live births
Cuba: 6.45 deaths/1,000 live births

Life expectancy at birth:
Puerto Rico: 77.49 years
Cuba: 77.04 years

Literacy rate:
Puerto Rico: 94.1%
Cuba: 97%

You must admit that some of Cubas results are amazing, and that Cuba being under an embargo does not make them less amazing. This tells me that Cuba must be doing something right, eventhough I constantly have to remind fellow leftists of all the things they do wrong.

And here's my signature for that last post.

Øyvind

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