Angry Fun

I was talking with my friend Baz. Baz is someone whom you might call a "doom-watcher." He is a close follower of the news. An especially close follower of bad news. Especially the kind of bad news that presages the end of the world. Hence, the epithet. The point is, he is brilliant at all this (he listens to BBC alot). He has an amazing command of language, speaks with great force and passion, and, behind it all, a certain grim humor. You get a sense that he is enjoying all this - the foretelling, the tintinnabulation of the tocsin of change, the promises of plague and pestilence, tribulations and terror.

During our dialogue (him ranting, me listening), he turned to his computer, fired up YouTube, and clicked on part one of a two-part Keith Olbermann editorial on President Bush. It was a perfect complement to our percussive discussion. Olbermann's anger was undisguised, his attacks on the president fearless and undiluted, his language studied and often verging on poetic, and in back of it all, it was, forgive me, immensely entertaining.

There was something fun about it - the passion, the aesthetics of a truly well-written diatribe, the thoroughness of the argument, the clarity of the supporting evidence, the sheer bravery of Mr. Olbermann's outspoken outspeaking. Along with the heaviness, the seriousness, the truth of it all, came the fun of it all. Olbermann was having fun. He was in flow. He was both brilliant and entertaining.

This led me to the discovery of yet another flavor of fun - it's the taste of fun that comes from righteous indignation, artfully rendered. Bitter, definitely. Sweet, though, sweet to listen to, to be able to agree with so thoroughly, as if the words were coming from our own anger, and it was elevating us, somehow, into some kind of joy.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith