Category Archives: Rhetoric

Summary: Think Sarcasm is Funny? Think Again

Here is my summation of an article by Clifford N Lazarus Ph.D. on Jun 26, 2012 from Psychology Today:

Think Sarcasm Is Funny? Think Again

Sarcasm disguises hostility as humor: a smiling, put down jerk, cutting and hurting his victim.

Sarcasm heightens the perpetrator’s own underlying hostility, while ceasing it brings happiness to self and victims.

One can use sarcasm sparingly to spice up conversation with humor but when overdone it creates emotional bitterness in the recipient.

One creates wit intelligently with cleverness and consideration, ending in appreciation; while one who composes sarcasm simply with anger, criticism, meanness, humorlessness and talentless, ends in bitterness.

In summary, sarcasm hurts because it disguises hostility as humor, while wit hurts none because it delivers undisguised and harmless humor.

Here are your words to shield against sarcasm…

I don’t appreciate your comments because they are veiled hostility and unacceptable bullying.

Devices for Rationale When Your Emotions have Failed You

I was at a loss for words, words that perhaps would have gotten me into even more trouble.   I came, I saw, I kept my mouth shut.  If I’m not fired with enthusiasm, I will be fired, with enthusiasm.  I ask not what your company can do for me, but what your company can do for my wallet.  You said I was always late – true enough. You said I was not prepared – true enough. You said I did not defend your statements – true enough.  Is it too late for me to warn:  Judge not, lest ye be judged?  Or maybe: My heart is not judged by how much I despise, but by how much I despise you.  If you do me in today won’t you feel awful tomorrow when you hear,  “He’s passed on! This parasite is no more! He has ceased to be! He’s expired and gone to meet his maker!”  People who like this sort of thing (hating me) will find this the sort of thing they like.  Nothing is worse than doing nothing (but hate me).  I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, starting after you are deceased.  To my thick self, everyone is ‘boring, boring, boring!’  You heard it with our own floppy ears here first.  I try to forget (you’re a jerk), and in the forgetting, you are entirely forgotten. We all want this.  It’s accomplished, we succeeded, won, and walked away victorious. To think clearly and rationally should be a major goal for man (when thinking of you); but to think clearly and rationally is always the greatest difficulty faced by man (when thinking of you).

So, then I pulled out a claw hammer — are you still with me here?  After I did the deed, the car wouldn’t start this time, but at least it didn’t catch on fire (this time).  As I sat waiting for the PoPo, I thought: Many (police) are called, but few are chosen (for humanitarian awards).  As I lay prone on the gravel, they tell me once and I forget.  They beat me twice and I remember. They incarcerate me and I learn a new criminal skill.  No one would suggest that those who are brainless elected to be the class clown.  As the cop’s knee approached my face rapidly, I contemplated: Should I strike now, or bide my time? After that first knee, I began my attack of words:  If you do that one more time, I’m gonna –…  So, I ask you, dear reader, what would you have me do?  My detached self – reacted to my detached retina – it was disturbed — make that appalled — by the spectacle.  Observing my reflection in the pool of blood forming inches from my broken nose, I mused:  You are the fairest flower in this tenement — nay, in the entire barrio.  These dirty cops could do no more to me.  They cannot denigrate, they cannot deprecate, they cannot decry me further.  My fellow marginalized read and studied and wrote and passed and graduated. We fared no better here than those who laughed and played and talked and failed.  So that’s why I’ve prepared a special bullet for a special someone.  I made it nice and hot, just the way you like it.

You found my weakness. You are a hero, a prince, a god!  Coming of cerebral maturity in the year 2000, I am the very model of a mental modern millennial. I’m (bragging you know) uninformed in history, geography, and etiquette.  That’s us.  We not few, we happy but not few, we band of not few happy boorish bothers. As for you, Hero, I have three words for you mental pre-millennials: old, odd, odoriferous.  Going forward, what we will be seeking . . . will be large, stable communities of like-minded people, which is to say, redundantly, sarcastic millennials.  You’ve already seen it, a hundred head of millennials scattered throughout the coffee klatches or spinning their vino at an under-thirty wine bar.

Each word of sarcasm was dull wit from one half so. Frogy croaked – You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass. – like he was Solomon and those words were being spoken for the first time. Don’t judge a fool by his foolishness (he deserves worse). After his laughter died (the extent of the wished for death here) he added – We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately(I’ll do the hangin’ around here, Baba Looey).  Listening to his drone set my blood boiling.  It was a cool 100 degrees in the shade (of my numb scull).  His was an intellect quickly surpassed.  It is a sad state but true. Sudden insecurity and confusion drove him to cliche.  Enter the obnoxious fake laugh primeval.

The assassin was not unacquainted with doofus, you see.  Calling him an idiot would be an insult to stupid people. Are you always this stupid, or are you just making a special effort today?  I told him: Get out of my way, you mouth-breathing cretin.  He moved proudly.  Before he could retort I hit him with the nearest thing, a link sausage (lucky for me).  He shot back: It’s just a flesh wound!  Then fainted at the site of Dijon.  The clash and clang of another whipping sausage jarred him awake. Do not let a gift sausage in your mouth…he thought that was how the phrasing went.  His next salvo was: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you – and let fly his own sausage fusillade.  Seeing my enjoyment of his porcine screed, he screamed: You’re the most arrogant, selfish, self-absorbed, insufferable narcissist I’ve ever met!  Am I blushing?