All right, that’s quite enough. This religion business has exceeded its allowable silliness quota, and it’s time for it to just stop. An Amish sub-cult is attacking dissenting Amish. Dirty Harry, it ain’t.
In one attack, men are accused of entering a home Oct. 3 and telling 74-year-old Raymond Hershberger, a bishop in a Holmes County Amish community, they were there to talk about religious matters, Holmes County Sheriff Timothy Zimmerly said Tuesday.
After a few minutes of small talk about the weather, the men suddenly announced, “We’re here for Sam Mullet to get revenge,” Zimmerly said.
And then they shaved off Hershberger’s beard and restyled his hair. Not stated, but I imagine they all then jumped into a buggy and galloped off. My fevered imagination then adds a high-speed buggy chase with the bad guys firing blunderbusses at the cops, but I told you, this is too silly. Stop it right now.
Wait…Sam Mullet’s revenge is sending out thugs to give haircuts? I’m done. No more.
Beard crime?
For this I will not stand!
Imagine if Sunnis and Shiites used these tactics!
One Amish group attacking another? I don’t see the problem.
It keeps them occupied and away from meddling in other people’s business.
Imagine if the various flavours of Fundmentalist were just war’ing amongst themselves…
(dreams of a beautiful sunset, on a calm beach).
Oh please, please, PLEASE let it be a mullet they gave him!
Pretty please?
Fucking brilliant! If only all religious disputes were this funny. The world would be a lovlier place.
This is awesome. Once in a while I get the feeling there might be an occluded, non-omnipotent god somewhere behind the scenes whose job is to make life as ridiculous as possible.
Mission Accomplished.
I could maybe see shaving off his beard, but restyling his hair? Well, that’s just going too far!
Yeah good point. Because that’s one thing the Amish are famous for, meddling in other non Amish people’s business.
My father-in-law is 74. I would be horrified if he were assaulted like that, even in so silly a manner.
This really isn’t helping my long-lived sneaking suspicion that actually, there’s no one, anywhere, that believes a word of any religion, and the whole thing is now and always has been some kinda elaborate prank.
In this specific case, I get this vision of, after the shaving hijinks, the victim and perpetrators both ditching the buggies, whipping out their smartphones, and texting each other to arrange a meeting at the local pub, where they will proceed to throw back a few beer and laugh, a la Bower and Chorley, about their latest gag.
But they’ve gone too far this time. We’ve got ’em, now! No one is gonna buy this one, I tells ya. No one!
That’s right, you cheeky bastards! (Shaking fist…) We got ya! You just hadda go one sillier even than the masses of people gathering, flash-mob style, to worship pareidoliac window reflections… I mean, mullet? Seriously? How stupid do you think we are?
(/Fine, you had us there for a few thousand years, okay, but we’re onto you now.)
I humbly propose the addition of an a cappella version of “Yakety Sax” to the Amish hymnody.
I was thinking the same thing. Hell, I’d be horrified if this happened to my d-bag fro wearing little brother. And it isn’t all that silly. More than a few hazing rituals involve shaving off a victim’s hair.
Did they give him a discount card for half price on their fifth visit?
I hear there have been several drive-by shunnings
Other reports say that they also cut the hair of a few of the women. A big no-no as well. It is a form of shaming. Kind of Hatfield and McCoy kickin’ it old school.
So when it’s done in college it’s a prank, but if the Amish do it its aggravated assault and kidnapping? SHIT those are some really serious charges!!
My favorite part: they used battery powered hair clippers- oooh whose the renegade dissenting Amish person now!!
ugh youre right PZ. Too much silliness
Yes, it is too utterly silly for words. Nonetheless, I’m glad the authorities are taking it seriously and making serious charges. A 74 year old could have a heart attack and die or be seriously injured in a physical assault, even one with only style intent. And the cult involved needs to know that they’re not above the law. Otherwise, they will get worse and probably more overtly violent.
I think that PZ is overreacting.
He is just unduly sensitive to the idea of shaving off beards.
Fortunately, this was just hair. But does anyone remember 1 Samuel 18:27?
Bad Amish, bad Amish
Whatcha gonna do?
Whatcha gonna do when they come to shave you?
Hm. I sense a potential television show here, perhaps a religious version of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. “And now for the reveal — behold, Jebediah, you are truly plain!”
groan
While the reasons for it may be silly, the fact remains that a group of men conned their way into the home of a 74 year old man and assaulted him in a manner designed to cause significant humiliation. Sadly this fails to trigger my sense of humour.
I never thought in my lifetime
I’d have to make this kind of rhyme.
But this is just weird:
They’re cutting off beards.
It’s Amish-on-Amish crime
Coyne had a post on a botched attack.
…so don’t be vain, and don’t be whiny or else, brother, I might have to get medieval on your hiney… /weird al
You knew it would happen eventually.
I guess now we know what “medieval” looks like in a pacifist community.
The reason Sam Mullet’s group is being shunned is because his son, Crist Mullet, raped a 12 year old child. I think that is a much better reason to shun someone than because their buttons are too fancy.
http://www.homefacts.com/offender-detail/OH79546/Crist-S-Mullet.html
They used battery-operated trimmers in the attack.
Wait
Battery powered hair clippers?
If I wasn’t so goddamned busy peopling the planets of the other 1×10^22 stars in the Universe, I’d sort out issues of religious observance on Earth.
But as long as the conflicts are only one sect imposing haircuts on members of other sects, I’ve got better things to do.
I don’t find this funny or silly either. I’m sure it was terrifying and horrible for the victims to have been attacked and violated this way.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
I’m sorry, this is just too funny. I know it’s a serious matter to invade someone’s home and assault them, and that religion was somehow the motivator is sick, and it certainly shows that the Amish aren’t necessarily all they’re cracked up to be.
But damn if it ain’t funny to read.
I just heard this term for the first time.
Amisharia
I didn’t coin the term but I love it!
I’m digging deep here, and am finding it hard to find much humour in this assault.
Let’s swap 74 year old for a seven year old, for example.
Ugghh.
..And Now For Something Completely Different..
Amish Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Holmes County:
Enter Amish man with beard, followed by Sweeney Todd, also bearded, dressed as barber. Man sits down. Todd pulls out a cut-throat razor.
Todd: How close would you like it?
Amish man: Oh, just a little trim round the edges.
Todd: (Grabbing the man’s beard and cutting it off in one swift stroke.) HAHAHAHA, the Demon barber strikes again!
I thoroughly agree. This is not an act that should in anyway be condoned or excused.
However, that said, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
This reminds me of one of my favorite obscure comic book characters
BEARD HUNTER.
Created by Grant Morrison he was a murderer who targeted bearded men and face scalped them to collect their beards as trophies
If you’re wondering he fought the Doom Patrol because their leader had a beard
BEHOLD THE BEARD HUNTER! TREMBLE IN FEAR PZ! He’s coming FOR YOU!
?
SCHISM!…gets popcorn and a tubeabubbles outta the fridge!
But if the antipathy was for a revenge of the purported rape of a minor…where the fuck are the police and social services?
@Anubis
It’s Amish.
Like the Orthodox civic services leave a wide distance and let the little cults have their own defacto rule of law.
I am finding this both hilarious and very much not funny.
Hole invasion assault related to the rape of a twelve year old girl. Not funny.
Breaking into a man’s home to style his hair. Gold, comedy gold.
I am very very happy that the police are taking this seriously. This needs to be investigted and the people responsible for the assault brought to trial.
The world is a very very strange place.
If by ‘absurdity’ you mean the irony of a community known for losing its fucking shit arguing over the superiority of one computer company vs. another pointing and laughing uproariously over a fit of inter-group beard-shaving, then I agree.
So basically, in context not at all funny, out of context very funny.
It is odd that the brain can hold both the in context and out of context interprations at the same time.
Print out and keep a copy of this article for future use: it will come in handy when proselytizers knock on your door “to talk about religious matters” and you call the cops to report a threat of aggravated assault and kidnapping.
@AlanMacandCheese #14: winner
@Crys #16: No, it’s assault in college, too, unless there’s consent.
Anubis
It’s not revenge over the rape of a minor. One of Mullet’s sons was the one doing the raping. And now his brothers are the ones “exacting revenge.”
This silliness, though potentially damaging if someone were to freak out because several men have grabbed you and held you down, is much better than the normal maliciousness some do as a result of religious beliefs.
I hope more radical offshoots adopt this behavior. I would rather see people with funny haircuts than blown up. Or murdered, or anything else.
It is an odd choice, though.
… Or you could just demand that they submit to a pat-down, let you check ’em over for any concealed hairclippers.
”Kay, pal… just hold up… I’m gonna have to insist you place any metal items in this tray here… ‘Kay… Now walk through the metal detector…
‘… you bastard. I knew it. This is a home barber kit, isn’t it? Isn’t it?! (shaking clippers at him…) You’re going downtown, pal…’
More seriously: I’m gonna add: much as I hear those pointing out this was almost certainly a thoroughly traumatic experience, I think most of the humour here for me is in the absurdity of the image you get when it’s the Amish doing something like this…
… yes, it probably helps that it’s a forced haircut, as, opposed, to say, someone getting messily and fatally impaled on a hay fork. But add to that that it’s black-clothed guys in hats jumping out of a buggy wielding hairclippers with menace… It’s just replete with absurdism, given the whole of that picture.
This is not funny.
It is somewhat absurd. Absurd that there is a cultural insult hidden in the shaving of hair, yes. Absurd that schism leads to assault, yes.
It is still not funny.
For the victim, there is nothing to separate this from any other form of ritual shaming. If we don’t place value on hair, then we certainly place value on personal boundaries and autonomy.
Anyone finding this funny needs to dissect the situation and explain exactly why this physical and psychological assault deserves to be treated with levity.
Would anyone like to start by dismissing the victim by making a list of all of the more serious types of insult he could have suffered?
Anyone who thinks that assault is a laughing matter is acting like a fucking callous arsehole.
I’m sorry. Yes it’s not cool what happened to the Amish Gentleman. Yes assault and invasion of ones personal space is bad and should be called out.
But situations within bad situations that are outside the norm can have a humorous slant to it.
If I heard someone was attacked by being hit over the head with a giant 3 foot purple dildo, I would feel bad for the victim, but the situation still contains a humorous aspect to it.
There doesn’t appear to be any large systemic societal oppression being fueled here, so I’m perfectly content to sit back and accept that some people think this is funny, and some people don’t think it’s funny.
http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=0kz7amnvl1
“Flamboyant cuttlefish” I just thought you would like it. So pretty.
Not if you’ve played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas enough to find such an experience commonplace.
This community needs fewer techies and more anthropologists.
Rey Fox: “There doesn’t appear to be any large systemic societal oppression being fueled here…”
Not sure I agree. It was noted above that one of Sam Mullet’s sons is a child rapist. In violent, authoritarian, patriarchal societies such as Mullet’s breakaway clan, sexual abuse is considered a feature rather than a bug.
Page 2 of the AP article to which TPM Muckraker links mentions that Mullet sued the county sheriff after the latter took two of Mullet’s granddaughters away from their mother. I wonder what the grounds for taking the girls into custody were.
Is it okay to laugh at Will’s unfortunate “hole invasion assault” typo? I’m pretty sure i feel guilty about that . . .
Sure, but it’s about as funny as joking that Chinese names sound like pots and pans being thrown.
I get why people think such things are funny, but either way the humour is out of ignorance.
As Bernard said, “For the victim, there is nothing to separate this from any other form of ritual shaming.”
There are cultures whose members could not fathom why most of us here would find being publicly ‘pantsed’ humiliating, and might likely find it hilarious that we do.
… it helps also to know the larger context, ’round Anabaptist sects ‘n this sort of thing.
… I mean, I’d heard through the grapevine that the investigating officer was saying on the scene that, sure, this was a disturbing incident, but he’s seen worse…
… As apparently, sometimes, among the old order Mennonites, they also give the vic a forced manicure.
(/… and if they’re really pissed, they clip all the nails just a bit too short. And we all know how that feels.)
And I pulled that situation out of my…
.
.
.
.
wait a minute
I’ve read articles that suggest it’s not uncommon among maintstream Amish.
I thought that was a little too on the nose, Rev BDC. I should have guessed.
They fooled me, Jerry!
That man will never again be respected by his khalasar.
Q: What goes “Clip clop, clip clop BANG… Clip clop, clip clop BANG”?
A: An Amish drive-by shooting.
Brownian: You’re right, and I think PZ has posted about sexual abuse among mainstream Amish in the past, now that I think of it.
I think we’re all dying to know if the new looks actually worked.
It ought at least to factor into the severity of charges.
And please, I know it’s serious, that’s one reason to make fun of the perps and their attack.
Glen Davidson
It’d look like the 30 years’ war.
If we could get the fundies to all restrict themselves to throwing pies, tampons, and ham slices at eachother, then it’d be pretty fun. But they’d have to wear red rubber noses so we could tell who was a combatant and who was a bystander.
I’m a horrible person who finds absurdity to be funny. It’s a medical condition caused by an over-amplified sense of irony.
Put me down in a vote for “broad stroke==hilarious, but the details == horrific”
Oh, stop it. Just stop it. Stop telling people what is and isn’t funny, and stop telling everyone they’re acting immorally for smirking at this. It is possible to recognize that an assault is not OK (Jeezis, do I really need to say this?) while seeing black humor in the absurdity of the situation. Finding the funny in awful situations is commonplace, normal around these parts, and in no way indicative of a lack of empathy.
Honestly, it’s unbelievable seeing some of the regulars getting on high horses about this. Really, Brownian? You?
@Josh
Hey I’m saying that it sounds funny but really isn’t. If fictional it would be hilarious….as I mentioned with my love of Beard Hunter.
I know, Ing-I share your view. Funny in the abstract, not at all funny in real life. It’s just that some folks here are having a vexed hard time with the “it’s OK to laugh in the abstract” part. Irksome and preachy.
They used a “battery-powered hair clipper” hang on a mo…
Now I can’t stop thinking about a Beard Hunter II; where the guy was jilted by a closeted lover and decides to take out his revenge on society by assassinating the wives of closeted gay men.
Ok it’s details like this in stories that make me feel like Bender. Yes objectively this is horrible but I have to keep reminding myself of that.
@56
Laugh away, I know I am.
Look, it is one thing to be struck by the absurdity of something and to break a wry smile, but quite another to use absurdity as a license to make fun of the situation.
See above, where people are starting to insert and add their own jokes. That isn’t just finding the grim humour in the irony or absurdity of the situation. Doing that kind of thing is really making jokes at the victim’s expense, and diminishing the seriousness of the assault.
I can’t help but think that this really is a situation where the Amish identity of the victim is giving cause for people to pretend that this is not serious assault.
I see a number of people (particularly at the start of the comments) making light of some actions involved in the assault – hair cutting – but I can’t find obvious examples of comments mocking the perpetrators which don’t also make light of the acts dealt upon the victim.
I think that a different victim would not be receiving this response, and particularly not on this site.
Fuck off, Josh. We judge people all of the time here.
Would you like to tell me which of the following comments is the funniest? Which of these doesn’t diminish the suffering of the victim? Which of these doesn’t make light of a fucking assault and ritual shaming?
.
Which ones of those would you like to argue recognize that an assault is not OK… while seeing black humor in the absurdity of the situation.
More comedy gold here then?
Yes, Bernard, everyone’s pretending it’s not a serious assault. Eyeroll.
Cider-crazed Ohio Hutterite warlord:
Sends minions to prove superiority of Christianity by attacking theologically disputatious greybeards with mustache scissors
Vodka-fired Georgian Marxist despot:
Sends minions to prove superiority of materialism by decimating uppity peasants in thousand mile swath from Kiev to Kazakhstan
Dawkins had better leave this one alone
Ing @ #73: That would just be like a whole issue of Marcus Bachmann in a state of pants-wetting terror.
Sometimes, if people haz cornflakes, I haz piss.
The whole deal struck me as funny too, until I realised that there was a cultural reason for the perpetrators going after these men’s beards, which puts this squarely in the camp of ethnocentric humour, as I see it. The story would be no different if a renegade band of Buddhist monks went around slapping other monks on the tops of their heads.
So, yes, there’s a funny absurdity about the situation. Just realise that the funny lies in it being absurd that the people in question have different sacred or meaningful objects than you do.
Are you going to find every hair based assault and try and tie them together as if they are the same situation?
I get why people think such things are funny, but either way the humour is out of ignorance.
in some cases, I would agree.
but not all.
many here are well aware of how seriously Amish take their traditions. Heck, it’s part of BEING Amish.
Instead, there is indeed a certain absurdity involved in the idea that the tradition is taken so seriously that cutting off someone’s beard is actually taken as being equivalent to raping that person.
one can, at the same time, comprehend that Amish take their traditions seriously, and also realize that those traditions are, frankly, absurd. I think the sense of humor is what allows us to compartmentalize the two attitudes without severe cognitive dissonance.
I’m betting those of us who feel this way about it are also fans of grotesque satire, like Python.
I mean, how on earth can the Inquisition torturing people POSSIBLY be funny?
The whole deal struck me as funny too
I rest my case.
Form one giant braid of hyperbole
Indeed, which is why my first comment on this story made reference to geek wars over operating systems and billion-dollar computer corporations.
Wait does anyone actually NOT think the tech wars are funny?
Indeed, which is why my first comment on this story made reference to geek wars over operating systems and billion-dollar computer corporations.
Frankly it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there have been actual cases of assaults involving “Apple” vs “PC” groupies.
I’ve often mentioned how much modern advertising and marketing mimics religious techniques in order to garner “brand loyalty”.
…likewise, though… I find the entire “computer wars” entirely absurd, and have no trouble at all in laughing (HARD) at those who engage in it, while still understanding why they do so.
You’ve got a shitty case, then. I’d wait before taking it to the judge.
All kinds of things strike me as funny, including jokes implying assault or rape, and racist and sexist ones as well. Not always, but not never.
So, whether I initially think something is funny is not my litmus test for whether I should laugh at it, or moreover, contribute or pass it on.
Read the Steve Jobs thread. You’d think PC users showed up at his funeral and tried to install Vista on his coffin.
You’d think PC users showed up at his funeral and tried to install Vista on his coffin.
NO WAY!
current version is Windows 7, isn’t it?
All kinds of things strike me as funny, including jokes implying assault or rape, and racist and sexist ones as well.
oh, well my bad for thinking you react to things in a more usual way then.
carry on.
you were whinging about what again?
Not in my office. We’ll be adopting Windows 7 sometime around 2020.
Which is what, exactly?
We’ll be adopting Windows 7 sometime around 2020.
meh, skip it.
Windows 8 looks promising…
oooh, cloud computing enabled!
*sigh*
Which is what, exactly?
uh, I’m not even sure any more.
what are we talking about?
This is SERIOUS! There will be hell tupee.
Me not reacting to things in the usual way.
Just looking for a definition of what that is, before I recommence ‘whinging’.
“Ok it’s details like this in stories that make me feel like Bender. Yes objectively this is horrible but I have to keep reminding myself of that.”
Word.
An analogous situation (but with a fatality): A year ago a group of punks invaded the home of a person in my town that had been giving testimony against a member of the gang. They were beating him and stealing his money. He managed to grab an ornamental sword and skewered one of the gang, who later died.
I know that this is a tragedy but.. A FUCKING SWORD!!! You don’t get more old-school than that. And it helps that it is hard to feel sympathy for the skeweree. If you hang around with violent creeps, don’t get surprised if bad things happen.
And 30 years ago our local village bully who had graduated to a career of petty crime got himself blown up when trying to cut into a safe using an acetylene torch -the fuel/air mixture inside was as good as dynamite. One for The Darwin Award.
Just looking for a definition of what that is, before I recommence ‘whinging’.
you compared yourself thinking rape jokes were funny to how you found this situation initially funny.
do you think that is a common reaction?
not one I run into often myself.
I assumed you found it initially funny for the same reason several posters here have also expressed, including myself, that religious traditions are essentially absurd to begin with, and thus, amusing.
do I need to explain this all over again, or can i just refer to the previous posts?
do you have a point?
The reactions about it not being funny are funnier than the original post indeed. In my home country we have an expression that translates as ” those who go into the cellar to laugh” to describe humourless persons who always complain when others find something funny.
Did anybody else think of weird al’s song “amish paradise” ?
My company still uses XP and IE7
@Josh,
That is a pretty disappointing response from you. Particularly because I presumed that you were trying to make a point, and would therefore be willing to defend it. Typing eyeroll is absolutely no substitute for a reasonable response.
Which of the quotes would you like defend as not diminishing the suffering of the victim? If the assault is serious, then why should anyone get away with comments that mock the victim?
Since when did mocking victims of crime become acceptible here?
@RBDC,
Someone had their hair cut during an assault. If an Amish having his beard forcibly shaved is comedy gold, why isn’t a woman having her hair cut on a bus also hilarious?
Is it because it is only funny if there is a religious aggravating element to the assault? Perhaps it just becomes more amusing when a person is assaulted by intruders to their home, rather than on public transport?
Really, someone explain the joke to me. I’m obviously too stupid to understand it.
@Ing,
It is good to know that some victims of crime are funnier than others. Would you like to make a list for me of which ones I can laugh at? I’ll work on being more of a bastard in those special cases.
I was reacting to the comments that I quoted above. There is a big difference between highlighting the absurdity of what went on (even cracking a wry smile and acknowledging the irony) and on the other hand, piling on with jokes. That is what I wrote above, and I stand by it.
This story still isn’t funny. This is a very peculiar form of religiously aggravated assault, and if there is absurdity worthy of ridicule in the Amish tradition of beard growing, then any humour doesn’t spill across into the consequences of an assault which targets those beliefs.
If I hit a Muslim or Jew around the face with a side of bacon, then I don’t expect right-minded commenters to make jokes about pork butchery or ham sandwiches.
Find a joke about it which doesn’t trivialize the suffering of the victim, and I’ll think about showing it to my sense of humour.
Sigh. I typed “eyeroll” because I’m disappointed I have to spend time explaining this (I assumed it was common knowledge how we regulars feel about violence and abuse). If I thought that making light of this in the comments here was actually contributing to this man’s suffering, or that it was making it more likely that people in a position to do something about such assaults would be deterred from doing so, then I would agree with you. But I don’t.
As Ing said above, by the standard you’re citing, we’d all have to give up black humor altogether. Really, Bernard – Ing was right that Monty Python films would be off the table by that rule. Yes, really, that is the logical consequence of your line of thought.
I won’t do that. It’s important to me. And it doesn’t mean I’m materially diminishing the suffering of a victim by finding some comfort in the absurdity and of it, and the fun-making being done.
So, Bernard, are you enjoying the sensation of being “more sanctimonious than thou”?
If I hit a Muslim or Jew around the face with a side of bacon, then I don’t expect right-minded commenters to make jokes about pork butchery or ham sandwiches.
BACON IS SACRED, and not a laughing matter at all around these parts!!
how dare you even consider abusing bacon in such a fashion?
don’t you know that Pork is the Meat of Kings!
Yes. That’s why we find people being educated in the sexist threads. Because why we find things funny is a mixture of cultural conditioning and instinct, many people (myself included) have been a product of that conditioning, and talking about such things can change that conditioning.
If you’ve always found the right sorts of assaults conceptually funny and the wrong sorts of assaults conceptually not funny, then I don’t suppose we’ve got much more to talk about here.
Ah, well. Than you’ve made the mistake of thinking that there’s a fundamental difference between the things we accord status because we have a religious narrative to explain why, and all the other things we accord status to for other reasons (ostensibly ones we find, of course, reasonable). As humans, we’re meaning-generating machines. Whether you think a beard is a fundamental part of your identity, which operating system you use, what style of music you like, your favourite sorts of foods, beers, wines, what kind of TV you like, the anime you prefer, or whatever the fuck you tell yourself makes you you, your rationale is generally going to be post hoc and piss-poor, because when it comes down to it, we’re status-seeking social animals stuck in cultures that predefine what status is.
Thinking these people absurd because they think beards are important is not much different than thinking it absurd to finding a eulogising obituary to a dead billionaire because he created and imbued certain products with status and meaning.
I’ve made several comments. You’re free to reread them, or have a discussion with somebody else if corresponding with me taxes you unduly.
Josh,
The fact that there is a good core here – you included – who set high general standards for decent treatment of others, is exactly why I was pissed off. My response to you was also coloured by the fact that I knew what I was targetting in my original comment, which perhaps wasn’t obvious.
I can only suggest that you go back up the thread and look at the tone of many of the comments before I wrote my first comment on this thread. Others appeared in the time it took me to write my reply, and some of those explicitly acknowledge the assault as serious, some also make explicit that it is the irony they are darkly amused by. Fine, and I have no real problem with those. At the very least, there is evidence of some sort of intelligent response.
I specifically pointed out the absurdity of the crimes, and it is an absurdity that lies in the absurdity of Amish culture. Absurd is not quite the same as funny, is it? Absurd can be funny, but there s a big difference in making a joke about the culturally technophobic Amish assailants using cordless hair clippers, and a joke about the victim having his hair restyled.
If the reasoning which underlies the importance of a beard in Amish culture are ridiculous, then having that important beard attacked doesn’t deserve the same ridicule.
There were a significant number, and I quoted them that really don’t seem to acknowledge the seriousness of the crime, or which directly mock the act that caused the suffering of the victim. It was those that I was irritated by. I would just like to see responses which seem to understand that this was religiously-aggravated crime, rather than simply someone suffering an unsolicited hair cut.
Does that help to make the reasons for my irritated response any clearer?
By Christ Brownian you’re good!
I’m digging deep here, and am finding it hard to find much humour in this assault.
Let’s swap 74 year old for a seven year old, for example.
Oh come on! A seven year old with a beard? That’s HILARIOUS! It would be like looking into a cradle and seeing a baby with a dour look and a chin wig.
@’Tis,
This is an honest reaction.
Things can appear sanctimonious when they are argued (too?) long and (too?) loud. Nonetheless, I am reacting honestly.
@Icthyic,
Which is exactly why I picked such a provocative weapon for my hypothetical assault.
I wouldn’t really argue with that type of joke, but a joke about Jews and Muslims being afraid of pig meat would be in pretty poor taste if I’d really carried out my cured-pork wielding attack.
If you’ve always found the right sorts of assaults conceptually funny and the wrong sorts of assaults conceptually not funny
but, that’s exactly what you’ve done here.
Thinking these people absurd because they think beards are important
hello Mr. Strawman.
please show me where I called these PEOPLE absurd. I didn’t. I specifically called the TRADITIONS absurd.
I really can’t believe YOU’RE the one I have to accuse of intellectual dishonesty today.
I’ve made several comments. You’re free to reread them
ditto, because you’ve 100% missed the point I was making in your rush to strawman my argument in favor of a point I wasn’t even contending against.
I made it perfectly clear why we can compartmentalize effectively both the absurdity, and the seriousness, of the issues involved here.
so, if you think I didn’t, you must have been pouring booze on your cereal this morning.
By Christ Brownian you’re good!
actually, he’s rather failing today.
goddamn fail tags…
If you’ve always found the right sorts of assaults conceptually funny and the wrong sorts of assaults conceptually not funny
but, that’s exactly what you’ve done here.
Thinking these people absurd because they think beards are important
hello Mr. Strawman.
please show me where I called these PEOPLE absurd. I didn’t. I specifically called the TRADITIONS absurd, which, btw, is exactly the same argument I made about the PC/Mac “wars”.
I really can’t believe YOU’RE the one I have to accuse of intellectual dishonesty today.
I’ve made several comments. You’re free to reread them
ditto, because you’ve 100% missed the point I was making in your rush to strawman my argument in favor of a point I wasn’t even contending against.
I made it perfectly clear why we can compartmentalize effectively both the absurdity, and the seriousness, of the issues involved here.
so, if you think I didn’t, you must have been pouring booze on your cereal this morning.
By Christ Brownian you’re good!
actually, he’s rather failing today.
Uh-oh, someone’s irritated by jokes! Everybody quiet!
Bernie, dude, LIGHTEN UP.
A comment section. For comments!
I’m fine thanks. I’m irritated. I’m not – however you may read my comments – scarlet-faced raging.
Anyway, debating the suitability of jokes is a frequent occurance here.
Did it ever occur to you that the victim might be reading this thread RIGHT NOW? Did it? Huh? HUH?
I thought not….
And I would have no trouble at all if they laughed at us. Seems only fair.
This situation would be hilarious if it were fictional. When you think about an old man being assaulted in reality, it’s not so funny, but I don’t see how you can possibly avoid seeing the absurdity of it.
On their little wicker Blackberry?
Sorry sorry, It really really isn’t funny (snicker). I am trying.
Bernard Bumner,
I thought one of the tools used to point out the absurdity of arbitrary religious imperatives was making fun of them.
Snork! Giggle!
I mean. Yes…not funny at all.
Saying that they “restyled his hair” is a turn of phrase that evokes the barbershop more than the forced shearing.
It plays down the violence and therefore plays up an absurd, lighter toned image.
At least it did, to me, upon reading.
Now you’re just being stubbornly obtuse.
What are your thoughts on someone being assaulted by a 3 foot purple dildo vs. a baseball bat.
Does your humor meter not see one situation a tad more humorous than the other?
Not to mention a huge portions of famous, and hilarious, comedians of the last 60 years.
How bout hillarious pain that’s self inflicted? (Crosspost)
@ Rev. BigDumbChimp, #8
“Because that’s one thing the Amish are famous for, meddling in other non Amish people’s busines.”
Sarcasim? I’m assuming you’re defending them here, in which case, YES they meddle in other people’s business; those of their children.
How else does the cultural/religious disease get passed on?
Why yes thank you!
Not really defending them as much as commenting on your odd assertion.
Their children are non Amish? And you expect them meddling with other Amish to stop them from meddling with, wait for it, their Amish children?
This is great news!
“Their children are non Amish?”
Yes, the children don’t have a culture or religion unless it’s forced into them.
@Therrin,
Yes. No.
Mocking the religious imperative, I have no problem with whatsoever. On another thread, I wouldbe happy to mock Amish traditions. Actually, on this thread I’m quite happy to see Amish traditions being mocked.
The line I’m drawing, and I’ve repeated a few times, is that the absurdity of Amish men never trimming their beards does not open up to ridicule someone who had their beard forcibly trmmed.
@RBDC,
The short answer is, of course I see the difference.
The longer answer is that beng assaulted with a giant rubber wang could be funny, but obviously not if it was a sexually-aggravated assault. So a random assault with a giant sex toy obviously has the potential for black humour, but when the sex toy is actually purposely employed to increase the seriousness of the assault, that humour evaporates.
The beard was targetted here precisely to maximise the suffering of the victim.
Rev, I know full well that you abhor comedy, and it is reflected in the dearth of jocularity in your commenting style, so I’m going to have to explain this in the most obvious terms.
Go back to the Gervais (who certainly is famous and existed within the last 60 years) rape jokes that were beng discussed. The critical distinction between jokes dealing with rape is whether they target the criminal or the victim and the act.
In this case, the beard (as silly as the tradition is and the justifications for it) was central to causing the victim more suffering. By making jokes about beard trimming and by treating the loss of facial hair as trivial (which it could be to the rest of us), it necessarily makes the victim the butt of the joke. The beard is inextricably linked to the Amish sense of self.
#123 reflects my reading of some of the comments which I quoted above.
FYI, your comments (and those of a similar tone) weren’t amongst those I was annoyed by originally. Honestly, if I posted strong and absolute statements then it reflected my irritation, and nothing more. Without wanting to sound equivocal, I expressed my opinion, and we all know that if you feel the need to defend an opinion you can quickly sound high-minded.
There are commenters here that I trust to understand the distinction I’m making, and they don’t need me to make it for them. If so, then I really wasn’t addressing you. I could have made that clearer, I thought that my discussion of absurdity was enough to show that I understand the difference between sardonic commentary and the type of mocking I was reacting to, but perhaps not.
Now, if I have sufficiently belaboured my point and made myself seem even more humourless, I’ll see what you make of it.
@Ing,
I would suggest that a soured cream enema should be on standby.
Made my day.Pure lunatics.
It strikes me that most of you on both sides of the debate are missing the true source of the humor in this situation. It’s not the beard-trimming and hair cutting per se that’s funny. It’s that it was carried out to avenge a man named Mullet.
Bernard:
The fact of a septuagenarian being assaulted in his home is not funny.
The concept of Amish barber hit squads shaving off beards on the orders of Mr. Mullet is hilarious.
Ichthyic, I didn’t intend to strawman you. I was incautious in my language, because the difference between seeing them as absurd and their beliefs as absurd seems pretty tangential to my point, but it is clearly important to yours, so I’ll grant you that. My bad.
What do you mean, you don’t see how I could possibly avoid seeing the absurdity of it? How about if I were fucking Amish? Or a goddamn ZZ Top fan who spent forty fucking years growing a goddamn beard and thought ‘fuck, that could have been me?’
Every time I think I should drop this issue (because Rey Fox said it best way back in #52), somebody insists that I have to see it exactly in the way they do and be uncritical about seeing it that way because they fucking think there’s something objective or universal about it, and then I have to dig back in here and explain why, if such fucking human universals exist, they sure as shit don’t involve humans finding it hilarious that another had their hair forcibly cut off.
Because there’s nothing actually absurd about it. Nothing. Some guy set out to hurt and shame somebody else, and so assaulted him and destroyed the thing he had that their common community decides is important. “Ha-ha—they care about beards” is only absurd because we live in a culture that cares about cars and houses and jobs and iPads as symbols of status and not about beards. And there’s nothing absurd about having status symbols. Just what they are varies from culture to culture. So the situation is essentially an ethnic joke. And ethnic jokes are fine. It’s just that they’re, well, ethnic jokes. And the fact that there’s some dumb religious narrative that explains why these people think beards are more important than iPads doesn’t change what it is. (Ethnic jokes aren’t necessarily racist jokes. They make plays on the sounds of languages spoken (including homophonic names like Mullet), or foods preferred, or styles of dress, all of which are as malleable as religious beliefs.)
If the men in question had smashed up the guy’s BMW, it wouldn’t have elicited the same humour response. It’s funny because fighting over beards rather than cars is not what we expect, and surprise is a critical element of many forms of humour (and a substantial part, I would argue, of rape and violent jokes: the surprise being the callous indifference to a group of people, for a subset of such jokes), for a given cultural value of we. But that’s the exact same kind of funny as “OMG: Japanese culture is so weird!” situations are and I’ve pointed out the subjectivity of those sorts of thoughts before, as well.
And I think it’s important to consider ethnocentric implications of such things because they’re not harmless or neutral. There was a recent discussion on The Alethian Worldview about homophobia and the ‘ick’ factor that some people find when considering homosexual sex. The poster admitted to having this feeling, and seemed to imply that it was innate, that there was something objective about feeling grossed out by the thought of two men fucking. A commenter made the claim that there was nothing innately ‘gross’ about it, and that the ick response was a result of conditioning: “I would say (and history has my back on this one) that your reaction is all nurture, not nature. You were trained to be creeped out. It’s no more natural than your response to eating Witchetty grubs.” And I think he’s absolutely right. But of course, that’s not what a homophobe thinks. His reactions are real to him. He’s actually disgusted. He would ask, “How can you possibly avoid seeing the grossness of it?”
And that’s what this is for me. I see the absurdity of Bartkrieg. I have that reaction, just like I used to have ick factor reactions to the thought of two men fucking (a mixture of self-criticism and exposure cured me of that). And moreover, I have humour reactions to everything. I think everything is goddamn absurd. So I have no fucking choice but to be critical about why I think and feel the things I do. I have to analyse it, and determine whether or not it’s beneficial for me to engage in sharing my little quip or thought or laugh because of whatever bullshit can’t-derive-an-is-from-an-ought liberal humanism filter I have that keeps me from being the nihilist I actually am (which is why I’m generally considered a funny fellow—because deep down, I think everything can go fuck itself hard in the face, and I’m good at discriminating about how, when, and how often I share my loathing). I mean, to me, the thought of an old man assaulting another old man is funny. It’s actually hilarious (even without lightsaber effects.) Just look at the way they fucking move for fuck’s sake, and consider that happening in this case. I could ask why everyone is falling all over themselves to deny that aspect of the gag, but I don’t. I see why violence and assault, though sometimes funny to me, is not something to be casually laughed at. Like the Ricky Gervais rape joke that Bernard Bumner alluded to. I understand why such jokes are damaging. I see why they’re detrimental. I still chuckle, deep down inside, if they’re funny to me. Because I have privilege. I get that. Which is why I don’t assume that whether or not I find something funny is some sort of absolute barometer of whether or not it is, on a greater social scale.
So laugh away. There’ve been some great quips and puns in this thread. I laughed at many of them. It’s just that the entirety of the ‘joke’ is equivalent to getting squicked out by the thought of people eating chicken’s feet. You can certainly do it, but at the very least be aware that there’s nothing objectively squicky about chicken’s feet or objectively absurd about this situation.
(After composing much of this, I went home last night and my girlfriend had prepared nagaimo. I don’t know how anybody can avoid seeing that shit as anything but repulsive.)
Gary Larson springs to mind
And if the victim in Rev’s fictitious dildo assault was named Wang? Funnier, right? Would you share the hilarity of that story with your second-generation Chinese-American friend Tim Wang? Would he see the cleverness in noting how his name sounds like a slang term for penis? He’s probably never heard that before.
No, best to save that one for sharing when Tim’s not around.
Well hell yes! Lets start getting the plan together to run around taking people’s kids from them at birth that way we can insure that they won’t be “meddling in other people’s business”.
*snicker
To be analagous, Wang would have to be the perpetrator’s name.
Also, it would have to be pronounced the same as “wang”.
My hair is past my ass. You cut it–you die!
OK, let’s push it. Is this funny?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOV09HOIsvw
I think so. I also think it’s horrid. I laugh and gag simultaneously.
As for the original Amish situation, the really funny thing to me is the fact that the hair cutter was named Mullet… that’s funny.
peadophilia jokes? Never funny.
Rev. BigDumbChimp says:
How ’bout a big white dildo?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbRSag-L-GQ&feature=related
A Clockwork Orange 1971
So, if a group of thugs stripped someone naked, took photos of them and posted them on the internet would that be funny?
How about if they dug up and sexually violate a corpse?
Of course not, because that would be violated essentially symbolic social rules to which the majority of posters here happen to subscribe.
Similarly if Hindu or Muslim religious nuts forcibly shaved the heads of “immeodest” women I soubt anyone here would be laughing.
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