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From: mat@hou4b.UUCP (Mark Terribile)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Geez people!
Message-ID: <1121@hou4b.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 25-Aug-84 01:46:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: hou4b.1121
Posted: Sat Aug 25 01:46:00 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Aug-84 00:43:30 EDT
References: <1110@hou4b.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 39


>A joke is supposed to be humorous: it is supposed to make people
>laugh.  That is what a *joke* is.  Now, there are other forms of
>humor.  A witty remark, for example, or a *pleasantry*, might make
>one's listners chuckle.  There is also *black humor* (cf Evelyn
>Waugh, taught in many schools): this is intended to shock people
>with the realisation that they are finding amusement in something
>that offends their sense of ethics.

>Now, in which form of humor was the President indulging?  Did you
>laugh?  Was there some unexpected punch-line that caught you off
>balance? Or was it a very *witty* remark in response to some
>situation?  Or was the president trying, through black humor, to
>get us to realize that the spectre of nuclear war is very horrible
>and that we should do everything in out power to avoid it? 
>Somehow I can't really buy any of these alternatives.

If you were living with the pressures of the presidency and you were
facing an important press conference, wouldn't you indulge in a little
gallows humor about the tpressures that you are facing?

Remeber, this is a ``good news, bad news'' joke.  Here's the good news:
Our problems with the USSR are over.  Here's the bad news:  We had
to start a thermonuclear war to do it.

This remark is being badly blown out of context, but it does reflect on the
enormous pressure that the job puts on a man.  And it reflects the pressure
that the USSR is putting on the free world.  If the free world could face
the USSR without blinking and the USSR knew it, we might all be able to go
home and hang those nasty guns back on the wall.  And RR understands this.

Now, we will never be rid of an arms race.  But the USSR sees the seesawing
between US administrations as an open invitation to take advantage of us.
And they are doing it.
-- 

	from Mole End			Mark Terribile
		(scrape .. dig )	hou5d!mat
    ,..      .,,       ,,,   ..,***_*.  (soon hou4b!mat)