Comic Relief

“In comic strips, the person on the left always speaks first.” George Carlin

I was watching some old videos of George Carlin stand-ups and found this line a classical Carlin comic relief, taking the obvious and seemingly irrelevant and giving it a humorous context. We often need comic relief to release emotional stress, especially when faced with serious and tragic events. Of course, with Carlin you can always count on someone being offended as the content will usually carry the sting of sarcasm about someone’s behavior or beliefs, but if you can get beyond that, comic relief is a good potion for what troubles you.

I needed this recently to snap me out of a dark mood about some recent events like the Thompson murder and the Penny trial; no sooner had they caught Thompson’s murderer, and no sooner than Penny’s acquittal, we get some in the media and many progressives eulogizing the guilty and demonizing the innocent. While I was never a real comic book fan, I do remember “Bizarro World”, a fictional planet where the people are the opposites of DC Comic heroic characters; the reactions by some to these recent events seems like Earth is morphing into “Bizarro World”.

How did those people lose their moral compass to the extent that they do not understand the difference between a murderer and a defender, making excuses for evil and creating hatred for good? Both were tragic events that involved taking human life, one clearly premeditated, the other far from it; yet there are those that will introduce issues such as grievance and race as justifications or causes for such tragedies.

The killing of Brian Thompson was clearly premeditated murder and raises questions about how Mangione knew precisely where his victim would be and at what time. The trial of Daniel Penny is a bizarre miscarriage of justice that reeks of racism and partisan prejudice, not to mention ignorance as it’s a counterproductive warning to all those that may find themselves in a situation where they can help their fellow man. The narrative that Mangione was acting based on some grievance on a UHC denial of coverage was debunked when it was found that he was not a subscriber to that insurance coverage; even if he had been, that may have been a motive but hardly a justification for homicide. The narrative that Penny was motivated by Neely’s race was debunked by the black people on the subway who were threatened by Neely and testified in Penny’s defense; a white racist does not come to the defense of those he hates.

This post is not about the many details of either case as the issue is less to do with the facts and forensics than the disturbing reactions from a bankrupt radical culture in the American judicial system and legacy media incapable of differentiating right from wrong; thankfully we have a cold-blooded murderer in custody and the citizens of the Penny jury rejected the charges brought against a hero. Some call these cases a turning point in the cultural pendulum swings regarding crime and punishment; maybe that’s true but I reserve judgement on that until after Mangione’s trial.

A curious fact is that many of those in media and progressive groups who eulogize Mangione and demonize Penny are the same people; these narratives have been with us for quite a while and contrary to what some people think, I believe that these same groups of people are still quite large and becoming more strident. There’s a group think nature to them that George Carlin spoke very seriously about that doesn’t offer much comic relief but helps us understand the malignancy involved:

“The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you’ve lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that’s bigger than you are and that controls you.”