courtesy of that consistently brilliant parodist, John Cleese—who truly is, as my wife says, at the top of his form with this one. (Scientism, if anyone is wondering, is the dogmatic faith in science which folks like Richard Dawkins use to replace faith in God.)
The great thing about Cleese, evident here, is his unflagging willingness to skewer everybody, including himself and those with whom he agrees. For an instructive comparison, check out Christopher Hitchens’ biting critique in the latest Atlantic of folks like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Al Franken, who (though they consider themselves satirists) are unwilling to do so.
I will say this – when Chris Hitchens is writing, its a lot harder to tell that he's roaring drunk. I'm not really sure on what grounds we should consider him an expert on funniness – from what I've seen, he is only unintentionally funny in his glowering self-righteous declarations.
Slogged through the article to find anything of substance. The impression I came away with was the had to dig pretty deep to find situations where Colbert and Stewart were not scalpel-like in their humor. I'd point Hitchens to, I dunno, last night's Daily Show. Or any night's Daily Show. I'd also point him to a local AA meeting. And the door :p
Frankly, by far the most powerful thing I came away from that article with is something I already knew – Hitchens hates liberals and does not find them funny.
…having had my Hitchens rant (I need one a month to keep my gall bladder functioning well), I think I'll be stealing the parody.
And seriously, I'd point Hitchens to the most recent Daily Show. Jon parodies himself on multiple occasions.
Stewart parodies himself, sure. What he rarely does is make fun of liberals–and I've never seen him pull the sort of dishonest stunt on Democrats that he regularly does on Republicans. Which is Hitchens' point; and if you missed that, you missed the whole thing. (But then, you evidently think Hitchens is a conservative, which he isn't.)
Glad you liked Cleese, though. 🙂