Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Fawlty Powers: Politics, Culture and Comedy | John Cleese" video.

  1. Mr. Cleese, what in the world do you see in Antony Blinken? The more I read about him, the more I see him as not only deeply embroiled in every foreign-policy clustershow of the last 25 years (Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Nord Stream 2, etc), but also instrumental in the weaponization of Silicon Valley social media. Clue me in please, why is this man supposed to be so impressive?
    4
  2. "You don't learn if you only hang around with people you agree with" Yes, but where do you balance the learning, with the anger, contempt, and just general friction that comes from interacting with people who think differently as obstinately as you do? And how do you hang onto anything true, if you're not willing to drive your lance into the ground, and shout "Here I Stand"? It seems to me that we have rediscovered that good walls can make good neighbors.
    2
  3. "What Christianity asks of its followers is quite difficult" Really? Take a stopwatch to a church that uses a traditional liturgy. Start the timer when the congregation starts reciting that we're all sinners and deserving of damnation. Stop the timer when the pastor announces that we are entirely forgiven for all of those sins, by the grace of God. At my church I would estimate it's under thirty seconds. If we're really paying attention, the common confession of sins is a leveler, and the annunciation of grace releases the tension of guilt. It's not as much fun as comedy, but it also serves. Comedy absolutely has its place in church though -- morality plays, properly produced, are hilarious. Parodies of the seven deadly sins are a rich vein of humor that will probably never be played out. You can base an entire comedic career on showing how ridiculous we are all made by pride, envy, sloth, avarice, wrath, gluttony, and lust, (not to mention the rest).
    2
  4. "Young people don't want to be in Parliament, they want to be entrepreneurs, doing 179 things reasonably well" ... "I admire people who do one thing in particular very well" Obviously, send them to the House of Lords, famous for doing nothing in particular and doing it very well.
    2
  5. "As long as it's fundamentally affectionate, teasing is good and healthy" CS Lewis pointed out that the Greek word for this kind of love is storge or something of the sort.
    1
  6. "Why don't they make these cruel comments traceable?" Because somehow at this point we've allowed the craziest, most hypersensitive people in the world (the sort of people who want to censor Fawlty Towers) to decide what is cruel and what the punishments ought to be.
    1