The Daily Show on the Ebola panic

Jon Stewart looks at how easily Americans are made fearful about everything and asks wonderingly, “What’s wrong with us? I thought we were the home of the brave.” While that sentiment may provide a rousing end to the national anthem, it is just another case of pandering to the self-image of people that they and their nation are possessed of some virtue not held by others. Such self-aggrandizing conceits are hard to erase. The hardest thing for people to accept is that they (as individuals and collectively as nations or ethnic groups) are pretty much just like everyone else in their basic human qualities.
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Against patriotism

I despise the entire concept of patriotism. I agree with Leo Tolstoy who wrote the following:

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, and conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power. And as such it is recommended wherever it is preached. Patriotism is slavery.”

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British and American humor

If there is one difference that I have noticed between American and British sketch comedies, it is that the former depend on more jokes with the set-up and punchline formula, while the latter often have an absurdist element that does not have even any identifiable gag but simply careens from one place to another using just language and non sequiturs to great comedic effect.
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Micro-aggressions

There is a new film out with the title Dear White People that was triggered by the series of photographs and the video I, Too, Am Harvard that had students of color at that university talk about the ‘micro-aggressions’ that they experience in an environment that is mostly white. Micro-aggression is the term given to often unthinking actions and statements based on ignorance, stereotypes, and prejudices. This has spawned similar efforts at other universities.
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