… in calmly ripping an interviewer a new orifice. Behold and enjoy.
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Konstantin Kisin delivers a master class…September 5th, 2022 |
 22 comments to Konstantin Kisin delivers a master class… |
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That was damn good but the knife really goes in at 4:18 😀
Ouch.
This is a massive rebuke to all those people who don’t believe in telepathy! BBC presenters are psychics. Who knew?
“…There are no jokes in socialism. There is no humor in socialism. There is no fun in socialism. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.”
Like telling a fart joke to the imam. Ships passing in the night. I’m sure that BBC guy thinks he destroyed KK.
The point that Konstantin made about how the interviewer thought he could peer into people’s souls was spot-on.
Scotland is going down the drain. I see that the whisky industry is drawing the ire of the “sustainability” brigade.
I don’t get why we’re all supposed to walk around on eggshells and not offend anyone. If someone is offended, that is that person’s problem. Don’t want to be offended by a known offensive comic? Don’t go to his show. It’s just that simple.
If one is offended by racism or sexism or some other -ism, either walk away, grow a thicker skin, or throw a punch.
Diversity is our strength apparently doesn’t apply to diversity of opinion or diversity of taste.
I have to disagree with KK on one point, it is quite clear that with Mr Sadowitz, he is not doing an ‘Alan Partridge‘ and creating a persona, (to mock that which he despises) he is being ‘himself’, or, if he is not, he is doing it very badly. I think that the BBC chap on that point is plainly and unarguably right, however much it might hurt to say that.
The Alf Garnett character, clearly distinct from the actor playing him, was meant to mock the working-class Cockney old man, he was clearly a caricature, but a likeable one, and the Sage of Kettering theorised that the series was ended because it backfired.
Nah, disagree totally, that’s far from “plainly and unarguably right”.
Sure, he’s not doing “an Alan Partridge”, but what he *is* doing is a schtick, an act, not a sermon, lecture, or party political broadcast. It totally doesn’t matter that he’s not calling it by a name like some character.
Konstantin Kisin is one of the most intelligent comedians I’ve seen in a long time.
Roue : “…There are no jokes in socialism. There is no humor in socialism. There is no fun in socialism. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.”
Nah. Those who stamp their boots on human faces, forever, find it highly amusing. Indeed one of the most obvious features of socialist regimes – international or national – is the appearance in petty administrative positions of people whose fun comes precisely from inflicting pain on helpless victims. It’s not a labour done in duty, it’s done for the fun of it.
The point that Konstantin made about how the interviewer thought he could peer into people’s souls was spot-on.
I didn’t find that particularly powerful – other than rhetorically. Do we not all spend large chunks of the day trying to guess what other people are thinking, not just from what they say, but from what they do ? Indeed, IIRC, old von Mises was of the view that the latter was a better window into another man’s soul, than the former.
People were laughing because they thought it was funny. If you then impute dark motives from that & ask a leading question based on those dark motives being a fact (which this chap did), it is very effective to challenge the entire premise of the question. That is exactly what Kisin did.
The interviewer then denied he had said what he has just said 12 seconds earlier, which is not a great look. Sure seemed like a good rhetorical kick in the bollocks to me.
The point is not that we are always perfect at divining the content of other people’s minds, merely that we all do it all the time. And you are doing it too – “people were laughing because they thought it was funny.” How do you know that ? Maybe they were laughing because they were nervous or embarrassed, or because they didn’t want to stand out from the crowd.
Sure, the BBC presenter was projecting his own tiresome woke assumptions onto the crowd of laughers (there, look, I’m guessing what he was thinking) and very probably he was entirely wrong, and you are right that the crowd just thought it was funny. But Kisin’s rhetorical rejoinder works as only as rhetoric, not as actual analysis. His jibe was that we’re not mind readers. Except that in fact we are, all the time. Though some are better at it than others.
As Katy mentions Kisin is smart (see Seinfeld on the fact that comedians are way smarter than actors) and so he’s good at rhetorial repartee. He owned the BBC guy, in the moment. But humans who do not attempt to mind read are unusual, and probably suffering from one of those autism spectrum thingies.
Interestingly, this is half of Hume’s argument against incompatibilism. (The other half is that we spend large chunks of the day trying to infer what other people will do, based on what we have inferred that they think.)
That does not apply in this particular case, however: the BBC guy did not seem to use his brain, he just assumed a racist motive, without providing justification. He did not spend a small chunk of the day thinking about it, let alone a large chunk.
I myself believe that in my life i have witnessed one, and only one, instance in which an audience seemed to laugh for reasons that i cannot explain other than racism. That was in 1984 (a pure coincidence) at a movie theater on the campus of Cornell University. I do not believe that that could happen today.
Snorri : The other half is that we spend large chunks of the day trying to infer what other people will do, based on what we have inferred that they think.
Which reminds me – veering once again wildly off topic – of a good Youtube video by Lindybeige, in which he explains that the real point of miitary deception operations is to influence what the enemy DOES, by influencing what he THINKS – but that sometimes ahieving the latter fails to achieve the former.
And he gives an illustration from WW2, wherein the British in North Africa were going to attack the Italians in Eritrea, and to assist with that they put on a deception operation to persuade the Italians that they were going to attack British Somaliland (a bit to the south east of Eritrea) which the Italians had occupied earlier. The object of the exercise was to persuade the Italians to think that the offensive was coming against British Somaliland, and thus to persuade the Italians to reinforce British Somaliland against the expected attack, by withdrawing some troops from Eritrea and putting them in British Somaliland.
The deception operation was 100% successful at the THINK level. The Italians wholly believed in the attack on British Somaliland. But unfortunately, believing that British Somaliland was not going to be defensible against the expected British offensive, what the Italians decided to do was to evacuate British Somalialnd, and move the Somaliland troops out of harm’s way….to Eritrea.
Thus the British deception operation, which succeeded in making the Italians think what the British wanted them to think, was an abject failure, as the deceived Italians failed to act as expected, and actually reinforced the garrison that was to be attacked.
You should watch more Dave Chappelle. Tons of blatant anti-white racism, hilarious specifically because it is blatant anti-white racism, even to this lily-white boy.
When one tries to read another’s mind it is very easy to project one’s own thoughts onto this supposed masterful body language reading.
The problem with a lot of woke people is that they are so drenched in the woke language of crazy, where they think everyone is deeply racist, structurally racist, misogynistic and so forth, since that is what they spend so much of their time thinking about, it never occurs to them that normal people just don’t give most of that stuff a second thought.
I work with lots of people of various races, sexes, ethnic backgrounds, sexual preferences and so forth and it never even occurs to me to notice most of the time. Maybe I do have some deep lurking racism, sexism, transphobia or whatever that I am simply not aware of and would need a few hundred hours of therapy sessions to really get to the root of my problem. But TBH, I think it is just a bloke, or a gal, or a bloke dressed up as a gal. I really don’t give a toss most of the time. I do notice if they suck at their job, or they are horrible people or they have horrible communication skills, or, have poor personal hygiene, or, of course, if she is a super chick with a short skirt. But I don’t think we need Freud to work out what is going on in this latter case.
And I don’t think I am different than the large majority of people in that respect.
For sure. If one is conditioned to see racism everywhere, one sees racism everywhere. The alt version of that is to see wokery everywhere. Hmm, must admit I do see wokery everywhere.
The defence here is that the comic does not really believe in the racist-sexist-homophobic (and so on) opinions he expresses.
But a true defence of Freedom of Speech would go much further – it would be that if the man believed every word he says on stage, he would still have a right to say it.
If you do not, for example, wish to hear a racist speech – do not go to the event where the racist speech is to be given.
“But that led to Hitler” – no it did not, as the Weimar Republic had “Hate Speech” laws. It was the countries that did NOT have “Hate Speech” laws (at that time Britain as well as the United States) that did not have such regimes come to power.
Good point.
@Paul Marks
But a true defence of Freedom of Speech would go much further – it would be that if the man believed every word he says on stage, he would still have a right to say it.
Sure, but in fairness, a true defence of freedom of association would say that even if he has the right to say it, he doesn’t have the right to say it in my theatre. The situation is a bit different if the government runs the theatre, but I don’t know if that is the case here.
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