The Winter Olympics in Vancouver have a shortage of snow.

Meanwhile in Dallas, there was a record snowstorm.

I just wanted to point that out. There's nothing at all ironic here.

Brandenburg Wall

U2 concert sparks fury over 'Berlin wall'

Brandenburg Gate is where Ronald Reagan gave his famous "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech. U2 gave a concert there, and selling out all available tickets. MTV constructed a wall around the area so that non-paying customers couldn't see it for free.

The irony of a "wall" covered in white plastic sheeting almost identical to the colour of the original Berlin wall was lost on exactly no one.

This is a tough case, because how do we describe this situation. The fact of the matter is, this is human nature. When you watch the Daily Show every night, and see how politicians say one thing when they're in power, and the exact verbatim opposite 4 or 8 years later, you wonder at what hypocrites they are. It makes complete sense to have different standards for your side and there side. MTV is a company trying to make money, this is capitalism. The Berlin Wall was supposed to help Communism. So insanely, the people who are complaining about this are actually themselves the ones who are being "ironic".

It's funny that the people who give credit to Reagan for ending the Cold War do to massive (incomprehensible really) military spending are mostly the same who think we need a giant border fence with Mexico. It's not ironic. Is putting a wall up at a place significant for tearing down walls ironic? The issue is that if they called it the "Freedom" or "Openness" concert, then that would be actually irony, since the wall MTV put up stopped the openness. This bleeds over to the whole event being called ironic, which I will live with, as long as people acknowledge the underlying fact that there is an implicit semantic meaning of openness being the venue in question.

Open Thread

You can present generic questions about irony here if you like.

Scales ask if his life is ironic. The first responder correctly pegs this as Catch-22, a particularly cruel situation where doing A causes B, which prevents C. But not doing A prevents B, which causes C. In life, all human beings like to think they have a choice. There is this magical thing called "free will" which exists in some sort of ether, and a Catch-22 violates this precept. The easiest thing to do is to laugh about Yossarian and Milo and Major Major Major Major, because laughter is easier than feeling bad about it. Irony is that catchall term where we don't know what to say, what to do, how to get by with what we see in front of us.

Historical inaccuracy

I'd heard some years ago about the dispute between the United Way and the Boy Scouts of America, and while researching I discovered this article.

Jack Kime, a supporter of the Boy Scouts said:

I register my refusal to passively sit and watch my America go the way of a Roman Empire, drowning in decadency and politically correct insanity.

The author, Austin Cline, responds:

Ironically, the Roman Empire was transformed into a Christian Empire where church and state were deeply intertwined.

For this discussion I'm going to avoid the clear bias on both sides, as well as any possible historical inaccuracy in the second statement, and comment on what the author was trying to say. Essentially, the author says that it wasn't decadency and politically correct insanity that caused the downfall of the Roman Empire, it was Christianity. Furthermore, the author asserts that decadency and political correctness are the opposite of Christianity. The illogic here is quite clear, the person who doesn't want America to become like Rome is actually trying to make sure America becomes like Rome! If a person says, "I want to live longer, so I'm going to smoke a cigarette", is that ironic? I would argue no. Stupid, certainly, ignorant and naive, but not ironic, it's just wrong. If I say, "I need 4 of something, so I'm going to add 2 and 3", is that irony? Well obviously not, everyone should agree. What is the difference between this and the blog post above? Not very much.

Stephen Colbert

On Thursday, Stephen Colbert was talking about the Anglican church. "The Anglicans are a church that started from rejecting central authority now has groups of people in it that want a stricter central authority to bring their foot down. Isn't that just delicious irony?"

No Stephen, it isn't. Of course people act like this. When you don't like what the authority does, you strike out on your own. When people start acting differently than you want them to, you run straight for authority to tell everyone how to behave. Now, it seems that this was a sincere joke, and not part of his character, which lampoons the Christian right, which seemingly wants big government in the bedroom and nowhere else. This isn't irony at all, it is hypocrisy. Those that split off from the Catholic church did so not because they wanted less central authority, they did it because they didn't like the policies that authority put in place. When they want specific policy to go into effect, they are happy with universal authority.

Wikipedia Ironic?

This Wordie page on the Great Firewall of China uses the a completely meaningless form of "irony". Wikipedia defines the firewall, and was for a time blocked by the firewall. This is not even coincidental. Wikipedia tells the truth about things, including the Great Firewall of China, and the Firewall is about blocking truth.