More from Orwell on Dickens

Since I managed to find, yet again, an excuse to quote from George Orwell's essay on Charles Dickens, let me quote two more passages.

The first is, again, relevant to tomorrow night's Oscar festivities, as it helps to explain why host Jon Stewart is funny:

If Dickens had been merely a comic writer, the chances are that no one would now remember his name. … He is always preaching a sermon, and that is the final secret of his inventiveness. For you can only create if you can care. Types like Squeers and Micawber could not have been produced by a hack writer looking for something to be funny about. A joke worth laughing at always has an idea behind it, and usually a subversive idea. Dickens is able to go on being funny because he is in revolt against authority, and authority is always there to be laughed at. There is always room for one more custard pie.

This is what Larry King didn't understand when he interviewed Stewart the other night (see video at Crooks & Liars or read the CNN transcript).

KING: This gives you fodder.

STEWART: Yes, I prefer not the fodder. I'm not — we're not the guys at the craps table betting against the line. I would — we'd make fun of something else. If public life, if government suddenly became inspiring and moved towards people's better nature and began to solve problems in a rational way rather than just a way that involved political dividends, we would be the happiest people in the world to turn our attention to idiots like, you know, media people, no offense.

KING: So, you don't want it to be bad?

STEWART: Did you really just ask me if I want it to be bad?

KING: Yes because you…

STEWART: What are you — I have kids what do you think? Yes, I don't want them to have any kind of a — I want things to corrode to the point where we're all living in huts. …

ING: You don't want Medicare to fail?

STEWART: Are you insane?

KING: No.

STEWART: You're literally asking me if I would prefer — yes, Larry, what I'm saying to you as a comedian I want old people to suffer, old and poor people to suffer.

The other piece of that Orwell essay I want to quote cuts to the heart of why the religious right seems anything but "Christian":

Where [Dickens] is Christian is in his quasi-instinctive siding with the oppressed against the oppressors. As a matter of course he is on the side of the underdog, always and everywhere. To carry this to its logical conclusion one has got to change sides when the underdog becomes an upperdog, and in fact Dickens does tend to do so. He loathes the Catholic Church, for instance, but as soon as the Catholics are persecuted (Barnaby Rudge) he is on their side. He loathes the aristocratic class even more, but as soon as they are really overthrown (the revolutionary chapters in A Tale of Two Cities) his sympathies swing round. Whenever he departs from this emotional attitude he goes astray. A well-known example is at the ending of David Copperfield, in which everyone who reads it feels that something has gone wrong. What is wrong is that the closing chapters are pervaded, faintly but not noticeably, by the cult of success. It is the gospel according to Smiles, instead of the gospel according to Dickens.

At some level, our neighbors in the religious right realize that they've taken a wrong turn somewhere in their own quasi-instinctive siding with the oppressors against the oppressed. Their disingenuous posturing as an oppressed and persecuted majority arises from this. I doubt they even believe it themselves when they make absurd claims such as, for example, that the granting of civil rights to the homosexual minority is tantamount to "persecuting" the majority that already enjoys these rights. But the fact that they feel the need for such posturing gives me some hope. They haven't entirely forgotten which side they're supposed to be on and they recognize they should at least pretend to be always and everywhere on the side of the underdog.

Dickens' sense of morality is also directly tied to his sense of humor. "There is always room for one more custard pie," but a custard pie in the face of the underdog, in the face of the oppressed, isn't funny. A custard pie in the face of the tyrant, or king, or CEO, or pope, or president — that's funny.