At last, a collection of the more “serious” gags from
Cracked magazine. They’re funny, the way getting kicked in the crotch by a
hyperactive six year old is funny, and it pulls no punches. The jokes here are
all about history, and while not exactly shocking (I always knew Edison was an
ass) they’re somewhat ironic.
The Dark Ages are shown to have been great if you were
living in one of the Muslim-controlled parts of the world. While France was “plunged
into anarchy,” Muslim Spain was a nation of arts and science. Now that part was
left out of the Discovery Channel series, but in this day and age you can’t
portray Islam as a religion of peace and stability.
Thomas Edison is treated harshly here, and rightly so,
because he is not the hero he’s always shown to be. Edison, the great inventor,
whom US schoolchildren are taught to fawn over (myself included), was a thief,
a liar, a con man, and a thug. He had his own “patent police” who he’d send out
to smash up your workshop if he thought you were ripping off his invention. I
need to add here, none of the inventions were his, even the light bulb was
invented by someone else, along with the movie camera, the tickertape machine,
the vote recorder, etc. He bullied everyone he could into using direct current,
setting back US electricity 100 years.
Never, ever, let kids read this book. It will render half
the children’s books in the library obsolete. I guess the truth hurts, no?
No comments:
Post a Comment