Well, I just got this today, and I guess I just can't resist sending it to
the list. I hope no one is offended, and my apologies to those who have
seen this previously.  :-)   Jim

**********
>
>"I Have a Philosophical Secret!"
>
>The Lowest-Rated Jerry Springer Show Ever
>------------------------------------------------
>
>Crowd: Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!
>
>Jerry: Today's guests are here because they can't
>agree on fundamental philosophical principles. I'd
>like to welcome Todd to the show.
>
>Todd enters from backstage.
>
>Jerry: Hello, Todd.
>
>Todd: Hi, Jerry.
>
>Jerry: (reading from card) So, Todd, you're here to
>tell your girlfriend something. What is it?
>
>Todd: Well, Jerry, my girlfriend Ursula and I have
>been going out for three years now. We did everything
>together. We were really inseparable. But then she
>discovered post-Marxist political and literary theory,
>and it's been nothing but fighting ever since.
>
>Jerry: Why is that?
>
>Todd: You see, Jerry, I'm a traditional Cartesian
>rationalist. I believe that the individual self, the
>"I" or ego is the foundation of all metaphysics. She,
>on the other hand, believes that the contemporary self
>is a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity
>reflecting the political and economic realities of
>late capitalist consumerist discourse.
>
>Crowd: Ooooohhhh!
>
>Todd: I know! I know! Is that infantile, or what?
>
>Jerry: So what do you want to tell her today?
>
>Todd: I want to tell her that unless she ditches the
>post-modernism, we're through. I just can't go on
>having a relationship with a woman who doesn't believe
>I exist.
>
>Jerry: Well, you're going to get your chance. Here's
>Ursula!
>
>Ursula storms onstage and charges up to Todd.
>
>Ursula: Patriarchal colonizer!
>
>She slaps him viciously. Todd leaps up, but the
>security guys pull them apart before things can go any
>further.
>
>Ursula: Don't listen to him! Logic is a male hysteria!
>Rationality equals oppression and the silencing of
>marginalized voices!
>
>Todd: The classical methodology of rational dialectic
>is our only road to truth! Don't try to deny it!
>
>Ursula: You and your dialectic! That's how it's been
>through our whole relationship, Jerry. Mindless
>repetition of the post-Enlightenment meta-narrative.
>"You have to start with radical doubt, Ursula."
>Post-structuralism is just classical skeptical thought
>re-cast in the language of semiotics, Ursula."
>
>Crowd: Booo! Booo!
>
>Jerry: Well, Ursula, come on. Don't you agree that the
>roots of contemporary neo-Leftism simply have to be
>sought in Enlightenment political philosophy?
>
>Ursula: History is the discourse of powerful centrally
>located voices marginalizing and describing the
>sub-altern!
>
>Todd: See what I have to put up with? Do you know what
>it's like living with someone who sees sex as a
>metaphoric demonstration of the anti-feminist violence
>implicit in the discourse of the dominant power
>structure? It's terrible. She just lies there and
>thinks of Andrea Dworkin. That's why we never do it
>any more.
>
>Crowd: Wooooo!
>
>Ursula: You liar! Why don't you tell them how you
>haven't been able to get it up for the past three
>months because you couldn't decide if your penis truly
>had essential Being, or was simply a manifestation of
>Mind?
>
>Todd: Wait a minute! Wait a minute!
>
>Ursula: It's true!
>
>Jerry: Well, I don't think we're going to solve this
>one right away. Our next guests are Louis and Tina.
>And Tina has a little confession to make!
>
>Louis and Tina come onstage. Todd and Ursula continue
>bickering in the background.
>
>Jerry: Tina, you are... (reads cards) ... an
>existentialist, is that right?
>
>Tina: That's right, Jerry. And Louis is, too.
>
>Jerry: And what did you want to tell Louis today?
>
>Tina: Jerry, today I want to tell him...
>
>Jerry: Talk to Louis. Talk to him.
>
>Crowd hushes.
>
>Tina: Louis... I've loved you for a long time...
>
>Louis: I love you, too, Tina.
>
>Tina: Louis, you know I agree with you that existence
>precedes essence, but ...well, I just want to tell you
>I've been reading Nietzsche lately, and I don't think
>I can agree with your egalitarian politics any more.
>
>Crowd: Wooooo! Woooooo!
>
>Louis: (shocked and disbelieving) Tina, this is crazy.
>You know that Sartre clarified all this way back in
>the 40's.
>
>Tina: But he didn't take into account Nietzsche's
>radical critique of democratic morality, Louis. I'm
>sorry. I can't ignore the contradiction any longer!
>
>Louis: You got these ideas from Victor, didn't you?
>Didn't you?
>
>Tina: Don't you bring up Victor! I only turned to him
>when I saw you were seeing that dominatrix! I needed a
>real man! An Uber-man!
>
>Louis: (sobbing) I couldn't help it. It was my burden
>of freedom. It was too much!
>
>Jerry: We've got someone here who might have something
>to add. Bring out Victor!
>
>Victor enters. He walks up to Louis and sticks a
>finger in his face.
>
>Victor: Louis, you're a classic post-Christian
>intellectual. Weak to the core!
>
>Louis: (through tears) You can kiss my Marxist ass,
>Reactionary Boy!
>
>Victor: Herd animal!
>
>Louis: Lackey!
>
>Louis throws a chair at Victor; they lock horns and
>wrestle. The crowd goes wild. After a long struggle,
>the security guys pry them apart.
>
>Jerry: Okay, okay. It's time for questions from the
>audience. Go ahead, sir.
>
>Audience member: Okay, this is for Tina. Tina, I just
>wanna know how you can call yourself an
>existentialist, and still agree with Nietzsche's
>doctrine of the Ubermensch. Doesn't that imply a
>belief in intrinsic essences that is in direct
>contradiction with the fundamental principles of
>existentialism?
>
>Tina: No! No! It doesn't. We can be equal in
>potential, without being equal in eventual personal
>quality. It's a question of Becoming, not Being.
>
>Audience member: That's just disguised essentialism!
>You're no existentialist!
>
>Tina: I am so!
>
>Audience member: You're no existentialist!
>
>Tina: I am so an existentialist, bitch!
>
>Ursula stands and interjects.
>
>Ursula: What does it [bleep] matter? Existentialism is
>just a cover for late capitalist anti-feminism! Look
>at how Sartre treated Simone de Beauvoir!
>
>Women in the crowd cheer and stomp.
>
>Tina: [Bleep] you! Fat-ass Foucaultian ho!
>
>Ursula: You only wish you were smart enough to
>understand Foucault, bitch!
>
>Tina: You the bitch!
>
>Ursula: No, you the bitch!
>
>Tina: Whatever! Whatever!
>
>Jerry: We'll be right back with a final thought! Stay
>with us!
>
>Commercial break for debt-consolidation loans, ITT
>Technical Institute, and Psychic Alliance Hotline.
>
>Jerry: Hi! Welcome back. I just want to thank all our
>guests for being here, and say that I hope you're able
>to work through your differences and find happiness,
>if indeed happiness can be extracted from the dismal
>miasma of warring primal hormonal impulses we call
>human relationship.
>
>(turns to the camera)
>
>Well, we all think philosophy is just fun and games.
>Semiotics, deconstruction, Lacanian post-Freudian
>psychoanalysis, it all seems like good, clean fun. But
>when the heart gets involved, all our painfully
>acquired metaphysical insights go right out the
>window, and we're reduced to battling it out like
>rutting chimpanzees. It's not pretty. If you're in a
>relationship, and differences over the fundamental
>principles of your respective subjectivities are
>making things difficult, maybe it's time to move on.
>Find someone new, someone who will accept you and the
>way your laughably limited human intelligence chooses
>to codify and rationalize the chaos of existence.
>After all, in the absence of a clear, unquestionable
>revelation from God, that's all we're all doing
>anyway. So remember: take care of yourselves -- and
>each other.
>
>Announcer: Be sure to tune in next time, when KKK
>strippers battle it out with transvestite omnisexual
>porn stars! Tomorrow on Springer!
>



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