Dave Barry’s Year in Review: 2020 was a year of nonstop awfulness

December 29, 2020 11:41 PM

We’re trying to think of something nice to say about 2020. OK, here goes: Nobody got killed by the murder hornets. As far as we know. That’s pretty much it. In the past, writing these annual reviews, we have said harsh things about previous years. We owe those years an apology. Compared to 2020, all previous years, even the Disco Era, were the golden age of human existence.
posted by dancestoblue (125 comments total)

He had me right up until he trivialized the deliberate dismantling of the USPS. Then I had to stop.
posted by panglos at 12:11 AM on December 30, 2020 [17 favorites]

I'm confused about how this useless old straight white hack ("Fascism and racism are FUNNY! BOTH SIDES!" according to this column) is still getting paid for anything since the Onion first appeared many, many years ago.

Dave Barry ’s Year in Review: 2020 was a year of nonstop awfulness

There. Fixed.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:23 AM on December 30, 2020 [28 favorites]

even the Disco Era,

Ah yes. A callback to a certain type of homophobia.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:25 AM on December 30, 2020 [25 favorites]

I like Dave Barry. Consider my cereal thoroughly micturated upon.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 1:40 AM on December 30, 2020 [7 favorites]

A callback to a certain type of homophobia.

Let's be fair. We can't say it's just a callback to homophobia. It's entirely possible that it's also a callback to misogyny and racism. And that it's less of a callback and more just a call.

It's not very nice to see "disco sucks" on the front-page, to be honest. I'm not imputing any ill will on OP's part, but it doesn't really feel like who we are in 2020.
posted by howfar at 2:18 AM on December 30, 2020 [26 favorites]

I absolutely adored Dave Barry's work growing up, he's one of the biggest and most profound influences on my sense of humor. When I was a kid/teen in the 1990s, his year-in-review columns were saved and re-read constantly. I religiously watched "Dave's World." (R.I.P. Harry Anderson). Still, it was clear by the time he retired his column back in 2005 that the well was pretty close to run dry, the running gags had run out of steam, and the schtick was starting to feel dated. I am okay with just giving this, like the rest of his Year End Reviews over the last decade, a pass and just remembering the good times.
posted by HunterFelt at 3:42 AM on December 30, 2020 [47 favorites]

Based on the (admittedly surface level) reading I’ve done, it doesn’t seem to be the case that an individual’s disco culture hate is necessarily based on racism or homophobia? For sure, both of them featured prominently in the wider phenomenon, but there would appear to be plenty of seemingly unrelated things for any given person to potentially hate about it. (As a non-American, I say ”seemingly”, because racism in particular sure seems to permeate almost everything associated with American life, sometimes imperceptibly to an outsider.)

I have a few of Barry’s humor books from the late 90’s/early 00’s and they came off as formulaic but wholesome. I’m not familiar with his Miami Herald career though, so maybe there’s something more than ”duh, he’s an old straight centrist white guy” there. Without that context the accusations seem a bit uncharitable? This thread seems destined to go there already anyway, so if someone’s got something concrete to back this interpretation up, I’m fully open to it.
posted by jklaiho at 3:55 AM on December 30, 2020 [14 favorites]

Yeah, that was awful. Like Mark Russell comedy special levels of awful.

I think he provides a pretty good window into his "old straight centrist white guy" soul here:

Ha ha! Seriously, we hate each other more than ever. We disagree about everything — when to reopen the economy, whether to wear masks, whether to go to the beach, whether it’s OK to say “China” — everything. Each side believes that it is motivated purely by reason, facts and compassion, and that the other side is evil and stupid and sincerely wants people to die. Every issue is binary: my side good, other side bad. There is no nuance, no open-mindedness, no discussion.

BOTH SIDES.....we need more NUANCE and DISCUSSION and people need to be more OPEN-MINDED!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:19 AM on December 30, 2020 [24 favorites]

I also loved Dave's World, and via Barry I was introduced to the works of Carl Hiaasen, so I owe him that.

As for on point contemporary commentary on the Disco Age, I will leave Louis Virtel's recent tweet right here: We need a gay revenge thriller that begins after the 1979 Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 4:19 AM on December 30, 2020 [10 favorites]

Not a huge Dave Barry fan, primarily due to the predictable nature of his humor (I can't believe he made it through a column this long without saying something would be a great name for a band) aimed at middle aged white guys (like myself). But I do have to say that comparing Trump's legal team to hapless Perry Mason adversary Hamilton Burger was pretty good.
posted by TedW at 4:26 AM on December 30, 2020 [5 favorites]

Having recently watched a bunch of old Perry Mason epsiodes, I think that's kind of an insult to Hamilton Burger.

The plot demands that he have a sound enough case so that Mason can pull through at the last minute. He's never disingenuous about his prosecution, he just doesn't have the full picture. When Mason introduces evidence that implicates someone else, Burger always accepts it and humbly submits a motion to drop the charges against Mason's client.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:46 AM on December 30, 2020 [17 favorites]

But I do have to say that comparing Trump's legal team to hapless Perry Mason adversary Hamilton Burger was pretty good.

This seems unfair to Burger, who was at least an honest lawyer regularly sandbagged by an unexpected reveal of the truth rather than a sociopath intentionally ignoring the truth and explicitly lying in court.

On preview: ha! Jinx!
posted by soundguy99 at 4:50 AM on December 30, 2020 [8 favorites]

If anything, Trump's legal team is like Joe Rogan's NewsRadio character who believed that court cases can be won instantly by uttering the right magic words.

Given the Joe Rogan connection, I've always wondered how much of Moon Law might have originated from that episode.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:12 AM on December 30, 2020 [7 favorites]

Back when Dave Barry was writing his as-yet-unsyndicated weekly column for the Miami Herald, like decades and decades ago, even then it was the same. fucking. article, over and over again. The same beats, the same rhythms, the same formulas. A single, sweat-stained, catsup-smeared, nicotine-darkened page out of the "HUMOUR COLUMN MAD-LIBS" loaf of bread, already well past stale and into mouldy. Barry has made a decent living writing Budweiser humour and if he has one saving grace, he hasn't been convicted of any typical Old White Male Comedian crimes like wife beating or child abuse. As far as I know.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:16 AM on December 30, 2020 [6 favorites]

Harry Anderson died? Oh man, how'd I miss that?

Since so many people hate this article (I got bored and quit reading it pretty quick myself), here is Harry doing his wonderful needle through his arm trick.
posted by JanetLand at 5:45 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

Look, back in the 80's there were like 3 TV channels and there was no DVR, so millions of people watched shows like Airwolf* because it was on. Nowadays there's so much TV your main problem is moving the giant pile of stuff you're not interested in out of the way so you can find the show you want to watch.

Same deal with comedy columns. When you didn't have Twitter, or ESPN Page 2, you used to get Dave Barry once every few months in Reader's Digest. There wasn't anything else, so hey, it was good in that context. And when you only hear the joke once a year or so it can stay pretty fresh.

Also, man, I wish the Astros season was as successful as that.

(Also, in re "Disco Era": MALAISE FOREVER.)

* I mean, I remember it being awesome, but I'm not sure it holds up today. Then again, for all I know Netflix rebooted it 2 years ago.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:51 AM on December 30, 2020 [9 favorites]

I loved, loved Dave Barry as a kid. I will never laugh as hard at anything again as I did at Dave Barry when I was 10. If it was just about cheesy running jokes I would be into this, out of nostalgia if nothing else. But stuff like whether it’s OK to say “China” is broken glass in the cereal bowl.
posted by john hadron collider at 5:55 AM on December 30, 2020 [20 favorites]

noped/ho-hummed out at, like, 3rd "pelosi"
posted by 20 year lurk at 6:09 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

> he hasn't been convicted of any typical Old White Male Comedian crimes like wife beating or child abuse. As far as I know.

Holy shit. I mean, not that I didn't know this, but sometimes, MetaFilter can suck every bit as much as Twitter.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 6:10 AM on December 30, 2020 [35 favorites]

2020 is pretty much satire-proof. It was too outlandish on its own to be exaggerated and too terrible and deadly for any jokes about it to not seem cruel. Even Charlie Brooker mostly failed in his special a few days ago and it isn't really an insult to Dave Barry to say that he's not up to the task.
posted by octothorpe at 6:19 AM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

I also loved Dave Barry's work as a teenager. But the man is 73 years old and writing gentle humor for the widest possible audience. It's the butterscotch candy of humor, traditional and predictable.
posted by JDHarper at 6:23 AM on December 30, 2020 [14 favorites]

It is very funny to me to look at the 2010 version of this post and see the exact same thread happening.
posted by JDHarper at 6:25 AM on December 30, 2020 [41 favorites]

Are you making this up? We need to know if you are making this up.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:29 AM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Also, I guess I should have known this already, but Dave Barry is only 5 years younger than Joe Biden.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:34 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

I am disgusted at the "is it okay to say China" comment. That alone is so vile I'll never read anything by him ever again. Blecch.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:01 AM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I used to think Dave Barry and Mitch Hedberg were hilarious...
posted by TwoToneRow at 7:12 AM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

I think part of the problem, at this point, is Barry's chosen medium. As an article on the internet, his material is dated, formulaic, punching in all directions in a where people like to see punching up or to the right, etc., etc.

If he were doing the same material as a standup routine (and that's where a lot of the rhythms of his columns seem to come from), say, on a cruise ship, or at a casino, he'd be killing 'em.

Of course, most of the kinds of people that read Metafilter, myself included, would not be in the audience.
posted by box at 7:13 AM on December 30, 2020 [5 favorites]

It's partly that I used to think Dave Barry was really funny, but mostly that Dave Barry used to be really funny.
posted by Brachinus at 7:26 AM on December 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

I think JDHarper wins Metafilter for the day.

Metafilter: It is very funny to me to look at the 2010 version of this post and see the exact same thread happening.
posted by PhineasGage at 7:27 AM on December 30, 2020 [6 favorites]

it isn't really an insult to Dave Barry to say that he's not up to the task.

To be fair, it's been a clusterfuck of a year. But given that, having the name recognition and audience he does it would have been notable to see something that was less like, "Well gee, people were certainly upset about a few things this year."

Not that it would change a lot of minds where they urgently need to be changed, but it still seems like an important time for figures who are as culturally entrenched and widely read as he is to do things that are very out of character for them, even if what they have to say is "Ominous Warning: You Came This Close And You're Still Not Out Of The Woods" type stuff.

Getting halfway through Ullrich Volker's Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 in the wee hours isn't helping so sunnier reading material is probably in order.

JDHarper: It is very funny to me to look at the 2010 version of this post and see the exact same thread happening.

*slaps forehead*

Those who somethingsomething history...

*shuffles bedside reading pile*
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:31 AM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

Never having heard of said Mr. Barry, I skimmed through his piece hoping to learn something about a man who seemed to be familiar, loved even by many in the US.
Mild butterscotch humour said JDHarper. Seems to sum it up very well.
Not my cup of Darjeeling.

I was more taken by a contrarian summary of 2020 offered in The Spectator, no toilet paper jokes in it and resolutely non-US centred, that argued that 2020 was one of the four best years in history
posted by jan murray at 7:44 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

I am disgusted at the "is it okay to say China" comment. That alone is so vile [...]

I think within it, there's a reasonable point... Trump has turned "Jina" into a slur, and there's no reason he should be allowed to control our language in this way. There's plenty of bad things to say about the Chinese state and the Chinese Communist Party... but post-Trump, it has become necessary to qualify this in ways that would have felt obvious before, for better or worse...

I can say that China is guilty of an ongoing cultural genocide of Uyghurs... but of course, I mean the state and the party... and suddenly I have to prove that individual Chinese people, or Chinese Americans, are OK, let me make very VERY clear that I'm able to separate the two... Trump is a master at this kind of manipulation, if nothing else. And it must be OK to talk (and joke) about it, because that's how communication evolves.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 7:55 AM on December 30, 2020 [12 favorites]

This feels like the annual taking-Dave-Barry-of-all-people-seriously thread. I went to hear him speak last year (I go to lots of Free Library events and I was fond of him back when he was this local guy who moved to Florida and made fun of it) but he was just an old frail white guy, a little confused, who's still bumbling along, amiably complaining about things. He's Jay Leno. He's somebody my grandmother might find a little edgy.
posted by Peach at 8:11 AM on December 30, 2020 [6 favorites]

Thanks to JDHarper’s link to the 2010 version of this thread I learned that AutoDave! The automated Dave Barry column generator is still around after 21 years, and that Dave Barry can write a pretty moving tearjerker of an essay when he wants to.
posted by TedW at 8:23 AM on December 30, 2020 [7 favorites]

if he has one saving grace, he hasn't been convicted of any typical Old White Male Comedian crimes like wife beating or child abuse

2020 ain't over, yet.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:27 AM on December 30, 2020

About the best thing Barry ever did was popularize the exploding whale story.

In the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and newspaper humor columnists were actually kinda popular & relevant, he was the mildly-liberal Boomer to Lewis Grizzard's grumpy Boomer conservative.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:29 AM on December 30, 2020 [10 favorites]

My Grandmother loved him, and he sent her an autographed photo for Christmas. That's all I got.
posted by Beholder at 8:48 AM on December 30, 2020 [5 favorites]

Surprisingly, Dave Barry introduced me to the internet. He wrote an article about the Rome Lab Snowball Camera in (checks google) '95, and wanting to throw imaginary snowballs at engineers, I found that Prodigy had a rudimentary connection to the Web.
posted by Buy Sockpuppet Bonds! at 9:06 AM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

I am an old and remember the disco era quite well. Whatever was young, wild, gay, or black in the movement was pushed aside by the record industry as soon as it started selling records. Then you got the stuff that inspired the backlash - trite homegenized shit with the same relentless goddamn beat. George Clinton said the disco beat "was like making love with just one stroke" and that kind of captured the dreary monotony of it. Sure, some of the backlash was homophobia and racism. But an equal amount was people just getting sick of a puerile product that was dominating the airwaves and record stores. New Wave and the NWOBHM helped wash it away but the dislike still lingers.

As far as Dave Barry goes, yeah, to be filed with Scott Adams and other MeFi whipping boys for just reasons.
posted by Ber at 9:10 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

> he was the mildly-liberal Boomer

Dave Barry isn't liberal; he's libertarian.
posted by Monochrome at 9:17 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

I was more taken by a contrarian summary of 2020 offered in The Spectator, no toilet paper jokes in it and resolutely non-US centred, that argued that 2020 was one of the four best years in history

I'm not clicking a link to The Spectator. And I'm not clicking anything that says it's contrarian, no matter where it's from. Sheer evil.
posted by ambrosen at 9:23 AM on December 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

Having recently watched a bunch of old Perry Mason epsiodes, I think that's kind of an insult to Hamilton Burger.

No way. He’s been scientifically proven to be the worst DA in history. His office loses every case, except for the ones where the original bad guy/girl being guilty is part of a ol’ switcheroo, and even then it’s the defense counsel who figures it out.

The DA files the charges, and brings prosecutions to trail. In in real life, if they went the court and just fucked up week after week, he’d be thrown out of office in a recall election after the first month.
posted by sideshow at 9:23 AM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

As far as Dave Barry goes, yeah, to be filed with Scott Adams

HOLD ON NOW
posted by Going To Maine at 9:35 AM on December 30, 2020 [10 favorites]

When I saw the column, I knew it would end up here, so I studiously read it to do my homework. I thought, compared to past years, this was pretty well-written, especially considering the lack of enthusiasm I and surely most people must have to looking back on this year or ever seeing another toilet paper joke. I didn't like the even-handedness, or the joke-frameworks that Barry has been using for decades. I thought the disco reference was telling- not of racism, but of over-reliance on common-denominator tropes from the last century. However, I sent this column to a friend who is probably the same age as Barry and he loved it and thanked me for it and I'm glad I made him happy.
posted by acrasis at 9:36 AM on December 30, 2020 [14 favorites]

My mom sent me this. She really does have good taste, I promise. But I could not hang with his both-sidesing of Trump and Biden. Funny thing: I watched Death to 2020 last night, a Charlie Brooker year-in-review with great guest stars, and it made lots of fun of Biden -- and that was fine! I didn't love the doing of the jokes, but they were pretty funny!

Thing about that show, though, is that you did not wonder whose side they were on. You get the sense that the producers would rather Bernie have been the candidate, but with Barry, you get the sense he does not care at all. I once read in Reason that he was a libertarian, which tracks.

Still, he was a huge influence on my sense of humor as a kid, and my joke construction as a grownup. So I owe him more than otherwise; but even so, this is just where he's at right now, and we don't need it.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:45 AM on December 30, 2020

Dave Barry isn't liberal; he's libertarian.

Libertarians have a way of claiming anyone who says anything remotely supportive of them. And, like a lot of celebrity libertarians, Dave Barry is not someone who seems to have given a lot of deep thought to the subject. Or, to put it in terms he might appreciate, he makes Penn Jillette look like Grover Norquist. From an interview he did with Reason:

I started getting Social Security finally when I turned 70 years old. So now I think it's the greatest program in history. Let me ask you, since I'm in the beating heart of libertarianism: If you pay into Social Security your entire life and you're never going to get anywhere near the money you paid in back, is it still wrong to take the money? Actually, I'm taking the money. Whatever answer you give, I'm taking the money. And if they came along and said, "Dave, we've increased Social Security a lot because old people want it," I'd take that too. I probably wouldn't say no.
posted by box at 9:47 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

For a completely different take on the worst year, check out Frankie Boyle's 2020 quiz. Be sure to read to question six. Warning: very UK centric.
posted by euphorb at 10:01 AM on December 30, 2020

For those with a knee-jerk unwillingness to click a link to The Spectator, the article concludes:

Despite a pandemic and a global lockdown, the share in chronic hunger right now is a quarter less than it was in 2000, child mortality has declined by 40 per cent and extreme poverty by two thirds.

posted by PhineasGage at 10:06 AM on December 30, 2020

Based on the (admittedly surface level) reading I’ve done, it doesn’t seem to be the case that an individual’s disco culture hate is necessarily based on racism or homophobia?

I think you’d have a hell of a time arguing that the disco backlash wasn’t based in homophobia/perceived effeminacy to a significant extent. But yeah Dave is just pulling out a stock joke that he’s used for thirty years.

I’ve said before I get a little annoyed with the decontextualized “disco sucks == racism and sexism and homophobia” package take because - yeah, it’s all three, in the intersectional sense that they sort of multiply. But the obligatory repetition of that list and proliferation of YouTube explainers flattens a lot of the actual history, particularly regarding race. See the comment mentioning that George Clinton thought disco was watered-down funk. And it was hardly the first black music white Boomers were aware of - even Dave Barry loved Motown and soul (seriously I read basically all the Dave Barry as a kid and he talks about it a lot.)
posted by atoxyl at 10:27 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

No way. He’s been scientifically proven to be the worst DA in history. His office loses every case, except for the ones where the original bad guy/girl being guilty is part of a ol’ switcheroo, and even then it’s the defense counsel who figures it out.

The DA files the charges, and brings prosecutions to trail.

Not to mention the DA has the whole law enforcement apparatus at his disposal to get to the bottom of things, yet Perry Mason figures out the truth with just Paul and Della to help him out. Although, to be honest, Paul Drake was someone who knew how to get shit done.
posted by TedW at 10:28 AM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

The You're Wrong About podcast episode on Disco Demolition Night does a great job of explaining the racist/homophobic subtext of the anti-disco movement, but it also notes that for a lot of people "disco" refers to the watered-down, cookie-cutter version popularized by Saturday Night Fever (itself based on a New York article that was a fictitious account by a British writer who was too intimidated by witnessing a fight outside the Brooklyn discotheque that he was about to enter to actually go in, and simply recycled a number of cliches and tropes about 60s English Mods for the article). Barry's use of it is just another embarrassing old-dude anachronism.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:38 AM on December 30, 2020 [10 favorites]

I haven’t thought about or read much of Dave Barry in this millennium, but I will always have a soft spot for him for writing my favorite anagram: that WASHINGTON POST can be rearranged to TOWN GASP: NO SHIT
posted by thecaddy at 10:49 AM on December 30, 2020 [11 favorites]

Barry's use of it is just another embarrassing old-dude anachronism.

Especially in 2020, a great year for disco!
posted by Rinku at 10:53 AM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Bothsidism as a fair point died during the GWB presidency, in spite of plenty of politicians around the globe not noticing. So it makes sense there is a MF FPP from 2010 with the same content.

Smart comedians noticed back then already that it is a huge challenge for comedy when one side of the aisle is consistently wrong. Obviously this guy didn't.
posted by mumimor at 11:03 AM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Dave Barry isn't liberal; he's libertarian.

This is a shocking twist! I read a lot of Dave Barry as a kid, because we had lots of Dave Barry humor books lying around (and I even acquired a few at different points, because hey, jokes!) There are two of his observations of his that have stuck in my brain.

• In an essay on politics, Barry imagined an American as a driver with a flat tire. The Democrats would happily pull over to help you but would only succeed in setting your car on fire; the Republicans would know how to change the tire but would instead drive by because they had to get to the country club. I don’t remember when Barry wrote those lines, but it seems like an assertively mainstream political take, akin to Will Rogers noting that he isn’t a member of an organized political party because he’s a Democrat. I would have to slightly squint to see that take’s author identify as a libertarian -it’s a believable evolution- but it’s easy for me to believe that it’s author would just want everyone to stop fighting.
• In some essay where he riffed on paying taxes, Barry notes that you could take the standard deduction, but that was the way the government got you and you should really itemize everything. (I have entirely forgotten the joke.) I might be able to finally itemize my deductions at long last, but for the majority of my life the standard deduction has always, always, always been the right choice. Whenever I remember that riff I just think that Barry is a man from a very different time and place, and probably in a very different income bracket.

posted by Going To Maine at 11:33 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

(In the voice of Daniel Plainview):

Booooooooooooooooooth sides! Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooth! Sides! ...Boy! That's right! Both sides both sides both sides. Bone dry!
posted by ishmael at 11:41 AM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I will always have a soft spot for him for writing my favorite anagram: that WASHINGTON POST can be rearranged to TOWN GASP: NO SHIT-- thecaddy

In that regard, this made me chuckle: she [Kamala Harris] would become the first U.S. vice president whose name can be rearranged to spell “I Alarm A Shark".

I thought he was quite mischievous 25 years ago when he outraged Mattel and parents with calls for him to be banned, by mentioning in a column that he noticed he could take is daughter's rollerblading Barbie that shoots spark out of her skates, spray it with hair spray, and create a fire bomb.

Unfortunately, this edginess turned out to be a single exception to his usual slop.
posted by eye of newt at 11:46 AM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I loved Dave Barry as a kid. As I got a little older I realized his columns were extremely samey. And his politics were (and apparently still are) the generis boomer/older GenX ironic cynicism.

I have a soft spot in my heart for him, (and his fantasy novels!) that is strictly nostalgia. My brain sorts him in with Harry Anderson, Tom Petty, Thomas Dolby, MacGyver and other reassuring models of gentle seeming, off beat white dude from my early yearsj.

I'm not able to completely overcome the temptations of nostalgia, but I can at least manage not to mistake it for a sign of quality, or to be irritable because others don't share a fondness for the minutiae of my childhood.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 11:54 AM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

HOW HAS NOBODY POSTED "OK BOOMER" YET.
posted by LMGM at 11:59 AM on December 30, 2020 [13 favorites]

This old white guy/unrepentant hippie/Leftest has never found DB amusing, despite friends' attempts to share. Surprised he's still publishing mainstream, as he's collecting Social Security now? Retire for heaven's sake and shut up already.
posted by Rash at 12:05 PM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

I would rather be forced to spend a day reading Andy Borowitz New Yorker pieces rather than a single minute reading Dave Barry.
posted by holborne at 12:15 PM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

Big Trouble is the single funniest Florida crime novel I have ever read in my life. It was written by Dave Barry. I keep it around to reread as a fictional comfort blanket for days that really really suck. I didn’t even try to read this column because “both sides” plus I am not sure 2020 will ever be a source of humor for me regardless of the author of any supposed “humor” piece about this loathsome year.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:35 PM on December 30, 2020 [8 favorites]

I would have to slightly squint to see that take’s author identify as a libertarian -it’s a believable evolution- but it’s easy for me to believe that it’s author would just want everyone to stop fighting.

I mean he’s always basically been the classic American “boy, our government just can’t get it right!” bothsides-y popular cynicism guy. It’s more Libertarian-lite. I’m pretty sympathetic to having a basic level of contempt for both existing parties, but it’s hard to come up with a positive vision of politics out of Dave Barry-ism.

I would rather be forced to spend a day reading Andy Borowitz New Yorker pieces rather than a single minute reading Dave Barry.

Reeeally can’t say I agree with you there, though. Dave has been writing the same shit for like fifteen years but at least I can get a bit of nostalgia for the (almost the same, but fresher) version he wrote fifteen years before that.
posted by atoxyl at 12:36 PM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

About the best thing Barry ever did was popularize the exploding whale story.

You forgot the exploding Pop Tarts.
posted by briank at 12:58 PM on December 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

At this point we just need to force an AI to read all his writing and then it'll churn out slightly better versions forever.
posted by The otter lady at 1:43 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Retire for heaven's sake and shut up already.

The year in review is, I believe, the only thing that Dave Barry writes any more.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:45 PM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

Unfortunately, this edginess turned out to be a single exception to his usual slop.

He also wrote a completely sincere plea for people to wear bike helmets, following his son's accident.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:05 PM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

The writing of Barry's I recall fondly was, solely, about his dogs -- the "large main dog" and the "small auxiliary dog" -- and their penchant to "get the rips". His takes on humans, I'm not into them.
posted by runehog at 2:07 PM on December 30, 2020 [5 favorites]

The most interesting thing in all this to me is how in the modern era it seems to be impossible for people to simply not like something. Instead, it's all "...for me to poop on!" It seems like a lot of wasted effort on something that doesn't deserve it.

Ironically, this year in review may be the least bothsides a Dave Barry thing has ever been. Sure, he took the piss with Biden a bit, but that shit about Trump was dripping with obvious disdain, possibly bordering on hatred. His material has always required reading between the lines to fully get the message. Humor is rarely very humorous when everything is stated explicitly, and that ambiguity is one of the things that allowed him to have a job for so damn long despite the massive shifts in societal attitudes over his career.
posted by wierdo at 2:07 PM on December 30, 2020 [7 favorites]

... it’s hard to come up with a positive vision of politics out of Dave Barry-ism.

Here's his vision:

I would eliminate all giant federal departments - Transportation, Commerce, Interior, Exterior, etc. - and replace them with a single entity, called the Department of Louise. This would consist of a woman named Louise, selected on the basis of being a regular taxpaying individual with children and occasional car trouble and zero experience in government. The Department of Louise would have total veto power over everything. Before government officials could spend any money, they'd have to explain the reason to Louise and get her approval.

"Louise," they'd say, "we want to take several billion dollars away from the taxpayers and build a giant contraption in Texas so we can cause tiny invisible particles to whiz around and smash into each other and break into even tinier particles."

And Louise would say: "No." ...

Foreign affairs: These would be handled via another new entity called the Department of a Couple of Guys Named Victor. The idea here would be to prevent situations such as the Panama invasion ... The Department of a Couple of Guys Named Victor would not handle things this way. I'd just tell them, "Victors, I have this feeling that something unfortunate might happen to Manuel Noriega, you know what I mean?" And, mysteriously, something would.

This is funny enough that I remember the column from my childhood. But it's clearly not a joke from someone who is interested in government. And that was fine, back then; it was easy not to care much. But that apathy, that "what a bunch of clowns" type of joke, led millions of low-information voters to fail to take Trump's crimes seriously because "they all do it."

These days, if you're into comedy and you want to make broad jokes about the government, you joke about guillotines. It's a different world.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:10 PM on December 30, 2020 [13 favorites]

Although generally not known for a gentle style of disagreeing, Spike Lee offered a good model: "Not my cup of tea."
posted by PhineasGage at 2:12 PM on December 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

He also wrote a completely sincere plea for people to wear bike helmets, following his son's accident.

He wrote a few fairly moving sincere pieces, actually.

But that apathy, that "what a bunch of clowns" type of joke, led millions of low-information voters to fail to take Trump's crimes seriously because "they all do it."

I mean, the joke did not. The joke reflects an attitude that has been popular in America for a very long time.
posted by atoxyl at 2:22 PM on December 30, 2020 [6 favorites]

Also the Department of a Couple of Guys Named Victor is basically just the CIA.
posted by atoxyl at 2:45 PM on December 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

I wish we had actually seen Elizabeth Warren handing out atomic wedgies.
posted by PussKillian at 2:46 PM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

At this point we just need to force an AI to read all his writing and then it'll churn out slightly better versions forever.

This is a capital suggestion and solution: I invite everyone to scroll back up and give it a favorite:
posted by y2karl at 3:17 PM on December 30, 2020

you’re right, atoxyl, sorry my phrasing was unclear
posted by Countess Elena at 3:18 PM on December 30, 2020

Ironically, this year in review may be the least bothsides a Dave Barry thing has ever been.

Well, one would hope so, given that one of those sides has (just going for a few of the recent hits here) allowed and caused unknown tens of thousands of people to die prematurely, used the office of President to enrich himself and his family, repeatedly perverted justice by abusing the power of pardon in order to protect himself from testimony by coconspirators, avoided impeachment for an attempt to corrupt a democratic election by enlisting the aid of foreign powers and then tried to overturn that same election in order to lead the US (and the world) further down this path of evil and destruction.

The problem isn't really the "both sides" thing. It's that this sort of "doesn't Mitch McConnell look miserable amirite?" humour is wholly inadequate for addressing the actual events and issues under discussion. The Republican Party is literally a danger to the future of the planet: this stuff simply won't wash.

If Barry's style is not adequate to addressing modern politics (and it isn't) he should write about other things and also some jokes.
posted by howfar at 3:30 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Well, he did (mostly) retire 15 years ago.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 3:51 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

And yet here we are.
posted by howfar at 3:55 PM on December 30, 2020

Metafilter: Your humor is inadequate for the current political moment.
posted by PhineasGage at 4:06 PM on December 30, 2020 [7 favorites]

At this point we just need to force an AI to read all his writing and then it'll churn out slightly better versions forever.

This is a capital suggestion and solution: I invite everyone to scroll back up and give it a favorite:

In the thread from ten years ago, griphus pointed out that this was largely solved by AutoDave!.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:21 PM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

As an 80s kid immersed in a right-wing evangelical culture, Dave Barry was just about the funniest and most subversive media I was allowed to consume.

When he describes the Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle as the greatest event in American history and definitive proof of God’s existence, part of me thinks he means it.
posted by lumpy at 4:52 PM on December 30, 2020 [9 favorites]

At this point we just need to force an AI to read all his writing and then it'll churn out slightly better versions forever.

And then we can modify the AI to read all the old replies to pervious versions of this thread, and churn out slightly better versions for the comment section. I'm not sure any human input into this is needed.
posted by happyroach at 4:53 PM on December 30, 2020 [12 favorites]

sideshow: No way. He’s been scientifically proven to be the worst DA in history. His office loses every case, except for the ones where the original bad guy/girl being guilty is part of a ol’ switcheroo, and even then it’s the defense counsel who figures it out.

I think you're overlooking the substance of our comments re: Hamilton Burger. While he's not the best or the brightest prosecutor in the world, he knows when he's been beat which is why comparing him to Trump's legal team is kind of insulting. At the end of each episode, after Mason has gotten the true killer to confess to the crime, Burger could just proceed to trial anyway evidence be damned, but instead he immediately asks the judge to dismiss the charges because he's able to recognize that Mason has uncovered the truth and is unwilling to dispute reality.

Also, to take a Doyalist viewpoint, he only loses the cases we see him lose because Mason has to (almost) always win for reasons of plot.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:56 PM on December 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'll probably regret this, but I'm gonna interrupt the two minute's hate on Dave Barry going on here to get something off my chest that's really bothering me about some of the comments in this thread. Like who you wanna like, dislike who you wanna like -- no problem -- de gustibus non est disputandem after all. What's problematic to me though, is the blatant ageism that I'm seeing here. So what if Barry's 73? As several people have noted, his humor isn't much different these days than it was decades ago so, what does his age now have to do with anything? MetaFilter is usually better than this -- you don't see people here assuming the worst about someone based on their gender, ethnicity, home country, taste in music, hair color, etc, so how come old people are fair game for communal scorn just for being old?

I get it that a lot of the shit we are all dealing with these days is due to evil old fuckers like Trump, McConnell, Giuliani, et al, but the problem isn't these fuckers being old as much as it is them being evil. Picture if instead of Donald Trump, we had Jared or Ivanka as president, how much better do you think those youngsters would be? Or for that matter, imagine if Trump himself had been elected back when he was in his thirties, say?

I admit that I take this personally, being a oldtimer myself (go ahead, OK BOOMER me if you like, see if I care.) By the way, my earlier post in this thread about how I also used to like Barry was in reference to this, in case any of y'all young whippersnappers didn't get the joke.
posted by TwoToneRow at 5:01 PM on December 30, 2020 [17 favorites]

MetaFilter is usually better than this

ooooh no not really. Ageism is an acceptable -ism here, I've found, for the most part. It does suck, it's lazy.

What I think is actually being criticized is his lack of personal evolution - totally fair game. That's not down to age. I mean Patti Smith is 71, David Byrne is 68, Toni Morrison is 82, they are not rehashing their old stuff. But that's not down to their age but their personal choices.
posted by Miko at 5:31 PM on December 30, 2020 [11 favorites]

humor isn't much different these days than it was decades ago so, what does his age now have to do with anything

That very thing, I'd guess - a lot has changed in those decades. Playing a straight-down-the-middle shot just isn't a neutral proposition anymore for many after the last 4 years.

Honestly for me most of the annoyance is in the first few sentences, since "Trump wasn't re-elected, nor was there a successful post election coup" rate a shade above the absence of murder hornet fatalities.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 5:34 PM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

As someone who pointed out his age, I'm not saying he's inherently unfunny or problematic because he's an older man. But his humor comes off as dated, because he honed his skills thirty years ago and he hasn't really changed his formula since.

Like, take the disco reference that mandolin conspiracy referenced in an early comment as "A callback to a certain type of homophobia." I don't think Barry is consciously or particularly homophobic, but there was an ambient homophobia in the 80's and 90's that got into a lot of the humor of the time, and Barry hasn't updated his list of harmless punching bag topics.

And I think if he were a younger man he might have been more conscious of what he was saying. He'd have a different context, and might have recognized the latent homophobia of the time.

Even if not, he probably wouldn't be making references to trends that happened fifty years ago as if they're a fresh and relevant punch line. His work is calibrated for an older audience, and the young folks here are going to either not connect at all or are going to connect in a nostalgic way.
posted by JDHarper at 5:40 PM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

Toni Morrison is 82

I have sad news, I’m afraid.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:56 PM on December 30, 2020 [9 favorites]

I have to push back a bit on the assumption that anti-disco reflects homophobia, knowingly or otherwise. My dislike of disco comes from growing up in So Cal in the 1970s, when disco was the emblematic music of cheesy straight pick-up bars in Marina Del Rey. Think Two Wild & Crazy Guys, not Village People. And I just didn't (and still don't) care for the monotonous thumpa-thumpa beat, regardless of who else likes or dislikes it. As to the fashions, I was mostly concerned about fire safety, what with the largely petroleum-based sartorial options.
posted by PhineasGage at 5:56 PM on December 30, 2020 [5 favorites]

the question of whether barry is bad actually is kind of irrelevant, since he’s a cultural artifact of a deeply different time. the more interesting question is what was it exactly about middle-aged 80s/90s culture that made something like barry appealing or necessary.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:10 PM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

Patti Smith is 71

She turns 74 today.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:28 PM on December 30, 2020 [5 favorites]

“ President Trump accepts the defeat with the calm, mature grace and dignity that have become his trademark as leader of some imaginary nation that we are fantasizing about in this sentence.”

Reading this, I audibly sighed.
posted by Guy Smiley at 6:40 PM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

I do like the Elizabeth Warren wedgie gag, though he gasses the dismount when he explains that what he has just described is an "atomic wedgie."

dear joke tellers, plz be confident in your material. if I sense you think I am slow I am less likely to laugh.
posted by Sauce Trough at 6:41 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: Metafilter: Your humor is inadequate for the current political moment.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 6:50 PM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

the question of whether barry is bad actually is kind of irrelevant, since he’s a cultural artifact of a deeply different time. the more interesting question is what was it exactly about middle-aged 80s/90s culture that made something like barry appealing or necessary.

Dave Barry is very Boomer in some ways (like all the writing he’s done explicitly about being a Boomer) but his formulas and stylistic tics feel very much an antecedent to Internet Humor, especially the 00s version. He makes perfect sense as a stage in the evolution of humor writing as we know it now. He just feels very outmoded at this point since not only did he thoroughly play out his schtick, but everyone else did, too. And various “news of the weird” sites took over the crazy Florida stories, and we can just pull up the exploding whale video and the flaming vacuum cleaner competition on YouTube.
posted by atoxyl at 6:54 PM on December 30, 2020 [18 favorites]

(I’m kind of a Dave Barry scholar!)
posted by atoxyl at 6:55 PM on December 30, 2020 [9 favorites]

atoxyl, that's fascinating.

on the Internet no one knows you are a dog Dave Barry.
posted by Sauce Trough at 7:21 PM on December 30, 2020

Atoxyl, I 100% agree. When there was no internet, he was an alt.take available in mainstream media. He represented a sort of vestige of gonzo that seemed to be dying in the highly corporatizing 80s/early 90s.

Sorry for the age/aliveness errors, just pointing that growing old is not a choice, but growing stale is.
posted by Miko at 7:59 PM on December 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

Aside from the fact that he doesn’t seem very good at landing a joke, Barry’s framing of cultural upheaval as something that happens to other people and politics as a game that only concerns a handful of elites in Washington is absolutely grating in less fraught times and completely asinine this year. A humorist with any amount of awareness and some respect for their craft would have noticed this and attempted to recalibrate their act years ago. Also, the Miami Herald didn’t do Barry any favors by placing images of real pain and trauma amid his clunky punchlines.

>The more interesting question is what was it exactly about middle-aged 80s/90s culture that made something like Barry appealing or necessary.

Would it be the fact that Barry’s brand of humor doesn’t seem to have a point of view? Is that what people found appealing in the 90s? I was around back then too, but Barry didn’t really show up on my radar when I was younger so I can’t say.

Or is it that he actually does present a specific point of view: that of the economically secure, culturally dominant, self-appraised ‘reasonable’ and ‘moderate’ person? The comedy equivalent of Chuck Schumer’s imaginary friends, Joe and Eileen O'Reilly, a white, middle-aged couple from the Long Island suburbs?

This approach was probably ill suited to political humor 30 years ago. I can definitely say it’s the wrong approach today. For contrast, see the aforementioned Frankie Boyle. He seems a bit off his game this year, but his piece at least has a clear perspective. It has focus. It doesn’t flatten all the year’s events into the same moral plane. It has a reason to exist.
posted by theory at 8:22 PM on December 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

To the question up-thread: just read Barry's last several years and you'll notice a) how seldom he even mentions minorities b) lots of OJ Simpson and celebrities it "goes without saying" are obnoxious or weird (because Dave Barry doesn't like them). Maybe it's the same 'wholesome satire' being applied to everyone else, but it feels sneering at the very least. Couldn't they give someone else a turn? John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Jerry Seinfeld, or how about another Barry - Lynda? Heaven forbid they take a risk on an unknown.

p.s. - it's a sure bet Dave Barry can't bust a move to save his life.
posted by AppleSeed at 8:38 PM on December 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am 73 and like House, Funk and lots of other kinds of dance music. I still have a bunch of 12" extended remixes in the vinyl vaults of our cellar. This year I lost my sense of smell and taste, we lost our cat Mimi, my spouse lost a friend to cancer who was only 65, two of our younger neighbors died within a week of each other a few days ago. I could go on but won't. Thankful to still be alive and have someone whom I care for very much.
posted by DJZouke at 5:33 AM on December 31, 2020 [4 favorites]

Sorry for the age/aliveness errors

Apologies, Miko, I didn't intend for my Patti Smith comment to come across as "U R rong", more as a "Hey, neat coincidence!", since several of the other places I wander to on the Internet (often music-related) had "It's Patti Smith's birthday today!" pieces up yesterday.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:47 AM on December 31, 2020 [1 favorite]

Let me first give you some background on my sense of humor. It’s like, so sophisticated, y’all. The other day, I accidentally clicked on a link to a slightly outdated humor column in “Le Monde,” and before I could close the tab, I regurgitated my very lunch upon a first edition of “The Menippean Satires of Thomas Pynchon.” I swear, it’s ruined. Ruined! Barely missed the Voltaire, if you’ll believe it.

Now, about this Dave Barry bloke, I have a confession to make. When I was just a wee lad, at the age of 17 months or less — I had barely begun reading the serious papers — there I sat, in my crib, laughing at the folksy silliness. Exploding toilets, what a hoot to the uneducated mind! He rented out the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile just to pick up his son from school? I laughed and laughed, like a fool.

Of course, these days, I know better. Nothing can be funny that misses the proverbial “edge.” Nothing that reflects, or comments upon, the perceptions of the unwashed masses will elicit a chuckle from me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must continue my translation of the collected works of Laurence Sterne into Volapük.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 6:21 AM on December 31, 2020 [9 favorites]

I'm 71, of the 'Nothing Like Us Ever Was!" affine group, and pretty much dislike everyone 70 and younger, so, take your best shot, noob. That out of the way, while fully concurring with all the above shade being thrown upon Dave Barry, we still must laud him for adding such classics as "Maybelline", "Roll Over Beethoven", and "Johnny B. Good" to the American Songbook.

(Is this how they do it? I would really like to fill out soc sec with some supplemental buckaroos myself)
posted by Chitownfats at 6:27 AM on December 31, 2020 [1 favorite]

No, no, everybody knows that was his cousin Marvin.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:44 AM on December 31, 2020 [1 favorite]

He did, however, write a lot of great music for James Bond movies.
posted by box at 6:45 AM on December 31, 2020 [1 favorite]

That Spectator article did have this observation, which was a little comforting in a human-progress kind of way:

Had we faced this new coronavirus in 2005, we would not have had the technology to even imagine such mRNA vaccines, if it had appeared in 1975 we would not have the ability to read the genome of the virus, if it came in 1950, we would not have had a single ventilator on the planet. And if we had suffered from this pandemic before the internet, our economy would have collapsed completely, as would our social relationships.

posted by Bezbozhnik at 11:20 AM on December 31, 2020 [5 favorites]

"...if it came in 1950, we would not have had a single ventilator on the planet."

Not exactly true; in the 1950's we had iron lungs; some of us in medicine wondered if COVID wards would end up looking like this.
posted by TedW at 12:50 PM on December 31, 2020 [1 favorite]

Of course, these days, I know better. Nothing can be funny that misses the proverbial “edge.” Nothing that reflects, or comments upon, the perceptions of the unwashed masses will elicit a chuckle from me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must continue my translation of the collected works of Laurence Sterne into Volapük.

The best comedians have always been disenfranchised somehow. To really understand society you can't be a comfortable member of the cohort running it and its very difficult to make jokes about something you don't understand.

There used to be a profitable business where the jokes (and people telling them) had their rough edges filed away for the consumption of "the unwashed masses" you mention of comfortable cishet white boomers.

The massively lowered barriers to entry of platforms like twitter and tiktok have allowed people from the fringes to actually tell their own jokes to millions of people at the same time the atomisation of the audience has undercut the old mainstream comedy business.

"Mainstream" comedy is never going to actually die, but as a cultural force its pretty much spent.
posted by zymil at 10:29 PM on December 31, 2020 [4 favorites]

Yeah well, I was really just having some fun with this bummer of a thread... but if you want my real opinion, it seems like we disagree on whether comedy can be worthwhile without being political, or a cultural force for justice etc.... I can't make the argument any better that this old comment, which is a translation of a German comedian's reaction to the Charlie Hebdo attack.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 4:33 AM on January 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

it seems like we disagree on whether comedy can be worthwhile without being political, or a cultural force for justice etc.

This is such a wild exaggeration of anyone's position that it's basically a strawman argument.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:58 AM on January 1, 2021 [4 favorites]

It's a specific reply to a specific comment by a specific MeFite... So by definition, I'd say it's not a strawman argument. But hey, if it's really a wild exaggeration, I'm glad. I hope you're right. And if you aren't, this thread still ends in a more reasoned, and pleasant, and fair way than it started (or middled).
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 7:05 AM on January 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

Even a quick scroll through Netflix pulls up comedians who never would have had a microphone 20 years ago, as well as plenty of direct heirs to the anodyne white male comedians of earlier eras. Totalizing arguments about comedy are no more accurate than totalizing comments about any other art form.
posted by PhineasGage at 9:21 AM on January 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

as an experiment, I put one of Dave's articles about his dogs into an AI writer, and got:

Lately, after only four or five barks the dog will start to rear up on his hind legs and paw at the air, as if he is trying to reach a light bulb that someone has accidentally lowered to hang just out of reach. The dog has to get his four or five barks or else he will just start to freak out, like the passengers in a stalled elevator.
I have concluded that you have your hidden life, I have my hidden life, and your dog has his. My dogs' lives are filled with walking, listening, talking, peeing, barking, and being absolutely, positively convinced that there's a piece of meat that's about to fall off the kitchen counter. They are basically unemployed.
You will probably be able to relate. Dogs are a lot like us.
posted by The otter lady at 6:08 PM on January 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

Can you squeeze Big Trouble out of AI? Nope. You cannot. Happy New Year to MetaFilter: Dogs are a lot like us.
posted by Bella Donna at 11:01 AM on January 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

I find it hard to get worked up about Dave Barry at this particular point in time.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:35 PM on January 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

(I’m kind of a Dave Barry scholar!)

atoxyl, were you by any chance in the alt.fan.dave_barry newsgroup on Usenet in the 1990s? (I was "Spiritual Hardware".)

Also, a few years ago I reread Dave Barry's Dave Barry In Cyberspace (published in 1996), which has held up at least as well as Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line (1999), and possibly much better.

On the software you'll need for your personal computer:

First off, you need an operating system, which is the "Godfather" program that operates behind the scenes, telling all the other programs what to do, making sure they cooperate, and if necessary leaving the heads of horses in their beds. The most popular operating system in world history as of 10:30 A.M. today is Windows 95^☺, but there are many other options, including Windows 3.1^☺, Windows 3.11^☺, Windows 3.111^☺, Windows for Workgroups^☺, Windows for Groups That Mainly Just Screw Around^☺, Windows for Repeat Offenders^☺, Lo-Fat Windows^☺, and The Artist Formerly Known as Windows^☺. There is also the old "MS-DOS" operating system, which is actually written on parchment and is rarely used on computers manufactured after the French and Indian War. And there is "OS/2," which was developed at enormous expense by IBM and marketed as a Windows alternative, and which has won a loyal following of thousands of people, an estimated three of whom do not work for IBM. And of course there is the Apple operating system, or "Apple operating system," for your hippie beatnik weirdo loner narcotics-ingesting communistic types of Apple-owning individuals who are frankly too wussy to handle the challenge of hand-to-hand combat with computer systems specifically designed to thwart them.

On the internet:

... I had managed to send this hideously embarrassing message to everybody in the world except the person who was supposed to read it.
Yes, thanks to the awesome communications capabilities of the Internet, I was able to make an intergalactic fool of myself, and there's no reason why you can't do the same.

Prefiguring Clay Shirky's cognitive surplus arguments:

So go ahead! Get on the Web! In my opinion, it's WAY more fun than television, and what harm can it do?
OK, it can kill brain cells by the billions. But you don't need brain cells. You have a computer.

The origin of Bill Gates's wealth: "versions."

How much should your new computer cost? "About $350 less than you will actually pay."

Also, check out the Comdex chapter for Barry's thoughts on the limited range of stories and game mechanics available in games written by and for men in 1996, and his speculation on what more diversity would look like. It's the kind of argument that, if republished in 2010 or later, would have gotten him angry notes from Gamergate folks.
posted by brainwane at 2:24 PM on January 2, 2021 [5 favorites]

While I bailed out on this piece as soon as he started both-sidesing with Trump, I still have fond memories of his 80s stuff. "This way to the Spackle Kingdom" was a running joke in my family for a long time.
posted by tavella at 10:08 PM on January 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

I enjoyed Dave Barry a lot as a youth, and find him basically irrelevant now, so I'm less interested in the specific argument over whether he's good or bad and more interested in the question of whether the reaction to him in this thread is ageist or whether MeFi tends to tolerate ageism more broadly.

I'll admit that I've done a lot more studying to understand systems of oppression and intersectionality which are based on race, gender and sexuality rather than age, but I also think there's some fairly different dynamics going on here because while I do think the average 73-year-old in America does experience age-based discrimination, it is also the case that the highest concentrations of power and wealth in this country tends to skew older than the average. Furthermore, the average age of Americans has grown fairly slowly over the past 10 years to ~38, while the average age of Representatives and Senators are increasing just as fast and are ~57 and ~62 respectively. In 2018, the average incoming CEO at an S&P 500 company was 54 and In May 2019, only 6% of those 500 CEOs were under 50. It's also worth noting that Trump's support in both 2016 and 2020 was strongly correlated with older-than-average Americans. So, in many ways the views and political desires of older people are fairly strongly advantaged in the aggregate.

Given all that, especially in this particularly harrowing year where the federal government (and many state governments) have done such a lousy job protecting all Americans, but especially "essential" workers*, it makes sense there'd be some resentment towards older, especially more privileged Americans whose politics seem somewhat outdated. It would be shitty to pre-judge what Barry's written based purely on his 73 years, but my guess is we'd be seeing a very similar kind of vitriol if the same humor originated with a 35–40 year-old. However, it's particularly hard to imagine someone that age writing like Barry does, and I think that may be part of why the knee-jerk anti-boomer sentiment arrives quickly. Certainly, there are lots of very powerful, progressive septuagenarians and octogenarians, but by and large it's pretty understandable than a lot of folks see the gross and widening inequalities in this country as largely the responsibility of Barry's generation.

* It's hard to find data on this, but I'd be pretty shocked if this group which includes grocery, food service and delivery people didn't skew significantly younger than average
posted by Cogito at 6:07 PM on January 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

There are a lot of problems with that argument, but one of them is that people 70+ are not a monolith. It was not a “generation” that produced the present degree of inequality but a focused 50-year campaign of the financial elite, at all ages, currently being happily replicated by whiz kids in their 30s, 30s, and 40s. Meanwhile, 1 in 10 seniors lives below federal poverty standards, and as with all wealth, the vast bulk of it is held by only a few tranches. Seeding generational warfare is one of the things capitalism does best. They hope you don’t notice that most of us regardless of age are getting stiffed by wealth hoarding.

Dislike someone for their positions. Lay off the ageism.
posted by Miko at 11:25 PM on January 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

Dislike someone for their positions. Lay off the ageism.

I agree! As I wrote, "It would be shitty to pre-judge what Barry's written based purely on his 73 years, but my guess is we'd be seeing a very similar kind of vitriol if the same humor originated with a 35–40 year-old."

However, your argument—that most seniors are not among the powerful elite—applies just as easily to gender and race, but I'm guessing that wouldn't make it ok that positions of power are overwhelmingly held by white people and male people. This situation doesn't make it acceptable to discriminate against the elderly any more than it makes it acceptable to discriminate based on race or gender, but the misrepresentation does shed some light on why people may feel resentment stemming from this misrepresentation in the corridors of power. And shitty takes from elderly white men tend to arouse that ire in an understandable way when one considers that structural inequality.

Seeding generational warfare is one of the things capitalism does best. They hope you don’t notice that most of us regardless of age are getting stiffed by wealth hoarding.

Again, I agree with you! Capitalism and our laws around inheritance are certainly to blame here. What I was trying to point out in my previous comment was that we're often unaware of the way power is concentrated along axes that do not represent the citizenry includes age as well as the more well-known demographics like gender, race and so on.
posted by Cogito at 10:17 PM on January 4, 2021

It isn't ageist to note the obvious connection between the era someone grew up or became popular in and their values when those values were so clearly prevalent in that time.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:52 PM on January 4, 2021

...or whether MeFi tends to tolerate ageism more broadly

Racism and ageism have this in common: they are something other people do -- but not me or my ilk. Other people think and march in lockstep but not me. I am a unique and enlightened individual -- as are members of my cohort. Unlike those people over there.
posted by y2karl at 1:03 AM on January 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

The fact that this hasn’t already been called out or drawn mod attention is all the evidence you need.

Let’s not do “if this were about black people....”

So ignorant. Or maybe it’s just shitty takes from young white men:
posted by Miko at 9:13 PM on January 5, 2021