# What did Kurt Vonnegut mean on The Daily Show on Tuesday? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 14, 2005, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563 "2005-09-14T05:45:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/21 "2005-09-14T17:08:44Z")
“Course, not long ago you would’ve been labeled a putz for belonging to a frat, but times changed.” – Bulu, mighty 600 lb. Gorilla ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/22 "2005-09-14T17:23:00Z")
Comedy Central has up Kurt’s Pic and the text says List of Liberal … but no link to the actual list. I am very disappointed. I enjoyed that interview more than most any other one that Jon has done. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/23 "2005-09-14T17:35:27Z")
[The list](http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/extras/vonnegut.jhtml) is up. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/24 "2005-09-14T17:41:04Z")
> [@Terminus Est](#): > > [The list](http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/extras/vonnegut.jhtml) is up. Hooray: Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. The hell I can’t! Look at the Reverand Pat Robertson. And He is as happy as a pig in sh\*t. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![cbawlmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cbawlmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cbawlmer)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/25 "2005-09-14T18:10:31Z")
I gotta say, I’ve never really heard liberals saying any of those things. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Bird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Little\_Bird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Bird)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/26 "2005-09-14T18:27:39Z")
> [@Silentgoldfish](#): > > It was the last segment so I don’t think they had a choice; the show wrapped up in like 30 seconds after the interview. Well, it’s taped during the day so they had plenty of time. Maybe it was illegible (as Jon had worried). ---
**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/27 "2005-09-14T18:28:57Z")
Aren’t they all from the bible? Frankly, the only really funny one was the one he got out over the air. Kind of a let down… ---
**Author:** ![Chance\_the\_Gardener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@Chance\_the\_Gardener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chance_the_Gardener)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/28 "2005-09-14T19:07:07Z")
Who transcribed that furshlugginer list? It’s full of typos, and reading the punctuation feels like running full-tilt through a muddy field full of old tires. You’d think the web site of such a prominent show could do better, particularly where such an established man of letters is concerned. Y’know, I could fill that need, and it just so happens that I really hate my job right now… ---
**Author:** ![Wolfian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7ea924/32.png) [@Wolfian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolfian)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/29 "2005-09-14T19:57:45Z")
> [@cbawlmer](#): > > I gotta say, I’ve never really heard liberals saying any of those things. Je-hizzle was all kinds of liberal. Giving to the poor. Hanging out with whores. By the by: WHOOOSH! ---
**Author:** ![cbawlmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cbawlmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cbawlmer)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/30 "2005-09-14T20:30:31Z")
> [@Wolfian](#): > > Je-hizzle was all kinds of liberal. Giving to the poor. Hanging out with whores. > > By the by: WHOOOSH! I don’t feel I was whooshed. I think “Je-hizzle” would be sickened by the folks who run around claiming to be his best buddies these days. Fundie Christianity (ie the people who go around quoting the Bible constantly) has bugger all to do with anything Jesus ever said. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/31 "2005-09-14T20:42:02Z")
> [@Chance the Gardener](#): > > Who transcribed that furshlugginer list? They also redacted “I’d cut him a new asshole.” (Or possibly “you-know-what.”) As for those perplexed by them all being Christian quotes, Vonnegut has a long history of commenting on the strangeness of conservatives laying claim to being more “christian” than the “godless” liberals. In the prologue to _Jailbird_, he related an anecdote about the labour activist Powers Hapgood, who dedicated most of his life to the labour movement, in spite of having all the advantages of wealth and status. Up before a judge for his participation in some picket or demonstration, he was asked _why_ he made the choices he did, in spite of his background. His response: “Because of the Sermon on the Mount, sir.” Even in _Slaughterhouse Five_, Vonnegut was commenting on the hypocrisy of people who always seemed to want to enshrine the Ten Commandments in public life. “I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Moun or the Beatitudes be posted anywhere.” When Vonnegut invokes Mammon, he is likely thinking of it in the same way that Eugene Debs (for whome the protagonist of _Hocus Pocus_ was named) did: > [@](#): > > I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men. The whole point of his list is to comment on how liberal ideals are more consonant with Christian feeling, despite how much more frequently and loudly extreme conservatives invoke God or Christian values. “By their fruits shall ye know them,” wot-wot? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/32 "2005-09-14T20:52:39Z")
I thought the interview was amusing but the list gets a big fat ‘meh’. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/33 "2005-09-14T20:56:15Z")
> [@C K Dexter Haven](#): > > I was kind of surprised that no one mentioned that in Vonnegut’s universe, humankind is descended from the feces left behind by an intersteller-race of travellers (giant cockroaches.) > > Of course, in another book, humankind is the result of deliberate manipulation of evolution so that people can be brought to the point that they can build a spare part for a spaceship of a stranded traveler on Saturn’s moon Titan. > > So, I guess Vonnegut is on both sides of evolution vs creative design, eh? Far be it for me to correct Dex, but “Venus on the Half-Shell” (where the cockroach waste origin was revealed) was was written \*as \* a Vonnegut book (by “Kilgore Trout”) but was authored by Philip Jose Farmer. ---
**Author:** ![TJdude825](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@TJdude825](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TJdude825)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/34 "2005-09-14T22:44:49Z")
> [@Larry Mudd](#): > > I wish that there was a wide shot during Vonnegut’s deadpan “endorsement” of intelligent design, though. I would have _loved_ to have seen Jon Stewart’s play of expressions. I imagine that it very quickly ran the gamut: > > Interest :)–\> Apprehension :dubious:–\> Disbelief 😕–\> Horror :eek:–\> Relief :o–\> Mirth 😃 I hope it was all those colors too. Small hijack: You can agree with evolution and intelligent design. You can believe that God always does exactly what he wants to do, and uses the process of natural selection to acheive it. The national debate is over whether ID should be discussed in science classes. As they weren’t in a science classroom, he was completely within bounds. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563/35 "2005-09-14T23:07:33Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Far be it for me to correct Dex, but “Venus on the Half-Shell” (where the cockroach waste origin was revealed) was was written \*as \* a Vonnegut book (by “Kilgore Trout”) but was authored by Philip Jose Farmer. My blushes, and my senile memory. Thanks for the correction. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-kurt-vonnegut-mean-on-the-daily-show-on-tuesday/321563.md?page=1)