# Your best examples of The Jester Speaking the Truth **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 18, 2009, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-best-examples-of-the-jester-speaking-the-truth/481833 "2009-01-18T05:37:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-best-examples-of-the-jester-speaking-the-truth/481833/1 "2009-01-18T05:37:14Z")
This piece has been mentioned many times before in the Straight Dope: **What is the Monkeysphere?** [http://www.cracked.com/article\_14990\_what-monkeysphere.html](http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html) It was a great piece describing in very funny and rude language a very serious and true recent discovery in monkey research. > [@](#): > > … > > The Monkeysphere is the group of people who each of us, using our monkeyish brains, are able to conceptualize as people. If the monkey scientists are monkey right, it’s physically impossible for this to be a number much larger than 150. > > Most of us do not have room in our Monkeysphere for our friendly neighborhood sanitation worker. So, we don’t think of him as a person. We think of him as The Thing That Makes The Trash Go Away. > > And even if you happen to know and like your particular garbage man, at one point or another we all have limits to our sphere of monkey concern. It’s the way our brains are built. We each have a certain circle of people who we think of as people, usually our own friends and family and neighbors, and then maybe some classmates or coworkers or church or suicide cult. > > Those who exist outside that core group of a few dozen people are not people to us. They’re sort of one-dimensional bit characters. > > Remember the first time, as a kid, you met one of your school teachers outside the classroom? Maybe you saw old Miss Puckerson at Taco Bell eating refried beans through a straw, or saw your principal walking out of a dildo shop. Do you remember that surreal feeling you had when you saw these people actually had lives outside the classroom? > > I mean, they’re not people. They’re teachers. > > “So? What difference does all this make?” > > Oh, not much. It’s just the one single reason society doesn’t work. > > It’s like this: which would upset you more, your best friend dying, or a dozen kids across town getting killed because their bus collided with a truck hauling killer bees? Which would hit you harder, your Mom dying, or seeing on the news that 15,000 people died in an earthquake in Iran? > > They’re all humans and they are all equally dead. But the closer to our Monkeysphere they are, the more it means to us. Just as your death won’t mean anything to the Chinese or, for that matter, hardly anyone else more than 100 feet or so from where you’re sitting right now. > > “Why should I feel bad for them? I don’t even know those people!” > > Exactly. This is so ingrained that to even suggest you should feel their deaths as deeply as that of your best friend sounds a little ridiculous. We are hard-wired to have a drastic double standard for the people inside our Monkey sphere versus the 99.999% of the world’s population who are on the outside. > > … The whole article is IMHO one of the most thought provoking pieces I have recently read, and it is supposed to be just satire or a comedy piece. It came from Cracked magazine on the web. Many other pieces in Cracked are as funny, but they usually include many items that clearly are not true (allowed when one is going for the laughs), this piece somehow manages to be funny and provides almost no false information\* Any more examples (scenes or pieces) you know of the jester speaking the truth in movies, TV or writing? Recommendations of whole Movies, TV, sites and books that are comedies but containing great truths are welcomed. - (maybe the quote attributed to Federline at the beginning? I thought it was from Stalin. “One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic.”) ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-best-examples-of-the-jester-speaking-the-truth/481833/2 "2009-01-18T05:49:04Z")
Jon Stewart George Carlin ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-best-examples-of-the-jester-speaking-the-truth/481833/3 "2009-01-18T16:58:43Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Jon Stewart > George Carlin My favorites! I have to ask for specifics here, do you recommend any of Carlin’s last books like “Brain Droppings” or “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?” ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-best-examples-of-the-jester-speaking-the-truth/481833/4 "2009-01-18T17:03:24Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > My favorites! > > I have to ask for specifics here, do you recommend any of Carlin’s last books like “Brain Droppings” or “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?” Stewart…is hard to be specific with. The whole collected “The Daily Show” in the last 8 years is pretty much exactly what the OP is about. Carlin, actually, is more in that vein for his stand-up than his books. The 7 words and his routines on religion fall into that category. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-best-examples-of-the-jester-speaking-the-truth/481833/5 "2009-01-18T17:56:55Z")
Ladies and gentelmen of the press, honored guests, Mr. President, I give you [Mr. Stephen Colbert](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_at_the_2006_White_House_Correspondents%27_Association_Dinner).