HFH
Exclusive
Atlas Tittered
Ayn Rand's rollicking hilarity and
constant practical jokes were truly uproarious, but always consistent with objective
truth: therefore she
was either Funny or Not Funny. And there was nothing uncertain about it --
the lady was a barrel of laughs.
Just
because you are a follower of objectivist epistemology doesn't mean you can't have
a
hearty
guffaw. Recently HFH research
interns dug up a short-lived humor Web site created in 1999 by Ha = Ha, an
obscure libertarian comedy group that follows the stern objectivist philosophy of
conservative czarina Ayn
Rand.
It seems that even some no-nonsense scientific capitalists were not
immune to the siren call of the dot-com revolution. Amazing in its similarity to HFH in style, if not
philosophy, Ayn Rand's Fun Hou$e superficially suggests
free and enslaved minds think alike though, on closer examination, the
resemblance ends.
Why did their project fail? Most analysts agree this attempt by freethinking men to find the lighter side of
something heavy was amazingly mirthful. Unfortunately, in order to live their
beliefs the creators insisted on an honor-based interactive revenue-collection system
that charged readers by the laugh, lest their audience,
with every snigger, would become humor parasites and the editors their
joke-writing slaves.
A closer look at their first and final
post
illustrates all too well that the business of left-brained
humor is no joke:
Ayn
Rand'$ Fun
Hou$e
Vol. 1 No. 1 June 1999
We can only be free if our
humor isn't.
Inside: Galt’s Giggle Gulch
"Man's happiness is the highest aspiration. If you are
unhappy, you are subhuman and do not deserve life.
Now go have fun." -- A.R.
It is only a free man
who can afford to laugh.
Is it funny if it is free?
A madcap visit to John Galt's utopian libertarian hideaway, where hilarious
hi-jinx are a paid-for commodity bought by free individuals who laugh
only because they have chosen to do so.
@$3.79
per laugh
Plus:
Eerie Objectivity
–
Refreshingly
unconventional,
@$1.87 per laugh obscure to
slaves, and obvious to free human beings
Bagpipe Cat Stands
Up to the Slaves of Budweiser
@$1.99
per laugh
Short-Attention-Span
Bombastic Novel -- Taylor Caldwell
@$2.03
per laugh
Ask the One-Worlder Collectivists
@$2.99
per laugh
Free-Market Funnies:
@$0.29
per laugh
Q: Why did the captain of industry cross the government-subsidized
Interstate highway?
A: Because it was the only way to get to his privately
owned railroad.
Q: What do you call 5,000 Marxists in the trash bin of
history?
A: A good start
Q: What do you call an altruist who keeps his dignity?
A: An oxymoron
Q: What do you call an industrialist who has become
rotten and
corrupt?
A: A philanthropist
Q: What do you have when 1,000 religious leaders are
buried up to their
neck in the sand?
A: Not enough sand
Q: What's the difference between a government bureaucrat
and a
catfish?
A: One's a slimy scum-sucking bottom-dwelling scavenger,
the other is
just a fish.
From the Fountainhead of Fun
If a man laughs at an
unfunny joke for the approval of the comedian or the audience of sheep, rather
than to please himself and only himself, then the joke is on him because he has
reduced himself to the status of a mere shtick man.
-- A.R. on stand-up comedy,
1957
@$1.29
per laugh
This
Month's Objective, But Interesting Fact
In Ayn Rand’s first draft of
Atlas Shrugged, the revolutionary motor John Galt
destroyed
to deny it to the socialist looters originally was to have been fueled
by a powerful mixture of
sheer audacity and the will to
act on one’s creativity
that arises from an objective understanding of
reality, all catalyzed by purely
selfish motivation. Because Rand had exceeded her cowardly publisher's
pre-set
"didactic limit," she reluctantly changed the fuel to "atmospheric electricity."
@$1.29
per laugh
Ayn
Rand'$
Fun Hou$e
HA=HA
productions
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