Another school of
thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency: that it is
an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But that could only depend on
the value, which is again an individual matter. The only real point that
is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your
grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple
moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It
will call the action anything else--mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic,
rather than call it sinful.
One example can be found in such cases as that of the prank of the boy
and the statue. When some trick of this sort is played, the newspapers
opposed to it always describe it as "a senseless joke." What is the good
of saying that? Every joke is a senseless joke. A joke is by its nature
a protest against sense. It is no good attacking nonsense for being
successfully nonsensical. Of course it is nonsensical to paint a
celebrated Italian General a bright red; it is as nonsensical as "Alice
in Wonderland." It is also, in my opinion, very nearly as funny. But the
real answer to the affair is not to say that it is nonsensical or even
to say that it is not funny, but to point out that it is wrong to spoil
statues which belong to other people.
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