Prosperity Gospel Church's Financial Woes Force them to Sell Private Jet

This is an older story, and one that I wish I'd been aware of in time to include it in Schadenfreude, Baby!

The headline alone should explain it all:

Financial Woes Force Church to Sell Private Jet.

The church preached the "Prosperity Gospel." Prosperity churches are based on the idea that success in business or personal life is evidence of God's love.

No word on whether they were planning on using the private jet to get a camel through the eye of a needle.

The Book of My Enemy

Books,computers and cars all share one trait. Their value plummets quickly after their initial release. (Please buy a copy of Bad Predictions for $5.00!)

While seeing a book you labored over for months or years relegated to the remainder bin is an author's misfortune, Clive James notes it's kind of a kick when it's someone else's book.

In fact, he was inspired enough by his literary schadenfreude to write a poem about it in his new book Opal Sunset. The New York Times printed the entire poem, but here is an excerpt:

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered.
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy’s much-praised effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs...

This Day in Schadenfreude History

July 2 1982- In case you needed any convincing, here are some reasons not to travel by lawn chair. Once you strap the 42 helium balloons to your lawn chair you might find that you travel to high, too fast. When you get into the upper atmosphere, you might find it hard to breathe, and a bit chilly for a lawn chair. And when you try to shoot some of the balloons down with your pellet gun, you might drop it, and only manage to take out a few of the balloons. You might then find yourself drifting into some power lines and blacking out over a Long Beach Neighborhood before crashing onto someone's driveway. And then the FAA might give you a fine of $1,500. At least that is what happened to Larry Walters when he tried it.

Can You Get a Grant for That?

European and American academics met Wednesday to examine society's fascination with "train-wreck" female celebrities, the Associated Press reports.

Topics included "Britney's Tears: The Abject Female Celebrity in Postemotional Society" and "Hooker, Victim and/or Doormat: Lindsay Lohan and the Culture of Celebrity Notoriety."

The one-day conference at the University of East Anglia was titled: "Going Cheap? Female celebrity in the tabloid, reality and scandal genres." It was organized by two professors in UEA’s School of Film and Television Studies.

One of the organizers, Dr. Su Holmes explained the lure of the tabloid celebrity. "First, it reflects on the wider desire to see celebrities 'stripped bare' - as 'damaged', more 'ordinary', and in some ways, apparently more 'real'. This might be cast as a kind of democratisation of the relationship between audience and celebrity, or at least a means of venting public frustration with inequalities in wealth, privilege etc."

If you'd like more analysis of Brittney Spears in a post feminist context, you can read more about this event at The Huffington Post.

A Girl Named Elvis

The UPI reports that a Swedish couple was not permitted to give their daughter the first name of their choice-- Elvis.

They felt the name was "pretty and gender neutral." But the Swedish National Tax Board disagreed.

I don't know how popular a name Elvis is in Sweden. Apparently not particularly so for girls at any rate.

It's not all that common here either. As I noted in my book The Elvis Impersonation Kit:

In 1935, the year Elvis Presley was born, "Elvis" was the 798^th most popular name for boys in the country. (About .006% of the male population were Elvises.) It was only slightly more popular than Chuck (as its own name, not short for Charles) and Errol but less popular than Elwyn, Denzil, Edsel and Aloysius.

In 1977, the year of Elvis's death, the name had moved up to #598 in popularity (Between Buddy and Torrey). About .011% of the male children born in 1977 were Elvises. In 2004, it was the 694^th most popular baby boy's name.

The Ballad of Jim and Tammy

No examination of the topic of Schadenfreude would be complete without a generous helping of televangelist scandals including "the superbowl of televangelist scandals": The Jim Bakker trial of the late 1980s.

There is nothing people enjoy more than a real life soap opera, and this one had everything. The main characters had a cartoonish quality to begin with, his wife Tammy Faye wore unintentionally comical makeup, and both spoke with soft voices and permanent smiles. There were allegations of sexual impropriety, enough showy wealth to make Robin Leach (the host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous) blush, and behind the scenes machinations by rival television ministers.

What I didn't know when I wrote the book was that it also had a theme song. The Ballad of Jim and Tammy, recorded by none other than Tammy Faye. You can listen to it courtesy of WFMU. Enjoy.

Rather Odd Retro Records and The Elvis Impersonation Kit

You're never really done with a book when you turn it into a publisher. Whenever something comes up related to one of your book's topics you have a desire to somehow go and stick a little extra note in the margin. Blogging is good for that. (Although the pay makes it a dubious choice from a career standpoint.)

Today I came across an unbelieveable curiosity related to another of my books, The Elvis Impersonation Kit, released by Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers. I spoke to dialect coaches and Elvis tribute artists to learn every aspect of Elvis performance, including the between song chatter. Had I only known someone put out a record of just such a thing!

Way Out Junk, a blog that catalogs obscure vinyl oddities-- especially children's music-- came across "Having Fun with Elvis" a record that featured everything you would need for a full Elvis concert experience except for the songs. Yes, a live concert with the pesky musical bits removed. If you want to hear what that sounds like, you can download this bit of recording innovation by clicking the link above.

Ironic Accidents

California State Senator Carole Migden, who voted for a state bill that fines people for using their cellphones while driving, rear-ended her state-issued SUV into a Honda sedan on Highway 12 in Solano County yesterday.

You already know the punch line: She was on her cell phone at the time.

Source: Engadget.

Why Do You Build Me Up?

If you heard that an acquaintence or a friend's daughter was having problems with drug addiction and mental illness, acting erratically and was in and out of hospitals, you would probably say, "I'm so sorry. That's terrible."

Replace "friend" with "pop star" and all bets are off. When it comes to Schadenfreude-star-power no one outdoes Britney Spears. Whether you were raised on MTV or you don't know the Spice Girls from Hannah Montana; even if you've never heard Britney sing a note, you probably know she had a meltdown and shaved her head; that she is divorced from someone named K-Mart or something, and that she likes to party with Paris Hilton and leave her underwear at home.

That Britney has inspired the do-it-yourself artists over at You Tube to produce hundreds of Schadenfreude-themed opuses is no surprise. That her tragic young life has inspired a ballet is a bit less expected. Meltdown, a 14 minute dance sequence by choreographer Hubert Essakow for the Rambert Dance Company, portrayed Spears’ constant hounding by the paparazzi, including the moment she shaved her head and culminated in Spears’ character being carried off stage on a stretcher. It was performed at the at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The music was composed by Richard Thomas, the man behind "Jerry Springer the Opera."

Essakow must have had his fingers crossed behind his back when he told the BBC that the ballet was not designed to wallow in Schadenfreude but as "an homage" to Spears.

Gemma Nixon, who danced the role of Britney, practiced by watching the pop star's videos. "I was a bit embarrassed," Nixon told the BBC. "It is sort-of grotesque this persona."

NPR did a feature on the production, and from this page you can also access economic reportage on "cashing in on Britney."

So why do we put stars on pedestels just to knock them off? The online publication Global Politican spoke with a Dr. Sam Vaknin, Ph.D on this subject. (Unfortunately the site offers no credentials for the good doctor, so I'm only going on the assumption that his Ph.D was in psychology and not agriculture.)

"The celebrity's inevitable downfall and corruption is the modern-day equivalent of the medieval morality play," said Vaknin. "This trajectory - from rags to riches and fame and back to rags or worse - proves that order and justice do prevail, that hubris invariably gets punished, and that the celebrity is no better, neither is he superior, to his fans."

Being a celebrity is a terrible, unnatural state that leads to madness and unhappiness. Thank goodness I avoided that tragedy by working at the Piggly Wiggly...

Incidentally, word is that Chris Crocker, the "Leave Britney Alone" guy (whose Wikipedia entry is nearly as long as Britney's), is hoping to turn his 15 minutes of You Tube fame into a TV career.

Blogenfreude

If you're just discovering the word "Schadenfreude" you're way behind, according to an article in BlackBook Magazine. Not only are more and more people using the word "Schadenfreude" itself, they are increasingly using "-(en)freude” as a suffix.

Examples? "Hillaryfreude may better name your sadistic joy at the death throes of the former First Lady’s campaign—unless your heart is filled with Obamafreude, over the Illinois Senator’s protracted preacher problems. Or maybe you’re bathing in Spitzenfreude, Shaqenfreude, or Spearsenfreude, as you luxuriate in the declining fortunes of Eliot Spitzer, Shaquille O’Neal, or Britney Spears," writes Mark Peters.

As the writer explains, "The success of -(en)freude is an example of what linguists call 'cranberry morphemes'—or cran-morphs for short. There was no cran before cranberry, but that little syllable grew up to become shorthand for cranberry in words like cran-apple and cran-grape."

The article gives many entertaining examples of -(en)freude words, my favorite being an example lifted from someone's personal blog: “Yesterday, it was ‘selfenfreude’ that got me through the day. If you can’t laugh at yourself...”

If "selfenfreude" catches on, I'll have to take joy in my own misery that a book on Schadenfreude is already behind the lexical curve.

Positive Schadenfreude

An early draft of Schadenfreude, Baby! took a mildly inspirational approach to the topic. My thesis was that people take solace in reading about people who have it worse than they have. If you're going through a divorce, for example, it can put your own situation in perspective to read about some of the most rancorous divorces in history.

Sometimes, no matter how much talent, energy and work you put into your dreams, you can’t seem to get beyond running in place. You won’t hear it from motivational speakers or daytime talk show hosts—but here’s the truth—that’s normal. That’s life. So stop beating yourself up with comparisons to the winners. It’s time to compare yourself to the losers for a change. These are the folks who would be singing “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me,” if they could only carry a tune and remember the words.

This aspect of Schadenfreude-- more a relief than a joy at another's bad luck-- is not as often discussed, but it is something we all recognize. Today I came across a story in The Guardian with the modest title: This Column Will Change Your Life.

It's author, Oliver Burkeman, reflects on this positive form of Schadenfreude while discussing how the story of Samuel Johnson's anxiety has been used to help people suffering from "toxic worry" in the modern era.

"Self-help authors love few things more than calling on the wisdom of great historical figures, and happily, great historical figures seem only too keen to oblige," he writes. "Maybe I'm guilty of schadenfreude, but it's far more invigorating to discover that some past icon was as insecure and fretful as the rest of us."

Discoveries in the Blog Logs

After I launched the Schadenfreude sweepstakes (see the left hand frame), I decided to take a look at the site logs to see if it had driven any traffic this way. The site logs tell me what google searches people did to bring them to this site. My favorite discovery was "blind director repeatedly kicked in the groin."

Why someone was searching on that topic is more a mystery to me than why this page came up in the search results.

Schadenfreude Watch: Financial News

In the early 1990s, I had the pleasure of working at a Whimpy fast food chain (named for the hamburger eating Popeye character)in Edinburgh, Scotland. Among the pleasures of this job were bright red overalls that were a cross between a uniform and a clown suit, and dealing with American customers.

Note that I am an American, born and bred in the Detriot area. But let's just say the ex-pat fast food context did not bring out our collective national best side. In my position on the front lines of the hospitality industry, I was tasked with explaining to my fellow Americans that ketchup packets, thrown liberally on McDonald's trays across the purple mountains magesties and frutied plains of the USA, cost 10p each in the UK.

This was invariably taken as a major affront, and elicited outraged shouting.

"What do you MEAN I have to pay for ketchup?? Do you want me to pay for the air too, or does that come free?"

Had I been a bit more confident in those days (the red overalls didn't help in that regard) I might have replied, "Sorry, Toto, you're not in Kansas any more." Presumably they left their native land with the hopes that things would be just a little different than home.

So you can see why some Europeans have come to believe that Americans have high expectations of what they can get with their all mighty dollars, and why seeing the U.S. economy in a recession as the Euro climbs might give them a little chuckle.

This is my long winded introduction to my latest Schadenfreude spotting from the Atlantic Review blog, reporting on a Financial Times article.

German Bundesbankers...are not concerned about any direct fallout from the US mortgage crisis, writes Ralph Atkins in the Financial Times.

The article's headline is "Schadenfreude stirs in resilient Germany," And why not? They invented it. But, the blog notes, Atkins only claims once that "across Germany, a sense of schadenfreude has even started to emerge."

I guess the writer of the headline felt more Schadenfreude than the author of the article itself.

Detroit Redux

And now an update on one of our earlier stories, the text message scandal involving Detriot mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. I already mentioned how Detroiters rose to the occasion producing t-shirts and even cookies to commemorate the mayor's fall from grace. On May 6 the professionals at the Daily Show got into the action.

Mortgage Bankers Association Can't Pay Mortgage

Foreclosure filings of all kinds - delinquency notices, auctions sale notices and bank repossessions - were up 112% during the first three months of 2008 compared with the same period a year ago. Community advocates and policy makers are worried that the problem will worsen as the interest rates on as many as 1.8 million mortgages reset this year. (Source: CNN Money) Is there any good news for the family facing foreclosure? Maybe this will help:

The Mortgage Bankers Association-- the folks that came up with the great idea of giving adjustable rate mortgages to people who couldn't afford them-- are having trouble paying their mortgage, The Washington Post Reports.

"A year ago, the Mortgage Bankers Association was thrilled to sign a contract to buy a fancy new headquarters building in downtown Washington. Interest rates were low, the group's revenues were steady and the prospects for quickly renting out part of the structure were strong. But since then, the association has fallen on tough times as many of the subprime mortgages dispensed by some of its members proved dicey. Borrowers discovered the loans were more costly than they had anticipated. Foreclosures soared, and cheap, inexpensive credit dried up, slowing the economy. The result: The trade group is about to find it harder than it imagined to pay its own mortgage."

There don't seem to be many tears shed for the professional organization.

"They are certainly getting what they deserve," Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal research group, was quoted as saying.

Male Lesbians and Your Good Name

It's just part of being human to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about your public image. This concern manifests itself in different ways-- you seek a more prestigous job title, for example, when you might be just as happy in the mail room if it carried more clout. You try to look presentable. You hope to avoid being the topic of nasty gossip. Having your name dragged through the mud is a great misfortune. (Usually compounded by the fact that we overestimate how much attention other people pay to us)

There are people whose names become sullied by their own actions, as when Monica Lewinsky's last name is used synonymously with a certain sexual act. (Or non-sexual act if you subscribe to Bill Clinton's definitions) After George H.W. Bush had an embarassing bout with illness during a 1992 state visit to Japan, the Japanese coined a new term for a humiliating episode of public vomiting, bushusuru, which translates loosely as “pulling a Bush.”

But then there are those people whose names give them grief through no fault of their own. Adolf Hittler, for example, a perfectly nice, non-genocidal, Austrian tour guide who had the misfortune to be named before that other guy- the one with only one "t" in his last name-- became completely infamous.

Recently Dimitris Lambrou, a proud Lesbian, decided to go to court in an attempt to prevent gay women from appropriating the name of his people-- residents of the Island of Lesbos. Lambrou filed suit on April 10 against an orgainzation called the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union.

"It's not an aggressive act against gay women," Lambrou told reporters. "Let them visit Lesbos and get married and whatever they like. We just want them to remove the word lesbian from their title... My sister can't say she's a Lesbian. Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos."

Frankly, the ship seems to have pretty much sailed on that one. Language has a life of its own. Once an association is there, it's too late for the lawsuits. Hormel, the makers of Spam (registered trademark) luncheon meat, have had to accept that their product's name is synonymous with unsolicited bulk e-mail.

Less lucky were the descendents of French physician Joseph Guillotin who advocated for more humane capital punishment during the French Revolution. Guillotin didn't invent the instrument of death, but became so closely associated with it that the device came to be known as a guillotin. After Guillotin's death, his children petitioned the French government to change the name of the blade, but it was too late. Their petition was not granted, and they changed their own name instead.

So my message to the proud Lesbian, Mr. Lambrou, is this: They're here, they're queer, they're called lesbians, get used to it. (Those of you who are still smarting by the "loss" of gay meaning happy to the English language-- that goes for you too.)

Post Script: For a vintage recording oddity of the other Lesbian variety, visit WFMU's fabulous Beware of the Blog.

Art Gone Bad

The life of an artist can be tough. You wait for inspiration, work to perfect your craft, and make yourself vulnerable by revealing your creative brain-child to the world in the hopes that you will be showered with love and admiration in return. But what if your attempts at opera are met with snickers instead of sighs? What if your dazzling dance produces only red faced embarassment?

With any luck, your friends will go on with life and be polite enough to never bring up the moronic free verse poem about the guy who dumped you, or your off-key karaoke again. But occasionally someone's level of incompetence in the fine arts rises to a stunning level. While we dither unproductively, achieving only moderate embarrassment, there are the gloriously incompetent performers and artists who elevate a lack of talent to dizzying new heights. They possess the magic qualities that separate a William Hung (the American Idol reject with a record contract) from all the other folks who were axed for singing flat. Their badness makes us cringe so much that it turns into a smile and a kind of stunned admiration that a person who clearly has so little talent could put himself out there with complete abandon.

Schadenfreude, Baby! has an entire section devoted to these heroes of artistic incompetence. Yesterday I learned of another entrant to this unenviable hall of fame. The play was "Moose Murders." Directed by Arthur Bicknell, it opened and closed on the same night and went down in history in the words of the New York Times as "the standard of awfulness against which all Broadway flops are judged."

New York Magazine said it appeared to have been staged by “a blind director repeatedly kicked in the groin.”

Its reputation for badness has given it a second life with performances at community theaters, staged readings at bowling alleys, and a "performance art" version at the Contemporary Art Center in Rochester, New York and at the famous restaurant for the New York theater set, Sardi's.

I learned about this achievement in theatrical incompetence when it was used as the subject of one of the quizzes on NPR's game show Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me. For a short time, you'll be able to use this link to listen to the panelists observations on this Broadway classic.

Schadenfreude for the Kiddies

Oompa Loompa doom pa dee do, I've got another puzzle for you...

Why has the 1971 kids' film Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory become such a cultural touchstone and cult classic?

Yesterday I was reading Pure Imagination, director Mel Stuart's book on the making of the film. He ponders this very question.

"The key is that it was never made for children—it was made for adults and an adult senseof humor. Deep down I think it caught on because it's cynical and it's not a kiddie film," he wrote. "Almost everybody in the picture—the parents, the kids, everybody except Charlie and Grandpa Joe are rather rotten people. But that's the attraction."

Suddenly it dawned on me. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory is confectionary Schadenfreude for kids. Sure, Entertainment Weekly called the movie the "video equivalent of an overstuffed comforter" in 1995, but they added that the audience could "gloat at the well-deserved punishment of a medley of kids so nasty they make the Menendez brothers look like the Von Trapps."

There is nothing saccharine about this film's candy man. In his care, each child but Charlie comes to an unpleasant fate--turning into a giant blueberry, getting stuck in a tube full of liquid chocolate, or being dropped down a chute with the bad eggs, for example. That is the very draw of the movie.

Roger Ebert reviewed the film by saying, "Kids are not sugar and spice, not very often, and they appreciate the poetic justice when a bad kid gets what's coming to him."

Sure sounds like Schadenfreude to me.

Just Plain Folks

What's the best way to get caught in a gaffe? Have cameras follow you everywhere. Oh sure, the rest of us do stupid things, but if a middle manager falls in the woods and no one is there to capture it on his cell phone camera, is it still cause for Schadenfreude? No, the people who give us the greatest chuckles when they screw up are almost by definition our most accomplished representatives. And politicians top the list.

The political pundits tell us that what we want in a political candidate is somone just like us-- a person we'd like to have a beer with. But let's face it, if our candidates were jsut like us, they'd be eating re-heated $5 Little Ceasar's pizza from a TV tray while watching American Idol, not traveling from coast to coast asking for your vote.

The sheer effort, resources and ambition needed to take the national stage mean that successful politicians probably put you to shame. They're rich, polished,great public speakers and are admired by a sizeable portion of the population. Is there anything they can't do?

Well, there's bowling.



And Hillary Clinton isn't going to knock Madonna off the top of the charts any time soon.



See? They're not any better than you.

While you're enjoying that clip of Hillary, remember that it could be worse. At least she didn't sing the national anthem like this:



Have a suggestion for a Schadenfredue story I should cover? Please send it to lauralee@speechwriting.com.

Don't Taze Me Bro

One of the news stories/pop culture phenomena that occurred between the writing and the publishing of Schadenfreude, Baby was the YouTube sensation: "Don't Taze me, Bro." Leave it to YouTube to turn issues of political protest and the use of force by police into a comedic catch phrase.

In case you spent the past year living in a cave: "Don't tase me, bro" was shouted by journalism student Andrew Meyer of the University of Florida as officers removed him from a speech by Sen. John Kerry. News networks may have aired the clip to spark debate about how police handled the situation, but most of its viewers were rubbernecking or giggling at the student's choice of words. Deep, dark, Schadenfreude.

"Don't Taze Me Bro" topped the 2007 list of most memorable quotes compiled by the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. And my excuse for mentioning it today is a follow up story published online at CBS4.com about changes in policy at the University of Florida following the event.

Incidentally, the second item in the list of most memorable quotes for 2007 could also qualify as Schadenfreude. It came from Lauren Upton, the Miss Teen USA contestant, who surely wished people would just forget all about her incoherent response to a question about why one-fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a map:



Why did people revel so much in poor Lauren's embarassment? It made all of us kinda-goofy-looking folks feel a little bit superior. I may never win a swimsuit competition, but I can find America on my map. The universe is in balance.

Schadenfreude Watch: Australia

The latest article explaining the word Schadenfreude comes to us all the way from Australia. Ruth Ostrow, writing in The Australian Business, warns against malicious joy in the misfortunes of others and suggests the more positive Buddhist concept of mudita - "sympathetic joy" or "happiness in another's good fortune." This is certainly the more enlightened approach. But is it funny?

Metaphorically slipping on a banana peel produces much more mirth than appreciating your neighbor's promotion. And Ostrow is forced to admit that "Wellbeing experts describe laughter and a sense of humour as 'healthy' while perhaps overlooking the fact that the humour is often rooted in humiliation of the other."

For more on the positive aspects of humor, especially in the workplace, visit The Humor Project.

The Science of Schadenfreude: Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck

While we're on the subject of Schadenfreude, I'd like to turn your attention to a scientific study of the brain functions involved. Tania Singer at University College London published her team's findings in the journal Nature about two years ago. I read about it in the New York Times:

"First the experimental subjects watched people playing a game in which some cheated (bad people) and others played fair (good people). Then they watched the same people suffering from a painful stimulus. The empathy circuits lighted up in both men and women when bad things happened to good people. When bad things happened to bad people, the women in the study were still empathic. But not the men. Not only did they show less empathy toward bad people, but the reward center in the left nucleus accumbens lighted up."

This points to biological differences in how men and women respond to bad things happening to bad people, and it may be the final word on why men find The Three Stooges funny and women can't stand them.

Schadenfreude History: Geraldo and Al Capone's Vault

This is the twenty-second anniversary of a moment Geraldo Rivera would just as soon forget, but no one will let him. We're certainly not going to let him off the hook here. His overhyped television special "The Opening of Al Capone's Vault" has its own chapter in the book Schadenfreude, Baby!

Geraldo's penchant for showboating and putting his own feelings into a story earned him many critics, even before he opened Al Capone's vault on live TV to find nothing but a couple of empty bottles. That's why his public embarassment was the cause of so much Schadenfreude.

And because Geraldo's style seems to have paved the way for a whole breed of opinionated reporters who now dominate the airways, "The Opening of Al Capone's Vault" has become a symbol of self-aggradizing, celebrity journalism with nothing at its center.

In the following YouTube clip, Geraldo took time away from being hit in the face with with chairs and drawing lines in the sand in Iraq to laugh along with his detractors. (Taking the advice of psychoanalyst Claudie Sies).

And let's give Geraldo his props. As Neil Steinberg wrote in his book Complete and Utter Failure, “the definition of real failure is the presence of true consequences—a fall, as opposed to a neglect to climb.” In other words, you have to get off your butt and try something before you can fail spectacularly at it. Could you get yourself a prime time TV show and a big enough audience for an embarassment of this size? I didn't think so.

Schadenfreude Watch: The Movies

The word "Schadenfreude" is gaining currency. A new CGI animated adventure made its debut yesterday at The New York Comic Con. Igor is about a mad scientist's assistant. In this film Igor is the main character.

But for our purposes much more interesting is the bad guy, the villainous Dr. Schadenfreude, played by British commedian Eddie Izzard. "Schadenfreude is described as being like a rock star in his world," according to the review at Ign.com.

Next time I'd like to see a movie with a corporate marketing exec named Mr. Schlimbesserung. (It translates as a so-called improvement that actually makes things worse.)

How Did You Understand It?

The Washington Post recently reported on a prostitution trial that appeals to lovers of Schadenfreude on oh-so-many levels. The lawyers are arguing whether Deborah Jeane Palfrey was an upscale pimp or if her escort service was a legitimate business. It has everything--the gawking and craning of the neck to see if a smut peddler gets her comeuppance (with its warm glow of moral superiority), with the added entertainment of seeing prostitutes with PhDs on the stand.

Seriously, prostitutes with PhDs like Rhona Reiss, who was putting her doctorate in higher education to a non-traditional use.

The Washington Post's reporter couldn't resist quoting a press release nnouncing Reiss's appointment to the faculty as head of a graduate program at he Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions two years ago. "Her numerous career adventures include clinical and academic positions in Tokyo, Chicago, Sydney, Dallas and Washington D.C."

But my favorite moment of Schadenfreude was reserved for defense lawyer Preston Burton, who forgot the number 1 rule of courtroom lawyering: never ask a question for which you do not already know the answer.

As proof that his client's escort service did not permit illegal activities he brought up the call girls' standard contract, pointing out clause No. 5: "Individuals caught performing illegal activities of any nature will be terminated."

When he raised the issue with Reiss, showing her the document and her signature, she told him, "I didn't sign any agreement saying I wouldn't do anything illegal." In her parsing of the clause, Reiss said, the rule technically did not prohibit illegal activity.

Burton seemed surprised.

"You're an educated woman," he said. "How did you understand it?

She didn't pause.

"Don't get caught."

The Law of Unexpected Consequences

Well it's tax day, and so it seems appropriate to share a tax related Schadenfreude story courtesty of The Real Estate Journal.

It begins with a clever team of lawyers (I assume it was a team, the original article doesn't say) representing Marilyn Monroe, LLC, who decided they could save Marilyn Monroe's estate a lot of money by convincing California tax authorities that the movie star had been a resident of New York. As a New Yorker, she would not have to pay taxes on the estate in California.

That saved them a couple of bob. There's just one thing: California allows "rights of publicity" after death. That means that even if a person is dead, you still need to license her image on posters, photographic prints, T-shirts, mugs, socks, whimsical clocks... And those rights of publicity have been netting Marilyn Monroe LLC more than $30 million. New York, on the other hand, says the dearly departed have no "rights of publicity."

A court has now ruled that if Monroe was a New Yorker, as her legal team successfully proved, there's no longer a right of publicity for Marilyn Monroe, and photographers who own Monroe photographs shouldn't have to pay her estate. Photographers who have been paying fees since the starlet died are looking for refunds. But hey, they were pretty clever about that estate tax, weren't they?

Schadenfreude Across the Political Spectrum

Four years ago on this date, the new liberal radio network Air America is went dark in two of its six markets because the owner of stations in Chicago and Los Angeles, Multicultural Radio Broadcasting, claimed the left-leaning broadcasters owed the firm more than $1 million.

I'd like to thank Failure Magazine's "This Day in Failure" feature for reminding me of this item, which brings up an interesting point about how subjective Schadenfreude is. Did this item give you a chuckle and a feeling of glee? You probably voted for George W. Bush.

If you shook your head and said, "what's funny about that?" Would you feel different if "Air America" were replaced by "Fox News"?

All of this ties in quite nicely to an item I covered in Schadenfreude, Baby! I give you a small preview here. This tale is unique because it has something for people on both sides of the political spectrum. The only question is whether you feel joy in the first part of the story, or when the man who engaged in Scahdenfreude gets his own comeuppance.

It began in Baltimore in early 2007 with a vandalized billboard. This is not the kind of thing that normally makes national headlines. But then this billboard featured Rush Limbaugh. When the guy responsible for cleaning up graffiti saw someone had done an imitation of Jackson Pollock over the radio ranter’s chin, he chuckled with glee.

Robrt Murrow of the Department of Public Works called up the Baltimore Sun. “It looks like they took globs of paint and threw it on his face,” he reported. “It looks great. It did my heart good.”

Murrow, who was described by the Sun as “a soft-spoken man who is usually in the limelight only when a water main breaks,” saw his quote splashed onto the online version of the newspaper in less than 30 minutes. With a few cuts and pastes, the story started to spread. People who hated Limbaugh gleefully sent it to friends and dittoheads sent it to complain about Murrow’s inappropriate comments.

It was inevitable that Limbaugh himself would get wind of the story and make a joke out of it. “What’s happening to the civility of our society?” he asked.

“I don’t care if it’s Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore or Britney Spears,” said Kurt Kocher, a department spokesman. “You don’t deface anything—period. And you don’t endorse defacing anything—period.”

Murrow “deeply apologized.”

Schadenfreude Watch: Detroit

You can tell when the public is reveling in unrestrained Schadenfreude by the t-shirts.

Here in Detroit, you'd have to live in a cave not to know that mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is embroiled in a scandal involving text messages. (Moral of the story: if you are engaged in an extra marital affair, and you don't want anyone to know it, try a form of conversation that is not written down.)

The public reacted to the mayor's alleged lapses of good taste and decorum by saying, "right back at you!"

Here are just a few of the products on sale in metro Detroit. The Milford Baking Co., is hawking cookies shaped like cell phones decorated with text messages saying “Busted” and “I’m sorry.”

A Royal Oak company set up a Web site featuring the mayor's mug shot, practically before the flash bulb had stopped glowing. The site, www.kwamemugshot.com, got great free publicity from nightly news stories which questioned the company's taste while posting the URL.

"I need one to go with my Camp OJ T-shirt," one customer wrote on the web site's forum.

The Detroit News ran a feature on the T-shirts popping up on Cafe Press, Zazzle and Ebay. Slogans include "I Did Not Have Text With That Woman," and "I was at the Manoogian Mansion Party, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."

By the way, from the "endorsements you don't need" file: The Detroit Free Press reported that Mayor Kilpatrick is "believed to support" the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Oops, indeed.

Wilkommen

Welcome to the official blog for the book Schadenfreude, Baby! coming out soon from Lyons Press. I am your host, Laura Lee.

Schadenfreude has taken hold in the American vernacular. This German word translates, roughly, as "pleasure taken at someone else’s misfortune."

The Windsor Star named it "Word of the Week" this week. It notes that the word was used in the final rounds of the 2007 AARP National Senior Spelling Bee.

(Picture to the left from an article on Schadenfreude on Fox Sports blog)

Because English lacks German’s nifty ability to stick nouns together and call it a new word a la “Fahrverneugen” we’ve gone ahead and adopted this great import. This is not to say that we didn’t have the concept, even if we have vastly different views on which stories produce Schadenfreude and which are just sad.

Is it a sense of superiority, the leveling effect, pity or painful empathy? Whatever the reason, we keep laughing when the clown gets a pie in the face. If you’ve ever read scholarly analyses of what makes humor funny, you know that it’s best to enjoy it and not to think too much.

Feeling guilty? Tell yourself this: Dusseldorf, Germany psychoanalyst Claudie Sies says Schadenfreude is actually healthy since it "relieves stress because it can lead to a hearty laugh that helps people relax." Targets of laughter, she says, should just laugh along with them. She should know. She's German.

The Broadway msucial "Avenue Q" used the most basic definition of Schadenfreude, using anyone's misfortune as a reason for celebration: ("Human nature/Nothing I can do/It’s Schadenfreude/Making me feel glad that I’m not you.") Its lyrics go on to express joy in a waitress dropping a tray full of dishes and other such everyday examples.

We all feel fairly guilt-free when the object of Schadenfreude is a bad guy who gets poetic justice from the fickle finger of fate. Case in point? The recent story, reported in the Associated Press, of the clumsy, would-be suicide bomber who tripped going down the stairs and blew himself up.

But Schadenfreude has become most closely associated with reveling in the woes of someone who seems too big for his britches. The people we elevate the highest seem to be the ones we most want to level. Whenever CNN is staked out to watch a vehicle headed to a courtroom, you can bet a little Schadenfreude is at play.

While some people argue that celebrity gawking is the ultimate meaning of Schadenfreude, my personal feeling is that most of it doesn’t quite qualify. When we’re gossiping about who JLo is dating this week, or how much Heather Mills got in the divorce from Sir Paul McCartney, I believe we’re enjoying the spectacle as a living soap opera. It’s not Schadenfreude, baby. It’s gossip. So the book includes a walk through of some of the celebrity downfalls we've reveled in, but focuses more on political figures, historical blunders, loveable losers and the works of the least adept criminal minds.

One of the things about Schadenfreude-watching is that it is ephemeral. Paris Hilton's arrest is SO last year. Eliot Spitzer was Shadenfreude currency last week, but his star has already waned. Next week there will be something new. That is why I started this blog to keep up with some of the stories that come my way after press time.

And also to plug my book. Lovers of Schadenfreude will note that I lost out on the name Schadenfreude for the URL for this blog. It was already taken. Seems fitting somehow. Anyway, the book comes out in May, and I would love to get you a copy the moment it comes off the presses. Anyone who places an advance order now will not only get one of the first available copies, but I will also send an absolutely free copy of my earlier book Bad Predictions. That's two books for the price of one. Plus they come autographed. What online book seller can beat that? Look at the link to the side to order, and enjoy the Schadenfreude stories and discussion as they appear here.