Man Stealing Copper Wires Killed By Electric Shock: Schadenfreude, Baby!

"Cable thief dies due to electric shock" was a headline posted today in the Facebook feed of one of my friends. The pleasure that one takes in this ironic misfortune is Schadenfreude, which leads me to the next in the next in my series of features on past titles.

Schadenfreude, Baby was published in 2008 by Lyons Press. Sarah Lindensmith of the Midland Book Examiner described it this way:

Schadenfreude, Baby! is a hilarious light read for anyone who appreciates a little sarcasm, turning of the tables, or other laughs. The word "schadenfreude" is actually German, and means "to take pleasure in another's sorrows or downfalls." There is no English correlation to this word, so we simply stole the German word and made it our own. Schadenfreude, Baby! is a collection of short stories (usually only a paragraph or so) about someone who did something stupid, mean, or less-than-legal and then got his comeuppance in a humorous way - well, humorous for us, at least.

Before Broke is Beautiful was published, this blog was Schadenfreude themed. I created it to talk about this book. So if you think Schadenfreude is fun, go back in the archives.

For those who love ironic tumbles and people hoisted by their own petards, you can get an autographed copy of this book for just $14.95.

At Least I'm Not That Guy

During these hard days and hard weeks, everybody always has it bad once in a while. You know, you have a bad time of it, and you always have a friend who says "Hey man, you ain't got it that bad. Look at that guy." And you look at that guy, and he's got it worse than you. And it makes you feel better that there's somebody that's got it worse than you.  But think of the last guy. For one minute, think of the last guy. Nobody's got it worse than that guy. Nobody in the whole world. That guy...he's so alone in the world that he doesn't even have a street to lay in for a truck to run him over.-Arlo Guthrie, The Pause of Mr. Claus


The Economists reports on a new study that suggests that the reason the nearly-poor are less likely to support systems that would raise taxes on the wealthy and favor the less well-off is that they are afraid that greater equality might erode their tenuous advantage over the really poor:

Paradoxically, as the share of the population that receives benefits in a given area rises, support for welfare in the area falls. A new NBER paper finds evidence for an even more intriguing and provocative hypothesis. Its authors note that those near but not at the bottom of the income distribution are often deeply ambivalent about greater redistribution. 

Economists have usually explained poor people’s counter-intuitive disdain for something that might make them better off by invoking income mobility. Joe the Plumber might not be making enough to be affected by proposed hikes in tax rates on those making more than $250,000 a year, they argue, but he hopes some day to be one of them. This theory explains some cross-country differences, but it would also predict increased support for redistribution as income inequality widens. Yet the opposite has happened in America, Britain and other rich countries where inequality has risen over the past 30 years.


Instead of opposing redistribution because people expect to make it to the top of the economic ladder, the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like to be at the bottom. One paradoxical consequence of this “last-place aversion” is that some poor people may be vociferously opposed to the kinds of policies that would actually raise their own income a bit but that might also push those who are poorer than them into comparable or higher positions. The authors ran a series of experiments where students were randomly allotted sums of money, separated by $1, and informed about the “income distribution” that resulted. They were then given another $2, which they could give either to the person directly above or below them in the distribution.

In keeping with the notion of “last-place aversion”, the people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them: rewarding the “rich” but ensuring that someone remained poorer than themselves. Those not at risk of becoming the poorest did not seem to mind falling a notch in the distribution of income nearly as much. This idea is backed up by survey data from America collected by Pew, a polling company: those who earned just a bit more than the minimum wage were the most resistant to increasing it.
Poverty may be miserable. But being able to feel a bit better-off than someone else makes it a bit more bearable.

Schaden-Frugality

Here's a story, courtesy of the Colbert Report, that mixes frugality with a hefty dose of Schadenfreude:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Jell-O Tampering
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Schadenfreude Headline of the Day

A Halloween reveler dressed up as a Breathalyzer machine was arrested early Sunday for drunk driving.

Schadenfreude Headline of the Day

Hummer drivers get five times as many speeding tickets as the average driver. Courtesy: Consumer Reports.

Schadenfreude 19th Century Style

Stay tuned for updates on my new book Broke is Beautiful due out in spring 2010. In the meantime, I came across a site courtesy of Boing Boing that is directly relevant to my last book Schadenfreude, Baby and felt compelled to pass it along.

The Hope Chest: Bad news from the past is a blog that reproduces late 19th/early 20th century bad news reports from various American newspapers, with a little snappy commentary at the end.

Political Irony of the Day

Courtesy Randy Cassingham's "This is True":

Schadenfreude Headline of the Day

From the Huffington Post:

Right-Wing Attack Group Funder Goes Bankrupt

Her Name is Rio-- No, Really, her name IS Rio

Jim Geraghty over at the National Review engaged in a little smirky sacrasm defending the GOPs challenges of registered voters in New Mexico. He noted that there were a number of problems with newly registered voters in that state that indicate widespread fraud. His piece de resistance? A registration for someone claiming to be "Duran Duran.":

Now, unless A. Serwer thinks that there is actually a registered voter named "Duran Duran" in New Mexico, he ought to refrain from sputtering that those who disagree with him are 'racist' and 'paranoid.'

The person who is "Duran Duran" almost certainly voted under their real name, and thus got two votes in the primary. God knows how many of those 27 others exist; for all we know, one person might have cast all of them. Anybody who voted once had their vote diluted by the guy who cheated to vote two to twenty-seven times.

Check and mate A. Serwer! Oh, but hold on a minute. There's one little detail I should mention. Duran Duran is actually a voter. Geraghty was forced to tag this amendment to the end of the story:

UPDATE: I am floored by the fact that the white pages for Albuquereque, New Mexico has a listing for "Duran Duran." Mea culpa.

Doh!

Fail

Slate magazine is writing an obituary of the term "schadenfreude." The new fun failure expression is "fail."

In an article entitled "Epic win: Goodbye schadenfreude, hello fail." Christopher Beam traces the origin of the expression to a 1998 Neo Geo arcade game called Blazing Star. If you beat a level, the screen flashes with the words: "You beat it! Your skill is great!" If you lose you're chided with this poor Japanese to English translation: "You fail it! Your skill is not enough! See you next time! Bye bye!"

It also introduces the current word for a form of schadenfreude, lulz, the questionable pleasure of hurting someone's feelings on the Web.

Schadenfreude is so 2007. I fail it. Bye Bye.

More Fun with Family Values

There are so many lovely ironic tales of "family values" politicians falling from grace that Schadenfreude, Baby! did not even need to include Mark Foley. Remember Mark Foley? Two years ago CNN viewers were invited to obsess over his sexual e-mails to male congressional pages.

"After being caught sending explicit emails to underage boys, Florida congressman Mark Foley has resigned," Jay Leno quipped. "So his seat is up for grabs, which is what got him in trouble in the first place."

Foley slunk off in humiliation and in rode a Democrat, Tim Mahoney, on a white steed promising to restore integrity to the office. A socially conservative married father, Mahoney ran on a “Faith and Families” platform.

If you've followed politics at all, you've probably already guessed the punch line. Mahoney has bonked himself into a scandal of his own. He had an affair with one of his staffers and just for good measure, fired her in a mean and nasty recorded telephone call and then agreed to pay her $121,000 in hush money.

This story just goes to show that family values hypocricy is not the sole property of the Rebpublican party. But wait, our friends at Political Irony have pointed out yet one more twist in the story.

"...it will be difficult for Republicans to wave this an example of how Democrats are just as corrupt as Republicans, because Mahoney was actually a Republican who was recruited to run as a Democrat against Foley in the first place. Since being elected, Mahoney has voted with the Republicans almost as much as he has voted with the Democrats."

Oh dear.


Cartoon ^© Chan Lowe

Political Parties

The legal blog Infamy or Praise has a regular feature it calls Thank God its Schadenfreude. On September 12, it refrenced a story in The Register about an Australian government minister, Matt Brown, who was forced to resign after an embarassing boogie woogie in his tiny whiteys during a drunken party at his Parliament House office.

The greatest part of the story was the quote by the minister's boss state premier Nathan Rees, who told Fairfax Radio Network: "I subsequently put it to former minister Brown late last night that there are too many reports of you in your underwear for me to ignore."

Our Winning Word: SADENFREUDE

Sadenfreude n. An emotion that combines joy in another's misfortune tempered only by the overriding sense that the misfortune is going to have some serious and sad consequences.

Seeing fat cats laid low has always produced an emotion the Germans call Schadenfreude, defined in English as "joy in another's misfortune." I should know, I wrote a book on the subject, Schadenfreude, Baby! published by Lyons Press.

The past few weeks have been a good time for Schadenfreude watchers. If you have a Google alert set to "Schadenfreude" you have seen it go crazy recently with observers of all stripes expressing something other than empathy for failed investment bankers. But it's hard to feel too gleeful. The emotion we're experiencing is different than our old school Schadenfreude over Brittney Spears and Paris Hilton.

“There would be something comical, even pleasurable, in watching the frenetic agitation of the banking world”, wrote Laurent Joffrin, editor of Libération newspaper, “if millions of jobs were not at stake, not to mention the economic balance of the planet.”

We need a new word to describe the mix of emotions we're feeling which is why I called for submissions from the general public on my blog www.schadenfreude-baby.blogspot.com.

The winning word was submitted by Tom Lennon of England who coined "Sadenfreude: Taking pleasure from others misfortune while feeling rather sad about it."

Other entries included karmaglee; desletsenium, a mix of three different latin terms for a regretful feeling of Schadenfreude; Eupheria or Schadenfreude tinged with fear of impending financial doom; trickledownpathoshumorism, and Himmeldonnerwetter, "brought to you by the same folks that gave you schadenfreude!"

Related neologisms submitted included "neoconomitus -- the shared malaise that comes from failed neoconservative economic policies and practices;" "Har-de-harbinger, Something that foreshadows an ominous-yet-funny event;" and "Fucosthriveudie-meaning financial officers of a company will always thrive, even if those they have scammed or let down financially die."

Congratulations Tom on your winning submission. Although the contest is now closed, please feel free to keep posting your words and suggestions. I've enjoyed your creativity.

This Day in Schadenfreude History

September 30, 1980- Seattle pitcher Rick Honeycutt was thrown off the mound after umpires discovered a tack and a piece of sandpaper taped to his index finger. Embarrassed at having been caught, Honeycutt wiped his brow- forgetting for a moment that business about the tack. He left a bright red scratch across his forehead.

Schadenfreude Sighting of the Day

Headline in the Times of London: Critics of U.S. Gloat over Crumbling Capitalism

Some excerpts:

President Barrat Jagdeo of Guyana complained: “There is clear evidence that many of the standards and much of the scrutiny that are applied routinely to smaller countries were not applied to some larger countries which actually pose much greater systemic risk.”...

The financial crisis put actor Michael Douglas, who proclaimed “Greed is Good” the film “Wall Street”, in an awkward spot. Appearing at a press conference on nuclear disarmament, Douglas was asked about his role as Gordon Gekko. “Are you saying, Gordon, that greed is not good?” a reporter asked. “I’m not saying that,” Douglas replied. “And my name is not Gordon. He’s a character I played 20 years ago.”

Those Bunny Ears Get Expensive

As we ponder how the old school celebrity schadenfreude (Paris Hilton, O.J. Simpson!) compares to the new schadenfreude (Morgan Stanley, AIG), finally there is a story that combines both.

A powerful magnate who made a grand show of his wealth is suffering financial losses and has to lay off... his Playboy Bunnies.

Yes, from The Telegraph comes this headline: Hugh Hefner to Sack Playboy Bunnies Amid Financial Crisis.

They couldn't have covered this story a year ago when I was writing Schadenfreude, Baby?

Germany's Dumbest Bank

Conde Nast Portfolio ran a story today with the headline "Credit Crisis Schadenfreude."

It quotes Germany's finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, saying that the credit crisis threatens the United States' status as a financial superpower.

"The United States will lose its status as the superpower in the world financial system," he said. "The world financial system will become more multipolar." (I would argue that this doesn't actually qualify as Schadenfreude, but as simple criticism and prediction, the real Schadenfreude is to come...)

Before you get too worried, I should note that German bankers do not seem to have a great knack for prediction. I remind you of an article I posted here in may.

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

The article's headline was "Schadenfreude stirs in resilient Germany."

Conde Nast's article today noted with a smirk that "Herr Minister has a personal reason to be bitter about the credit crisis. Steinbrück is on the supervisory board of the state-controlled bank KfW, which transferred some $425 million to Lehman Brothers a little more than an hour before the Wall Street firm filed for bankruptcy protection. 'Germany's Dumbest Bank!' screamed the front-page headline in the newspaper Bild."

Neologism Contest

"If Schadenfreude were a stock, it would have set new highs around the globe Tuesday," wrote Randall Forsyth in Baron's.

Today's Schadenfreude spottings: Slate Magazine's article Why Washington hates Wall Street.

"But it's a sign of Brauchli's newbie status in Washington...that he should think reporters at the Washington Post feel anything other than schadenfreude about Wall Street's tumble in fortunes. They can't help it—they're Washingtonians... 'Isn't this exciting?' Rep. Ed Markey enthused to me on Oct. 19, 1987 ('Black Monday')"

And just in case you needed any more proof that the current state of Schadenfreude is dark indeed it's the Hdege Fund Implode-O-Meter.

The kind of Schadenfreude many of us have been feeling in the wake of the financial crisis has a different quality and character than the celebrity downfall gazing of a year ago. It's darker, blacker and angrier. Over at Psych Central John Grohol is talking about his emotions: "I find a strange melancholic amusement to learn that many of these investment banks’ CEOs and boards of directors — people being paid millions of dollars every year to purportedly know what their own companies are doing and how they make money — didn’t have a clue as to how deep their companies were into questionable financial practices."

I'm looking for suggestions for a new word that encapsulates this "melancholic amusement"- Schadenfreude tinged with a touch of sadness and foreboding. Please post your suggestions in the comments. The author of the winning word will get an autographed copy of Schadenfreude, Baby! and just maybe add a new word to our vocabulary. You can also enter by talking about this contest on your own blog. Just send me a link to your article, and I will enter your words into the contest too.

Deadline: October 1.

Irony of the Day

From the Republican Party 2008 Platform:

"We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all."




Surviving the New Depression: Tip #94 from Steve Delahoyde on Vimeo.

Are You Saying You Don't See the Connection Between Government and Laughing at People?

The term "Schadenfreude" is becomming more and more current. Most often these days it is invoked to describe the feeling of those personal debtors who feel joy at seeing greedy bankers hoist by their own petard.

Today, Conor Friedersdorf, features editor at Culture 11 argues that Schadenfreude has also been the overriding political strategy of the GOP in the last few elections. In an article titled "The Politics of Schadenfreude" he wrote:

"The people who run the GOP are rewarded in prestige and treasure based on election results, not advancing a conservative agenda. So they are quick to realize that they need not do the hard work of finding the best candidate on substance, or running the most honorable campaigns, unless voters demand as much as a requirement for their support. Absent that, the GOP establishment hasn't sufficient incentive to run races, as Ronald Reagan did, that persuade Americans on the issues and create a mandate for governing accordingly. Not when running against the media and “the elites” is easier and as effective."

While you're reflecting on that, enjoy this scene from the Monkees 1968 movie Head for some psychedlic Schadenfreude.

How is that for a rock band name? Psychedelic Schadenfreude...