The sense of humor enables the scents of laughter. Humor, after all, is a laughing matter. Sarcasm offers an opportunity for the joyless to participate in the scents of humor. The sense of humor descends, like the Holy Spirit, upon some heads while skipping others.
But laughter leaves scars.
Milan Kundera - I learned the value of humor during the time of Stalinist terror. I was twenty then. I could always recognize a person who was not a Stalinist, a person whom I needn't fear, by the way he smiled. A sense of humor was a trustworthy sign of recognition. Ever since, I have been terrified by a world that is losing its sense of humor.
Modernism's birthmark, located on her inner thigh, can only be described as the humor of heroism. She laughs at her heroes; their mark is no longer mysterious to her. The hero's hunt cannot be a public affair; it cannot become a legend. The glare of the flashbulbs makes even the most soaked tragedy appear as sodden farce. So the heroes must tell their own stories, as beggars on the streets of Prague or ad-men in American corporations.
Eastern Europe Travel Guide - Foreign visitors consider Romanians among the friendliest and most
hospitable people on earth. Romanians are by nature fun loving, warm,
hospitable, playful, with an innate sense of humor.
The glories of Greece and Rome are gone, and the Romanians "innate sense of humor" is sullied by contact with the West. Kurt Treptow, perhaps a Socrates, is unveiled as a mere pedophile. In 2002, Treptow angered the gods and was convicted of having sex with two underage girls. It might require a sense of humor to appreciate his conviction on possession of child pornography. Possession of someone else's dark, evil deed is less legally permissible than inventing a dark, evil deed of your own. All those possessing the movie Schindler's List must ask themselves if they are not perhaps making light of the dark.
Treptow directed the Centre for Romanian Studies in Iasi with a velveteen glove. Since the Centre was housed in a building belonging to the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE), those with a sense of humor have wondered if perhaps Treptow's sense of humor did not undermine the logic of his scholarship. For Treptow had lived in Romania prior to the 1989 revolution. He was a Fulbright scholar. He wrote a less-than-comdemning book about Romanian Nazi Antonescu. He got close to the glam-rock socialism of the Iliescu regime. He got even closer to Ioan Talpes, a former head of the SIE and a presidential adviser to Iliescu. He got disgustingly close to little girls. And he was born in that capital of kitsch and Cuban insurrection known as Miami. So far, his profile fits that of professional Romanian spy like a martisor in March.
Laurence Weinbaum - One of the most steadfast whitewashers was an
American, Kurt Treptow, who in the early 1990s settled in Iasi and
eventually became director of the Romanian Culture Institute there.
Treptow kept company with "scholars" whose revisionist tendencies and
enmity toward Jews were no secret. Among them was the Iasi "historian"
Gheorghe Buzatu, a Ceausescu hagiographer and persistent apologist for
the Antonescu regime, and a Romania Mare legislator since 2000.
It is a hard scent of humor that hovers over Mr. Treptow, who is now free from prison and probably up to his old pranks. But we cannot give Treptow credit for this scent. The true credit belongs to the legal and prison authorities, who released him five years in advance because he published a book about Dracula. It is the law who secures the last laugh.
The scents of humor, like the smell of burning lard, contaminate bystanders. Michael Guest, a career Foreign Service officer, became the nation’s second
openly gay ambassador, serving in Romania under the Clinton administration. Clinton liked young girls as well, but not too young to be conniving. Michael Guest didn't really like girls at all. But he may have appreciated pedophiles. Bucharest Business Week found the scent of burning lard on Guest, so BBW alleged that the US Embassy, run by Guest, appointed a convicted pedophile
to an embassy-sponsored board that selects Romanian students for U.S. Fulbright
scholarships.
Lou Chibarro, Jr. - The embassy said it removed the appointee, U.S. citizen and historian Kurt
Treptow,
from the board after learning about his conviction in a Romanian court
for allegedly engaging in sex with juveniles and videotaping the encounters.
Neither the newspaper nor the embassy disclosed whether the juveniles were
males or females.The newspaper charged that the embassy failed to adequately vet Treptow before
making the appointment. It also charged that Guest and other embassy officials
gave Treptow favorable treatment in the selection process over other candidates
for the Fulbright board, in part, to provide cover for Treptow alleged work
as a CIA agent. Squire called the newspaper’s claim that Guest gave Treptow favorable
treatment “preposterous.” But State Department policy prevents
comments on matters relating to the CIA or U.S. intelligence activities, she
said. Guest could not be reached by press time for comment. Bucharest Business Week is published by AmeriCelt Publishing SRL, described
on its Web site as the Bucharest branch of Romanian Ventures Inc., the “only
wholly American-owned news media company in Romania.” The Web site says
the English-language weekly newspaper specializes in business coverage, including
news about American and European companies doing business in Romania. Corina Mica, the paper’s editorial director and the author of most of
the articles about Guest, did not respond to an e-mail by press time.
It remains a mystery as to whether Corina Mica, whose surname means "little", has a sense of humor. Ioan Talpes, who has moved from Iliescu to Romania Mare to the PDL, is one of the funniest men alive. He is what one might call “a barrel of laughs”, a modern connisseur of scents of humor. The echoes of laughter destroy the skyline.
