In Dave Barry’s book about Japan, he attends a Hiroshima memorial and among some other feelings is absolutely appalled that the Japanese politicians have managed to reduce what should be a human thing for the survivors and the people around them, a little event where people can express their horror and their sorrow, be together, and try to find peace and remembrance, and then turn around and wrap it up in the same bullshit empty language that they use to talk about everything else.

The whole section is separated by two solid gray pages from the rest of the book, because it is a humor book, but he wanted to talk about it and had no humorous feelings about it (either the ceremony itself or the politicians, or any of it), and so it’s just stuck into the middle of the book with the gray pages as a warning that it’s not supposed to be funny. You can feel him struggling for words to try to express how angry he is that the politicians can’t manage to say anything of substance, but still feel like they have to fuck up the silence.