Humor Now

A writer on Facebook thinks that jokes about the abortion controversy are outside of good taste and untethered to reasonable restraint.

Maybe she should lighten up.

Yes, sometimes things happen that are too serious to joke about.  Even The Daily Show went on hiatus after 9/11.  There is a time for everything, and the time is not always for making jokes.

But censure of humor sometimes has nothing to do with time and taste.  Often, it has to do with hostility to the point of view expressed humorously.  A person who despises a joke about the abortion controversy might – might – think hilarious a photo-shopped picture of President Obama as a bone-in-the-nose witch doctor.  So when somebody criticizes something that I smiled at, I don’t necessarily put on my shame face.

Timing and taste are important.  They are also subjective.  One person might be ready to see humor in something earlier than another.

So a German tourist couple was strangled in Bolivia and their bodies were returned to Germany.  Before they left for their exotic vacation, they probably expected to return and be surrounded by friends eager to find out about their adventure in the Third World.  And, in fact, when they returned to Germany, their friends did gather around them.

That is an irony best unmentioned at grave-side.  But as a comment on the irony and unpredictability of life, ghoulish as it is, it might be worth mentioning at another occasion.  And, certainly, a hard knot of grief might be massaged after the funeral by mourners trading light-hearted stories about their dead friends.

Another example.  I am dismayed by Fox News.  I am dismayed by incidents like their coverage of a D.C. rally featuring Sarah Palin.  Fox News showed a teeming crowd on the Washington Mall.  But the teeming crowd was from a different, better-attended rally.  You could tell that by looking at the foliage on the trees in the background.  (As pointed out by The Daily Show.)  And Fox’s coverage of the public-worker protesters in Wisconsin featured an unruly man shoving another man – with palm trees in the background.

I find these examples emblematic of Fox News.

Now, when he was on the air, Keith Olbermann blasted Fox News with indignation.  That indignation made Fox News seem big and dangerous.  Which they are, because they effectively masquerade as a news organization, and they are zealously followed.  But they are really an American version of The People’s Daily, a Chinese newspaper that I read for lack of a better option while I lived China.  So good on Keith Olbermann.

But good on The Daily Show for cutting Fox down to size by showing how their slavishness to conservative ideology makes them ridiculously manipulate “news”.

Is it really necessary to defend humor?  It’s not hard to do.

Humor is inherently creative.  It can shake us out of customary mental paths.  That can lead to good approaches to problems.  I talked with my brother about a brief written by an opposing lawyer.  The judge had requested briefing on an issue.  The opposing lawyer made a weak attempt to address the issue, then wrote an attack on our motives and characters.  I remarked, “If the law and the facts are against you, change the subject.”  It was a little bit of humor in lieu of angst.  It’s going into my reply brief.

Humor diverts.  Unhappiness comes; humor can make it a little lighter.   In law school, I had a happy apartment-sharing arrangement with two women.  While one of them, a beautiful, charming woman, was on vacation, she sent me a letter.  The letter asked me to move out.  My sorrow at being asked to move out was leavened because I could see humor in the contrast between the message and my initial joy of getting the letter.  Later, I shared this with the letter-writer, and we laughed.

But is there a difference in stolen laughs over little things and humor about the wider, dangerous world?  There is no question that the world is a very serious place right now.  Ours is a world of threats and menace.  Our material comfort is at risk and, I believe, we cannot take for granted the continuation of democracy in America.  Just to say two things.

In serious times, humor is an act of courage.  Fritz Gerlich wrote a satiric article in a Munich newspaper about eugenics-crazed Adolph Hitler.  He asked, “Does Hitler have Mongolian blood?”  That was courageous.  Gerlich was murdered in Dachau.

Sometimes humor is optimism. Persian king Xerxes sent word to Spartan king Leonidas that Persia’s arrows unleashed against the Spartans would “blot out the sun”.   Leonidas replied, “So much the better, we will fight in the shade.”

Sometimes humor is resignation, or hoping for the best in a bad situation.  We can’t do anything about the evil in the world, so we might as well grin and bear it.  If humor helps us to grin and bear it, fine.  So, in “Fiddler on the Roof”, the rabbi says, “A blessing for the Tsar? Of course! May God bless and keep the Tsar... far away from us!”

But again, time and place are all-important.  Winston Churchill didn’t start his “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech by warming up Parliament with a humorous anecdote.  Nor did Abraham Lincoln crack wise in the Gettysburg Address.  But Winston Churchill had a keen wit, and Abraham Lincoln was a genius teller of humorous stories.  Time and place.

So, to the woman who tolerates no jokes about the abortion controversy: you’re entitled to your opinion.  Bless you.  Who knows, maybe you’re right.  If I do the Long Fall after Divine Judgment, maybe it will be because, in my time on Earth, I wasn't serious enough.  That might be.

But I think that the salient sins that will eject me from eternal joy will have a bigger bore than jokes I’ve told or secret smiles at shocking quips.  And if the world is a waiting room for eternal compression, I won’t change it into the backstage for eternal expansion by never cracking a smile.  Nor will anyone, I think.

And if there’s humor in Hell, I’m sure I won’t enjoy it.  So on Earth, let me laugh.

Unstoppable Death

My friend Robert is dead.

He was younger than me. It was cancer.

As I thought of Robert today, my mind drifted to old movie monsters. They were slow moving -- almost laughably so. But even so, they were scary in their time. They were slow, but they didn’t sleep. They never rested.

Like death itself. When we're young, death is easy to outrun, if we’re even aware of it lurking somewhere out there. It can’t catch up to us when we're young. It can’t catch us unless we fall. It can’t catch us unless we succumb to some unexpected catastrophe that takes away our power to run away from it.

Like Robert -- Robert, on his death bed, unable to arise, unable to run away. In his wasted weakness, he couldn't fend off death, couldn't outrun it.  The slow-moving monster got past his doctors, got past his family, got past his guardian angels, and it took him.

It made him dead like itself.

Based on our knowledge of the arc of life, we know that one day, like Robert, we also will be in a state of mortal helplessness. We slow down. We tire. We know we need sleep. We begin to know the danger of that slow-moving monster that doesn’t sleep – that monster with it’s fatal persistence.

Science places barriers between us and the monster. So does wealth, health, and nutrition. But that dogged monster overcomes all barriers sooner or later.

And it can’t be killed. Because how do you kill death?

It starts its unstoppable journey to find us as soon as we possess life. It might start from far away, or from nearby. It might have many miles to travel before it finds us, or few. But whether many miles or few, the meeting must come.

It must come, and we know it must come, but we usually don't think about it.  Until we do.  Until it takes a friend or a relative.  Then we might resolve to eat healthier, exercise more, or visit the doctor for a checkup. We do these things hoping to put more miles between us and our tireless pursuer.

The last time I saw Robert, we were in a grocery store. It wasn’t that long ago, but it was before he knew he was sick. I was at the end of the checkout line, and he came from behind and bumped me, hard. In fun. I turned to see who bumped me. When I saw it was him, I smiled, put my arm around his shoulders, and said, "You don’t know how close you came to going unconscious."

Robert leaves a son and a daughter entering adulthood, and a wife.

Top ten reasons why an adult has to accompany a child into an R-rated movie.

10. To make sure the child doesn’t sneak into a G-rated movie.

9. It’s a form of public shaming for the adult.

8. So they can both be embarrassed.

7. To increase ticket sales.

6. To encourage quality "together time".

5. Because it’s cheaper than a brothel.

4. It’s the Motion Picture Association of America’s gift to pedophiles.

3. So the adult can explain the finer points of what they saw to the child.

2. So the child can explain the finer points of what they saw to the adult.

1. Because after the cow is out of the barn, it’s not too late to close the barn door.

Dumped!

She was an attractive Latina lawyer, my age. She was fit, smart, and religious.  I was dating her.

Was.

She broke up with me by e-mail.

In the e-mail, she talked about her life. She talked about her struggles and what she had to overcome. And she concluded that I was not as tough as she was. And that was unacceptable to her.

I acknowledged her wishes and wished her "good luck".

That might not have been much of a response. But she had just virtually called me a wimp. If I had written a sensitive, nurturing response, she would have accused me of lactating.

So it’s over.

Fine.

She didn’t have to tell me why she was breaking up. "I want to break up" is a fully sufficient reason. In my experience, women act like men can sue them if they don’t have a good reason for ending the relationship.

But in my experience, most men would rather not know. Because let’s face it, most women can come up with a pretty good reason. And that doesn’t build the guy’s self esteem.

But at the same time, if she didn’t say why, I would have been curious.

Still, I take the reason with a measure of skepticism.

That’s because of my philosophy of dating. I believe that some relationships are inherently hardy. Others are inherently weak. Only time reveals whether you’re relationship is hardy or weak. A hardy relationship will survive or thrive in circumstances that would drive the partners in a weak relationship apart.

In truth, I used to torture myself after break-ups. I used to say, "If I had only said (thus-and-such)!" Or "If only I hadn’t said (whatever)!"

But that was a long time ago, and I don’t torture myself that way any more. Because now I believe that when a relationship works out, or doesn’t, it has to do with who the people are on a deep level. The you-said-that stuff, or the you-are-thus-and-such stuff – these are just surface observations that might hint at the deep reasons why the relationship did or did not work. Or they might not.

If anything irritated me about the heave-ho, it was her attitude – sweet in its way – that she knew that I was going to be crushed by this. In fact, I liked her, and I was pursuing her for a reason, but I was not crushed.

After passing through many years, I have a certain fatalism about relationships. I use baby turtles as a metaphor. When I was young, I saw a National Geographic episode about sea turtles. The mother turtle lays her eggs in the sand. Predators eat some before they hatch, or they get stepped on by humans or animals. Of the baby sea turtles that hatch, some are eaten by predators on their way to the sea. In the sea, there are many more predators. Few sea turtles survive to adulthood.

To me, relationships are like baby sea turtles. It’s remarkable when one matures to adulthood. It’s un-remarkable when one doesn’t.

That attitude is consolation when a relationship doesn't work out. Also, for consolation, nothing beats sour grapes.

One of her stand-out qualities is her strict morality. Before the break-up, I saw her strict morality as a tonic from the disintegration of morality in the larger society. Her uprightness was admirably against the tide of a society that increasingly has bad values or no values at all. But after the break-up, I started to think, "If she were any more ‘principled’, she would wear a burqa."

Even with such consolations, I was not unaffected by the break-up. I got her e-mail this morning. All day, I was more irritated about things than I otherwise would be. So she hit a raw nerve.
    
But raw nerves heal. I think things are more tragic to young people, because they are not inured to disappointment. But we survivors of five-or-so decades know disappointment. Sometimes we even know tragedy. Over time, I have suffered great shocks. Compared to them, a break-up is a small thing. Life’s disappointments and shocks put every new unhappiness into perspective.

And compared to all of the tragedy in the world, this is very modest suffering. Thousands of people in Northeast Japan would swap misfortunes with me in a nanosecond.

So, I’m OK with her choice. Not happy, but OK.  I wish her well. And tomorrow is another day.