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.