HUMOR WHERE HAS IT GONE SYDNEY WILLIAMS
There is a sentence in P.G. Wodehouse’s The Inimitable Jeeves, in which Bertie Wooster speaks to Jeeves, that reminds me of today’s listening-challenged politicians and pundits: “On the occasion when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across the primaeval swamp…the clan has a tendency to ignore me.” Like Wodehouse’s Aunt Agatha, today’s politicians bellow and do not listen; so, concerns, if they are not of the woke variety, are ignored.
What have we become? Today’s transgender movement, with a biological male winning ‘woman of the year’ and with trans women athletes competing against biological females, is like watching a 1950s Hasty Pudding show. John Kerry and his crowd, in preaching of an impending climate apocalypse, remind us of a mythological Zeus hurling lightning bolts from atop Mount Olympus. Diversity, equity, and inclusion pronouncements could have been taken from Mad Magazine. Separate and segregated college graduation ceremonies are reminiscent of Jim Crow days: Dean Karayanis of The New York Sun recently wrote “that three dozen institutions from Yale to Ohio State are returning us to the days when ‘mixing the races’ was a secular sin, implementing policies that would make the most avowed Confederate grin.” Race and gender outrank merit in college selection and corporate advancement. Minorities, women, and the LBGTQ communities are told they are victims, and that they cannot rise above that appellation.
Political arrests and prosecutions remind us of Stalin’s Lavrentiy Beria: “Show me the man, and I will show you the crime.” Mass shootings elicit the expected response from the usual suspects: a Second Amendment defense from the right and more regulated sales of guns from the left. Ignored are the estimated 450 million guns already out there, many of them illegally acquired; gun safety rules, which in my youth came with the ownership of a firearm, are never mentioned by elected officials, and neither is the disturbing emotional behavior of most shooters as a possible cause. Declining birthrates will bring future demographic challenges, as the work force shrinks and the ranks of retirees expand. But progressives are focused on the right to abortion, at any time and any place. School choice is “fine for me but not for thee.” Families have disappeared into the maws of politicized governmental ‘communities,’ which encourage a lack of individual responsibility and accountability and that discourage the dignity of work and the benefits of personal independence. Future generations will wonder at today’s absurdities when preferred progressives’ ends were used to justify regressive means. In this overly sensitive world, there is no laughter.
Is there not absurdity in the idiocy of releasing criminals into poverty-stricken inner cities and then complain about an increase in crime? Do we help the nation’s most impoverished when we deny them choice in education and when we open the border to increased demand for welfare assistance? Where are the leaders who could offer perspective? Humor served Lincoln during the dark days of the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt reassured the American people through fireside chats during the Depression, and he reminded them of their commitment, as citizens, to personal honor and national service during the Second World War. Forty years later, Reagan used humor, as the country emerged from a decade of antiwar demonstrations, a prolonged recession, and crippling inflation.
Victory in the Cold War brought an end to the USSR, which as an enemy had united both sides of the political aisle. Now “the enemy,” as Walt Kelly once wrote in a different context, “was us.” Polarization, which began in the Clinton years, added fuel during George W. Bush’s tenure (with about a one-year hiatus following 9/11), gained steam under Obama’s time, got out of control during Trump’s four-years, and has derailed under Biden. Under all five Presidents, humor dissipated while anger intensified.
There was a time when the media was trusted to offer a balanced view. We remember William Shrirer, Edward R. Murrow, Lowell Thomas, and Walter Cronkite. They spoke to all America, and we trusted them to provide a balanced offering of the news, which for the most part they did. On January 16, 1787, Thomas Jefferson, then in Paris, wrote Edward Carrington of Virginia that, since America’s new government is based “on the opinions of the people,” that if he had “to choose between a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Today’s press is a far cry from Jefferson’s ideals or from the news we were offered seventy years ago, which allowed individuals to form their own opinions. Today’s news is presented in soundbites and thrives on exaggeration. Some wag recently wrote that if a conservative pundit has not been called a fascist it means she or he is not effective. And if a progressive is not called a socialist, it means he or she is failing at their job. It is unsurprising that Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow have some of the highest-ranked TV news shows because both substitute opinions for news. Neither one smiles and both exude self-righteousness. In the early 20thCentury, Oscar Wilde, in a Critic in Pall Mall, wrote: “It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.” How pertinent are his words today.
When radicals dominate both ends of the political spectrum, it is hard to smile. As America grew wealthy, left-wing politicians, to stay relevant, focused on racial and gender inequities. They united their followers behind veils of extremism, as they divided the rest of us by age, race, gender, and ethnicity. They became intolerant of ideas that did not conform to theirs’. Yet there are a few who see humor’s value. Senator John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) is one who effectively uses it. Still, there is concern; Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who lost one eye in Afghanistan and suffered a detached retina in the other, wrote in Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage: “I fear we are losing this ability to laugh off the small stuff, and we are even closer to losing the ability to laugh at the big stuff…Comedians are worried they’ll offend an overly sensitive generation of students looking for any reason to be offended. This is deeply unfortunate…”
For this octogenarian, this lack of humor is sad. Still, it is fun to watch politicians wriggle out from uncomfortable positions, a talent necessary for political success. A hundred years ago, Ambrose Bierce amusingly defined the word politician in his The Devil’s Dictionary: “politician, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.” Today’s politicians have also mastered the art of saying nothing in a thirty-minute speech. But, sorrowfully, it is rare to witness the self-deprecating humor used so effectively by Lincoln and Reagan, to deflect criticism, and to put a smile on the face of listeners. Not only did it cause their opponents to laugh, it lightened the nation’s mood.
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