ON THE NATURE OF HUMOR

I'm no expert on humor and comedy, but I hope someday to come pretty close. I don't know how it happened but it seemed to just open like a rosebud as i grew older. I can remember sneaking down the staircase to almost see the Johnny Carson in the far corner of the living room when i was a child. Some of the comics I listened to were Lenny Bruce, Mort Saul, Don Rickles, the Smothers Brothers, Laugh-in, all the way to John Stewart, Stephan Colbert, and a host of others. Somehow, along the way, this saying stuck in my head and never left: HUMOR SHOULD OPPRESS THE COMFORTABLE AND COMFORT THE OPPRESSED. It may have come from Mel Brooks. It took me a while to recognize the truth in that. It could be no other way. If you reverse it, humor should comfort the comfortable and oppress the oppressed, you are a sycophant of power in the first case, and a sadist in the other. Only a Republican could fail to see that, and you know which group they choose to comfort.

One of Mel Brooks many films is The Producers. I am 17 years old every time I see it. The premise is two Broadway producers putting on a play designed to offend the audience and close early, thus relieving them of the responsibility to share the profits with investors. The play they put on is named, Springtime for Hitler. Some of us are starting to forget that fascism was at one time out of fashion. Opening night brings, not the disaster they hoped,  but a critical success. The crowd belly-laughed to the ridiculous way fascists were presented. Today's political climate would have this movie shown in every liberal basement in the country, DOJ would probably raid the movie theatres where it is being shown. Comics and humorists have always been in the vanguard of anti-authoritarionism. At the end of the 19th Century, France had a cartoonist, George Columb, who drew caustic cartoons of the French aristocracy and, public life in his country, at the time. We  Americans had luminaries like Mark Twain at the same time. Their subject mater oppressed the too comfortable. Will Roger's came along in the 1930s, when we were fighting a little war against American fascists in Congress who were promoting German interests. A time when we were coming out of a Depression that economists capitalized. The 1950s saw the rise of the Beat Generation. Lenny Bruce, was one of many political humorists to emerge. He was so important that some way or other he got a hot dose of heroin and was silenced forever. JFK was killed about 3 years later. Neither culprit has been exposed, they might be connected. Or not.

Mort Saul was a more polite form of political comedy. Collegiate sweaters, well groomed, sharp tongued. George Carlin was a rougher-hued inheritor of the Mort Saul era. He was bearded, unkempt, and in jeans and tee-shirts. Yet we still remember his sharp-tongued humorous rebukes. The Smothers Brothers were a little more polished and had their own TV show, till CBS abruptly canceled them because they were too political. In their retirement they, and Pat Paulson a fellow comic went into retirement and made wine. Pretty good wine, too. The era of Vietnam-Reaganism had much humor to be mined. Writers like Hunter S Thompson, to Gary Trudeau whose comic strip, Doonesbury emerged to become iconic, and ironic. It became so effective in poking the bloated belly of Reaganism, that it was pulled from the comics page. That didn't work. The public outcry was so large that it showed up on the editorial page of the newspaper and went on to make fun of Trumps yacht. 

Again, I'm merely highlighting a few of the many worthy humorists. The new medium of cable television finally got a comedy show worthy of the name when John Stewart took  over the Daily Show. He was joined later by Stephan Colbert who did 7 years satirizing Bill OReilly. Humor has never buckled to powerful people. Don Rickles primary shtick was making jokes about the mobsters in the audience. He died of old age. The current President of the disunited States thinks he can tame the late night comics. To make his point, he had CBS fire Stephan Colbert and the Tonight Show format that started with Jack Paar back in the 1960s. Comedy hell has broken out! John Stewart turned over a full hour of his show to Stephans firing. He ended his show with a gospel rendition where he told CBS TO GO FUCK THEMSELVES. The season opener of South Park devoted its show to depictions of The fat Dick with a little dick, sleeping with the devil. The whole of comedy world is mobilized against Trump and his regime. No dictator, least of all a little dictator, stands a chance.

Many centuries ago, the Fool, what we call the Jester today, was said to be the only one in the Kings retinue who could tell the truth to the King. This went on for a very long time and became a custom. And then one day a king with no respect for customs and norms became THE king. One of his Fools spoke too freely to  this king and was rewarded with his head on a pike. From that unknown Fool, we have stand up comedy. No tyrant in the history of civilisation has succeeded in oppressing the comic.  The Republican party are the tyrannical party too incompetent to win this battle.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE OREGON REPUBLICAN LEGISLATOR: IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR WAY, WALK OUT.

    Oregon is generally a blue state, thanks to the major population areas on the west side of the Cascades. The eastern half of the state is a much different story. Thanks to the motor-voter bill, signed into law a few years ago, and mail-in voting , that has been in place since about 1987, the Republican party has not been successful at voter suppression. Thus, the GOP holds a minority of seats in both houses of the legislature. In the Senate, Democrats have a veto-proof majority. Thus, the only legislative tactic left to them is a walkout which denies a quorum. They have done this twice, in two consecutive legislative sessions. Both times have been over the issue of cap-and-trade. In 2019, one legislator, Brian Boquist of Dallas, actually threatened to shoot any state cop who came to take him to the capitol. That's another thing about Republicans, there are too many unhinged people who own guns.       Republican disbelief aside, our world is threatened b...
Read more

IS THERE A MORE BORING VOICE THAN A I?

Most nights I sit with my cat in my lap as I scroll through the political offerings on YouTube. I have a TV, but I gave up trying to figure out how it works without cable. Thats how old i am. Like most things media, there are good Podcasts, and there are guys in muscle shirts. There are also historical snippets among the hysterical snippets. Some of them are very good and the narrators successfully run the gamet between professorial and subtle irony. Few are boring. It's not hard to tell the difference. The most disappointing historical snippets are the ones with digitally created voice-overs.  I used to know a fellow who was a pretty good actor, no one you would know, but one who strode the boards of local theater groups with characters that were believable; the aim of every actor. When I met Doug, he had been at it for about 10 years, after mustering out of the airforce at the end of the Cuba missile crisis. He completed his acting career in 2005 when his twenty-year battle with ...
Read more

ASSERTIVENESS

   A white Male with economic or political stature is expected to be assertive, it is a desirable trait. A black man or woman of any color with economic or political stature is accused of being a tyrant in the first instance, or pushy in the second, if they assert their stature. Assertiveness is considered an undesirable characteristic, or so asserts the white males. The Presidency of the United States is supposed to be held by a statesman or diplomat who, while asserting his/her stature, must be seen as thoughtful or reasoned. The election of 2008 gave us the first non-white Male president. He was thoughtful and reasoned, a gifted diplomat whose assertions were a model of statesmanship. The aggrieved white males whose candidacies were handily rejected could not tolerate this interloper on their rightful domain. He was a (gasp) black man who had moved his attractive and morally upright family into their Whitehouse. His desirable traits were a tyranny and he was a tyrant, they ...
Read more