Good For A Laugh–Why Everything Is Hilarious But No One Is Supposed To Notice

The comedian Bill Murray has recently noted that it’s hard to be funny in an era of identity politics. Life is a nature preserve where every animal is beautiful in its own right, unique and special, and an expression of the world’s diversity and majesty.  Everyone is perfect. There is no room for humor in compassion, and at least as far as  the writers of the Gospels and the Epistles are concerned, Jesus Christ never laughed once.  Yet he must have found something funny when he was growing up – Mary spilling gruel on the dog; Joseph missing a nail and banging his finger – but we’ll never know since the years from his birth until the age of 12 when he began preaching in the temple are a blank. He neither makes others laugh nor finds anything to laugh at.

Some critics infer from the tales of his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem that he must have enjoyed himself.  At the many banquets described in the New Testament, could he have always kept a straight face? Or not shared in a joke? Was there no bantering and joking between him and his disciples like there almost always is when men get together? Surely they must have told jokes about the Samaritans, the Romans, and the Greeks.  There was plenty to laugh at in the Old Testament, so why should anyone assume that humor disappeared in the New?  Was everything in the three years recorded in the Gospels such a serious affair? Surely, even a man on a mission as revolutionary as his could not have thought only of his Father, his being, and his divine purpose.  If God indeed created him as a man, then he must have given him room for comic pause.

Concerned Americans wear this  mantle of concern, love for mankind, and compassion for others with honor and pride.  Jesus found nothing funny in doing God’s work, nor should they. Unfortunately, this proud mantle has become a wet blanket.  There is no longer any distinction between empathy and hilarity. 

Of course we all know that this isn’t so.  The world is filled with defects, departures from the norm so exaggerated that they are funny.   It is hard to ignore Mary Arkin’s strange symmetry.  Her eyes were awkwardly placed.  The carpenter’s level was off-kilter on the day she was made, and one eye was socketed in her face a good two inches above the other.   Mary was a lovely girl, sweet, kind, and generous; and if it hadn’t been for those misplaced eyes, she would have been considered attractive.  But try as her teachers might, there was no way to deflect attention away from that strangely misshapen face. 

Mary kept her chin up throughout childhood and adolescence thanks to her parents who admitted that God had been in too much of a hurry when she came down the assembly line and he had inadvertently given her an unusual appearance.  It was simply the luck of the draw, she concluded, nothing she could do about it; and besides, what was a set of slightly off-line eyes compared to the deformities she saw every day. 

Bobby Billups’ eyes were so close together that it was amazing he had any peripheral vision at all.  Betty Landers forehead was so big that she had half the hair of any of the other girls, so far back did it slope.  She did all she could to disguise it – floppy hair, wide headbands, and crazy hats; but she fooled no one.  Mary thought that only prize-fighters had cauliflower ears until Billy Hanks took his seat in Mrs. Thomas’ eighth grade English class.

Mary was unique not because of her strange eyes, but thanks to her precocious understanding that the world is full of freaks.  If looked at in the right way, life was indeed a circus side show.  If it wasn’t physical appearance, then demeanor.  Mr. Jenkins, the pharmacist – a man with Hollywood looks - had a facial tic so bad that it jerked his head so far back that he could look over his shoulder.  He snorted like an animal and blinked his eyes like a bird.

People’s vanities are always the most hilarious.  Mrs. Peabody thought that she was God’s gift to men and yet none of them got closer than arm’s length.  They found her overbearing, impossibly vain, melodramatic, and intellectually empty.  Yet she entered every room with panache.  God had given her an exaggerated view of herself but had also given her limited social vision.  She went on from salon to salon without a clue. Mr. Harrison spread butter on his toast in little dabs and ate them in order.  At the gym there is Hamster Man, a pointy-nosed retired lawyer who runs the treadmill like a rodent on a wheel.  Jabba the Hut, a 400 lb. black man who displaces half the water in the whirlpool. Death, a grey, stalky woman with a fixed stare into some scary afterlife who pumps the ellipticals in a weird, stationary race. The Man Who Polishes His Balls, Water Man who stays in the shower for hours, and The Barking Scarecrow – a stringy woman of 70 who clatters up and down the stairs in her track shoes and bangs on about organic veganism to whomever will listen.

Take The Man Who Polishes His Balls. Before the man who polishes his balls gets into his gym clothes he could be a K Street lawyer, accountant, or dentist.  Even with his clothes off he is no more misshapen than anyone else. His only curiosities are his badly bowed legs, thicket of body hair, and slightly humped stride. It is when he finishes showering that the show begins, for then he starts to dry his balls – not the casual, practiced, indifferent rub; but a deliberate stropping.  With a hand on each end of the towel, he begins to whack away at his crotch like a shoeshine boy. Whippety, whippety, Whopp!. Whippety, whippety, Whopp!, first on one side then on the next.  Then, changing direction and angle and bent over from the waist, he snaps the towel back and forth up and down his backside.

“Be sure to get yourself nice and dry”, his father might have said, showing him the proper way to get at the nooks and crannies of his body.  “With a dry body you will never get a fungus or a rash.”
These innocuous, helpful, and practical words must have had a particular salience for the young boy.  Perhaps he was already a hypochondriac or had had a bad experience in the shower, or was simply prone to exaggeration.
By the time he was fifty, his scrotum had been so stropped and given such a frottage that it was like leather. Because he had lost so much sensation there, he was unable to tell whether or not he was really dry; so the time spent on whipping the towel in his groin increased until now stopping was arbitrary and prolonged.

The Barking Scarecrow is anorexic, loud, and needy. She barks instructions about proper positioning on the adductor machine, the best posture for working abs, lats, and tris; the shortest route between Falls Church and Montgomery Village; how to test for doneness on a roast chicken; and the number of miles she has logged for the week. It is hard to feel sorry for this barking, insufferable woman even when she is sitting on the bicep machine, positioned at the top of the stairs, disconsolately waiting for someone to talk to.  She struts like a model on a catwalk, but with an exaggerated jock-walk that has not an ounce of feminine allure, sexuality, or even grace.

Americans are losing their humor. That’s a given; but the fact that so many young people are losing theirs is bothersome. When Mary Arkin went to Harvard, there were no holds barred.  Humor – ironic, sarcastic, witty, acerbic, clever, and even mean – was considered the highest form of intelligence, and the ability to perceive and appreciate the smoke and mirrors, tricks and foibles, vanity, and absurd posturing of the human race, and to dismantle, disaggregate, and disassemble ever absurd bit was genius.
While Harvard has always been tolerant of geeks who keep their heads down and eyes on their equations, musical scores, or electrical wiring, it has always – up until recently – prized those who kept their heads up and looked around even more.
Now the campus like many others has changed.  The culture of diversity and political correctness has cast a dark and humorless pall over the university. Everything that is funny is off limits.  What is funny if human looks, attitude, and behavior are taken off the table?  If religion, sex, and food are no-fly zones?  What is left?

Some of the funniest comedians are mimics who have an uncanny ability to observe and to recreate oddities in speech and behavior.  All of us have our peculiarities, and mimicked with exaggeration, they can be hilarious.  It is our vanity that we think so much of ourselves; and if it weren’t for the comedians of the world, we would never it punctured.  It is funny the way Professor Talmadge clears his throat and adjusts his pens before every lecture; or the way Ms. Perkins smoothes her skirt like an old spinster before she sits down; but laughing at them is out of bounds.   Bling can be funny.  So can gay sashaying.  Ghetto-speak can be parodied and pilloried and so can Mr. Featherstone’s patrician Main Line Philadelphia accent – but both are unacceptable.

There is only one solace in this seemingly unstoppable purging of humor from the American scene – self-parody.   There is no way that anyone can take the excesses of political correctness seriously; yet, they do.

Microaggressive: Saying you're not a racist because you have black friends.

Not Microaggressive: Saying you're a not a racist because you have black friends who are also racist.

Microaggressive: To compliment an Asian person on his math abilities.

Microaggressive: Faculty of color mistaken for service worker.

Not Microaggressive: White faculty member mistaken for professor.

Microaggressive: Female doctor mistaken for nurse.

Not Microaggressive: Male nurse mistaken for heterosexual.

Microaggressive: Raising your voice when speaking to a blind student.

Not Microaggressive: Gesturing with your hands when speaking to a deaf student.

The ethnic jokes of the Borsht Belt comedians of the 40s and 50s are now considered crude, insensitive, and intolerant.  There is no such thing as stereotypes, critics say, so singling out a racial or ethnic group for them is to demean and degrade them.  Of course anyone laughing at Jackie Mason and Shecky Greene knew that there was indeed something to stereotypes and there was nothing wrong in parodying Jewish mothers or Italian fathers.  The Nineties Show In Living Color was the inheritor of outrageous, stereotypical humor and its sketches of gay men, Jamaican immigrants, deformed firefighters, slovenly black bums, and white trash were hilarious.  The producers knew that no amount of politically correct cover up was going to disguise reality.

Nothing has changed in twenty years except that what was on limits then is off limits now. While the groups have changed, their stereotypical behavior does not.  Progressives, conservatives, black activists, environmentalists, justice warriors, gays, lesbians, and trannies have distinctive, recognizable, self-important traits; and when displayed by good comedians, their self-importance is punctured and everyone has a laugh.  The young Eddie Murphy and D.L. Hughly are the rare comedians who have been outrageously incorrect in taking them all on.

 

If there is one thing that distinguishes Man from the animals, it is a sense of humor.  All species have intelligence one way or another, survival instincts, territorial behavior, family structures, and much more.  What we have and they don’t is humor – a sign of high intelligence, mental agility, perception, and modesty.  When humor goes in the name of identity rights and political correctness, more than a few laughs are gone.  We become less human.

Se Me Cayó, I Didn’t Drop It, It Fell–Passivity And American Moral Indifference

The passive voice is an important feature of Spanish, at least in its American usage.  One doesn’t forget things or drop them.  They are forgotten or dropped.  The subjunctive adds an additional tempering of duty and responsibility.  ‘Let the floor be washed’ is far more acceptable, less confrontational, and much more polite than ‘Wash the floor’.  The language is gently suggestive rather than forthright.  What does it matter if there is no finger of blame or a direct order if the meaning is understood? Isn’t an accommodating, forgiving language more valuable than one without nuance, subtlety, and especially good manners?

Already polite requests in Spanish are made even more so by the passive voice.  “May I go now?” becomes “Is my leaving possible?”, and by so doing phrasing the request in a more general, less direct, and more universal way.  It is never a question of permission but of context.  Given all the possibilities that might occur – staying longer, too long, not long enough; leaving too abruptly or not quickly enough; lingering the front door or opening it too quickly – no one must assess the request in any other way than generously.  Regardless of the impatience of the host or the impatience of the guest, the departure is made without even the suggestion of ulterior motives.

Of course the passive voice can be a convenient way out of trouble.  American children learn quickly from their Salvadoran nannies that confessing guilt in Spanish is far easier than confessional English.  There was no passive voice used in Salem at the witch trials, and the only true confession before God and Man could be “I did that”.  Catholic priests in an American confessional would never tolerate anything but the truth.  “Bless me Father, for I have sinned’ could never have a passive voice.  Sin could never simply come to one.  Biblical justice has no room for elisions.  A nun’s hand was never stayed by a child’s excuses.  The ruler came down on misbehavior without counsel.



The cultural divide between Latin and North America could never be more distinctly seen than in this use of language.  Our Calvinist forefathers had an uncompromising view of right and wrong.  A Biblical injunction was just that – an order from God which one obeyed absolutely.  There were no conditionalities in Salem, no mitigating factors, and  no room for temporizing.  The soul would never see God if the pathway were unmarked.  There was no room for doubt or indecision in spiritual matters.  Sin did not just happen, one committed sin.  Regardless of the occasions of sin, the temptations of the Devil, or lack of backbone, a sin was a sin to be confessed. 

At the same time sin in Lazio or Punta Arenas was not the unforgivable lapse it was in Salem.  The Latin Catholic Church has always been more tolerant even of avoidable sin.  Although Jesus’ followers are heir to the sins of the flesh, thanks to his forgiveness and compassion, they are forgiven.  There is always a margin of moral error.  The Mediterranean Church has a far more accommodating view of human behavior and far more faithful to Jesus’ teachings than the pastors of Salem.  Fewer Catholics would have left the Church had they been educated by Franciscans in California rather than Irish Jesuits in Boston.



Despite this significant cultural divide, the Latin sense of se me cayó has become more and more common in mainstream America.  Evasion of responsibility and the fungibility of guilt are usual.  Mitigating factors are no longer dismissed but deliberately looked for as a way to exonerate those who might have had no choice.  Poverty, family dysfunction, sexual abuse, racism, and economic disruption must all be identified and used as exonerating factors in social behavior.   Psychological imbalance before medication cannot be helped.  Far from a criminal pathology, anti-social behavior caused by a chemical imbalance if not completely excusable is at least understandable; and the punishment should not fit the crime but the psychology of the ‘criminal’.

In a highly complex, information-rich, multi-layered society like America’s, there is more than enough room for moral confusion.  If morality is relative, given cultural plurality; and if ethics are conditioned and mitigated by the bewildering circumstances of post-modernism, then how can anyone be expected to hew to one and only one ethical standard?  American is characterized more by the ease of dissolution – of contracts, marriage, social obligations, membership, association – than the cementing of relationships. Individualism has its merits, but one of its deceptions is the easy slide into se me cayó. With the disappearance of institutional authority – Church, State, and Corporation – no one should be surprised at such moral expediency.

Trust and confidence in Congress, the White House, Wall Street, and Corporate America is receding.  Mainline churches have progressively moved from a Christian moral authority to a secular one.  Where one stands on civil rights, justice, and equality  is more telling of spiritual evolution than more traditional Biblical faith.  Evangelical churches in their emphasis on charisma and personal intimacy have further loosened the tie between traditional moral authority, the logical principles of Aquinas and Augustine, and the authority of institutional Christianity.

Pope John Paul II warned against moral expediency.  Abortion, he said, was not just a mortal sin, but a defiling of the notion of the sanctity of life.  Once a woman chose to abort a child because of work, family responsibilities, money, or position, she indirectly contributed to the general erosion the fundamental principle of faith.  Pope Francis reiterated the theme and went on to suggest that once one rejected the notion of the sanctity of human life, the rejection of the sanctity of all life became inevitable.  In so saying he became an environmentalist hero and a Hindu.



Every action has moral consequences, both Popes and philosophers have agreed; and without a due consideration of them, the path to moral indifference becomes an easy one. 

It is common to hear excuses from the lectern, the pulpit, and the podium.  Evasion of responsibility seems to be the order of the day.  The complaisance of the public – our ease with moral indifference – makes it easy for those in power and authority to act irresponsibly.  There are good reasons, they say, for their actions; and if they cannot be forgiven, then they should be at least understood.  Se me cayó.

The slide from the pious severity of the Puritans to the moral flexibility of today has been gradual but sure.  Moral relativism seems strict in comparison to today’s moral inconsequentiality. Classical relativists granted that culturally universal moral values did indeed exist. While they granted the validity and significance of their own moral codes among the many codes extant, they believed that no one moral or social code took precedence over or had a higher value than any other.  Most importantly they agreed that the existence of such codes, relative or not, was essential.  Without them only moral befuddlement at best and dangerous amorality could result.

Today’s moral relativism has nothing to do with universal codes derived from schools of philosophical thought, religion, or history.  It is not a question of comparing Hindu and Christian views of life, death, and redemption, salvation, and spiritual enlightenment. It is only a matter of ‘It depends’.  We temporize without considering consequences, avoid the issue of guilt and the corrective step of confession, and ask only to be believed.  Blame is a matter of proven circumstances, not acceptance of guilt.  “It’s not what you know”, says the Denzel Washington character in Training Day. “It’s what you can prove”.  Knowledge, admission, and morality have little relevance in an amoral world where getting caught is the only consequence.



So, although we have always dismissed the se me cayó culture as intellectual laziness, we have ironically adopted it lock, stock, and barrel.  No phrase nor any cultural marker so accurately characterizes American ‘philosophy’ today.  The culture of expedience that John Paul II so angrily argued against, is here.