Memo to all parents: Wanna stay relevant? Don’t crack jokes around your kids.
You can flaunt your techno savvy. Text and e mail. Tweet… Stream… Selfie. Send money by phone, they like that. But make a funny and you’ll be revealed as the retro-geezer they suspected you were all along.
I was outed during the last Presidential campaign. Watching Obama’s contortions on the Middle East and public financing I had what I thought was a funny idea.
“How about this for a novelty product? Obama flip flops. Walking metaphors for his positions. On the right sole we put his early statements, like ‘I will accept public financing,’ or ‘Jerusalem will be 100% Israeli…’ Stick in some of the real wild ones like ‘Nafta benefits all Americans…’”
Silence. I had their rapt attention. I was on a roll.
“That’s the flip, get it? Turn up the left sole and you get the flop. ‘Public financing is a way for Republicans to game the system’ or ‘American Jews have an excessive concern for Israeli security’ and maybe something catchy like ‘Nafta Shmafta’. Great party favor. Sell it at speeches, events…We could do a co-promotion with IHop…”
The silence wasn’t rapt, it was stony. Like any bombing comedian I hastened to explain.
“Flip flops? Flipping pancakes? Funny, huh?”
Not!
“Romney flip flops, Dad.”
“So do you.”
“Why is everybody allowed to change their mind, but Obama?”
Drenched in flop sweat, my voice broke like a teenager’s.
“It’s just a joke.”
“But it shows how you really feel.”
Whether they knew it or not they agreed with Freud that jokes are a socially acceptable way of expressing repressed hostility and unpopular opinions. And with Aristotle that a joke is a “a representation of people worse than us, a subdivision of the ugly and shameful.”
After that I was a moth to the flame. Watching the President demonstrate his lefty basketball moves I quipped:
“Wow, he does play like a white guy.”
They rose and stalked out:
“You mean like Larry Bird, Dad?
“Or John Stockton…?”
“Or Bob Cousy, your idol from the ’50’s? When they dribbled two-handed and shot into a peach basket?”
I gave futile chase. “I’m only quoting his brother-in-law…”
“Which you do all the time.”
There’s a rumour abroad that I dislike ‘Political Correctness’ This is a complete distortion of my views…
I absolutely fucking abhor it— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) February 6, 2016
Can’t blame them. Millennials live in a grim world. Bombs exploding, bullets flying. A world where you can die from a mosquito bite. Or end up the collateral victim of some psycho’s grudge. Where a harmless prank can lead to permanent pariahdom. Or suicide.
A world of narrowing prospects in which they are constantly reminded that they will be the first generation in history to make less money than their parents.
Millennials have to be careful what they say and do. Somebody out there—black, white, left, right, tranny, panny—is waiting to pounce on their smallest deviation. Better to be safe and drab and check your privilege.
The secular culture of taking and making jokes is long dead. Their discourse is dominated by competing orthodoxies, which have one thing in common: no humor allowed.
Religion has regained prominence. Horny, gluttonous or greedy cleric jokes are off limits. Friar Tuck is redacted from the children’s version of Robin Hood. There’s no humor in the Holy Scriptures. The Garden of Eden gets funny for a second when the snake slithers in, but the party is soon over. Moses could use a visit to Anger Management. Jesus won’t even stick a warm up joke in his sermons. And Muhammad…uh oh, better tread lightly here… Great guy, Muhammad, terrific kidder. What’s that Arab proverb— Muhammad laughs and the caravan moves on?
The left is trying to remake the world and feels immune to ridicule. It condemns humor as a bourgeois plot to make the oppressed laugh at and accept their exploitation.
Bernie Sanders admits he has a “bad sense of humor.” He won’t need it once his Revolution comes,
According to Marxist theorist Tom McLaughlin: “Under Socialism there will be no classes and consequently no class conflict. Humor will cease to reflect any objective reality and will wither away.”
The Right sometimes doesn’t have to be intentionally funny, it can serve as a parody of itself. What joke could equal schoolboy sneers about hand size, nose-thumbing retorts like “Ted is a big liar,” or or a candidate confusing war torn Aleppo with a popular brand of dog food. (Just kidding, I hope.)
“That’s racist.’ ‘That’s sexist.’ ‘That’s prejudice.’ They don’t know what the f–k they’re talking about.”…Thank you Jerry Seinfeld.
— RockPrincess (@Rockprincess818) September 4, 2016
Plato banned humor from his Republic. “No composer of comedy… shall be permitted to hold any citizen up to laughter, by word or gesture, with passion or otherwise,” he wrote in Laws.
The comedians have gotten the message. In his last years on the Daily Show Jon Stewart gave up satire in favor of predictable rants which got predictable roars from the Amen Corner.
Chris Rock no longer plays colleges. In an interview he said the audience was “too conservative.” Not politically, but socially. …”in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody. Kids raised on a culture of “We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.” Or just ignoring race to a fault….”
When Jerry Seinfeld revealed that fellow comedians had warned him away from colleges because they “were too PC,” he was savaged by the left media. Columnist Amanda Marcotte accused him of making excuses for being “a second rate hack.”
Okay, I get it. My form of good-natured ribbing is obsolete, suspect. Fine. I’ll just putter and mutter. Make chewing noises. Work on my osteo bump.
Too bad. I’ve got a great bit about Bill and Hillary in bed. Hillary getting oxygen, Bill watching Jenna Jam…
Ah, never mind.
Heywood Gould is a director, screenwriter and novelist based in New York
