S/He Who Laughs Last

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

The Daily Show has been dark for the second week in a row now, and I’m desperate for a laugh. Without the constant drip-drip-drip of humor, I’m finding it harder to deal with the dark side. I need a satire fix in the worst way. Colbert amuses, but Stewart provides rib-ticklers and belly laughs. These shows consistently prove my theory that lefties have the ability to poke fun at themselves, with a sharp eye for hypocrisy and an aversion to cruelty, all required for genuine political humor.

In my experience — and I’ve tried to be vigorously unbiased — the radical right doesn’t inspire much humor (except accidentally), and they lack the nuance for satire, although they cite the acerbic wit of Ann Coulter or the quick response of “entertainer” Rush Limbaugh to prove me wrong. Listening to this pair of hate-mongers for more than a moment or two makes me want to stick something sharp in my eye, so perhaps that explains my political choice. Or, conversely, my political choice explains my sense of humor.

Back in 2007, lusting after Comedy Central’s success, FOX News launched a political comedy show to go after Dems the way Stewart skewers the Pubs. Ineptly shooting for ‘clever,’ it was named The 1/2 Hour News Hour. It barely completed the season and was canceled for lack of viewers, who are mostly old white guys and members of the Dorbin-Dorbin-Derp-Derp Club. The cast was weak, the jokes mean. The laugh-track sounded staged and obvious against the disappointing void of humor. Dennis Miller was a regular, his previous SNL charm pretty much gone after 9-11, drowned in the bathtub of Islamic paranoia, patriotic clamor and militarism. Turns out satire must contain some kernel of truth to succeed. In short, The 1/2 Hour News Hour was a dud.

Playing to the stereotypes — Hollywood liberals and hippie-dippie tree-huggers — the cast did their best to demean the left, but evidently they didn’t tickle the demographic enough to hold its interest (although I can’t imagine they didn’t get a chuckle or two out of the recurring sketch called “Presidential Addresses,” featuring Rush as the President with Ms. Coulter as the Vice — a dream scenario straight out of Democratic Hell. Good times!). I watched its premier without the pleasure of a single laugh and that was more than enough for me. It proved another of my theories: there’s nothing funnier than good satire, nothing worse than bad. With rare exceptions, the right just can’t claim the necessary funny bone.

Coming up to an active summer season of campaigning for the liberal ticket here in the Pea Patch, I bemoan that a majority of my rural Missouri neighbors are FOX watchers. Several recent studies show that not only does FOX-watching dumb you down politically, but that viewers would be better informed NOT watching media at all. I wonder if living in that alternate reality is part of the right’s humor-challenge: when the line between truth and truthiness blurs, it’s hard to know what to laugh at. The Onion proved that, when we stopped thinking some of the faux-headlines absurd and started worrying that they might be true.

Far as I can tell, my right-wing neighbors wouldn’t know a knee-slapper if it bit ’em. They are more apt to laugh about killing critters or ridiculing others, spicing that up with a heap of local gossip (real or presumed.) Oh, every so often they’ll laugh at a leftie-type quip, but then they’ll have to embellish it with an attack on something, that’s when they get the big grin. I think it’s likely that constant FOX watching has shriveled their brains (or worse, their hearts.) I used to think the only way to eliminate their political obstruction was if the elders would die off, leaving the kids to step up. Now, with change at hand, I wonder how many of them will be left standing when it’s over.

Yes, it’s been a tough few weeks without the boys to cheer me. I didn’t laugh when Rush was ushered into the Missouri Hall of Fame, in secret and with only Republicans in attendance. I didn’t laugh when my state passed an anti-contraception bill, or when my local representative issued a statement that came to the attention of the nation, saying, “This bill is about religious freedom and moral convictions. This is about sending a message to the federal government that we don’t like things rammed down our throat.” It’s tough to laugh in the face of menaced liberties, it’s difficult to find humor when you’re struggling to keep your temper and your balance.

Perhaps the right wasn’t always so humor-challenged, but I suspect they were. I can always tell which ones they are in a social setting because they’re the ones that love the racist jokes, the ones that laugh at others. They’re the tough guys, the gun guys, the kick-yer-ass guys that stand taller with a boot on someone’s neck. And I have no doubt all the locals in the Pea Patch see themselves as modern patriots, members of the Tea Party, able to put aside the earlier and softer conservative bent that worked for them pre-black guy. This Tea Party strain satisfies their taste for radical rhetoric, saving them from having to go darker still; they’re too old now for those secretive midnight Klan meetings. They can get their fill of hate and conspiracy sucking down a brew, watching Hannity.

As former Reagan-Republican Michael Fumento designates, they’re likely members of the ‘new right,’ which he says “… cannot advance a conservative agenda precisely because, other than a few small holdouts like the American Conservative magazine or that battleship that refuses to become a museum, George Will, it is not itself conservative. Pod people are running the show.” Fumento asserts that “… the new hysterical right cares nothing for truth or dignity,” and offers numerous examples in his recent article. Rush is, of course, prominently featured.

I’m sure you know the charge that both sides have polarized at their far edges is a false equivalency. Nobody on the left is holding up appointments and prolonging years of filibuster and obstruction, nor have progressives refused to negotiate in good faith. You’ve got to give it to the right, though; they stand proud and unembarrassed in their battle cry that Obama hasn’t provided jobs or improved the economy, even while their own boycott of legislation is what created this long stalemate. Obama is, therefore, the “worst president ever:” please read that, “… and he’s black.”

There’s also false equivalency in how the parties go after each other. The left isn’t inclined to attack people, but rather the positions they promote. The right never changes its position, so in order to provide itself cover, it attacks people and distorts their message. Consider, for instance, the Romney camp’s recent admission that they intentionally plucked a clip of Obama’s voice, quoting an aide to John McCain on the economy during the previous election, for use in an attack ad. Assuming that those hearing the president’s voice would think the words his own, Romney’s people assured Politico it was fair game and a worthwhile gamble. Lenin would approve, confirming his infamous advice that, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” No shame will be forthcoming from the Romney camp. This is straight out of their traditional playbook.

Meanwhile Obama called a recent Romney speech in Iowa “… a cow pie of distortion,” providing me a snicker of appreciation, although I’d have preferred him to call Romney the cow pie. Speaking directly to Iowans in Des Moines, the Prez added, “I don’t know whose record he twisted the most – mine or his.” I suppose in their alternate reality, POTUS is guilty of implying that Romney is a twister. Maybe that’s enough of a “scare word” in the Midwest to get some subliminal attention, but nobody likes Romney anyway so it’s hardly necessary to make him less attractive. The GOP will march in step to support the Mitt-bot, even though, as some have pointed out, there isn’t a Christian in the race this year [sic]. And no matter how deep the rhetoric to herd the GOP into voting lines, there won’t be a fist-fight between the parties. Like it or not, Obama is a liberal, an academic and a gentleman,so we’re not going to see him wearing a hoodie and lurking in Mitt’s shadow in anything but radical-right delusion (which appears to be on-going and elaborate.)

No, I’m not looking forward to this campaign season. There are a lot of retired union-members around here, but they keep their leftie heads low in order to keep their golden years peaceful. The moneyed folk are all friends of Roy Blunt and use their power like a cudgel. With the FOX watchers, meanwhile, debate of even the simplest facts is perilous. Misinformation is a hard slog when the ‘pod people’ no longer accept anything but revisionist history as legitimate. To their minds, every concept that is not in agreement with theirs is a product of liberal conspiracy, and every liberal is — to quote Limbaugh — deranged. That doesn’t help a “Howdy, neighbor!” go down easy or make a political discussion pleasant.

It’s a conundrum. You can count the number of actual conservatives on one hand these days, which means that unless Edgar Cayce’s predictions of an American earthquake rearranging the whole of our topography and clearing the slate come true, we will have to work within our broken system — inside out, as it were — to make the changes we all anticipate. That also means that spitting in the eye of election politics and mainstream party shenanigans will do us little good. Perhaps we’ll really HAVE TO learn to work together!

Last night, flipping through the channels, I found a round-table hosted by former-Libertarian but now radical-rightie Tucker Carlson. Gone was the signature bow-tie, replaced by a big-boy tie in a power color (red), but his ever-boyish brow was still wrinkled with predictable faux-outrage. Intrigued, I stopped to listen to his comments. He was berating the President’s record, no doubt a riff on the recent GOP plan to hire “an extremely literate conservative African-American spokesman” to argue that Obama lied when he presented himself as a “black metrosexual Abe Lincoln.” No indeed, argued Tucker with passion, this president sold himself as a person who would unite the nation and he has completely failed to do so!

What? WHAT?

I thought of our belligerent little Dubby, the Smirker-In-Chief who saw himself as a “uniter, not a divider.” I thought of how many times I heard that phrase in the first decade of this century, a time when friendships and families were torn apart by deep rifts of partisanship and distrust, many still unhealed. I remembered the carefully-planned disinformation campaigns orchestrated by Karl Rove and the neocon policies enacted at the whim of our little “Decider.” I thought of the American treasure lost in those years, compounding our emergency today. I recalled Tucker’s daily defense of Bush’s foibles and infantilism on CNN’s pundit smack-down, Cross-Fire, which met its demise at Jon Stewart’s hands. I considered the sheer lunacy of hundreds of thousands of dollars in air-time devoted to a radical-right harangue that Obama had not managed to patch up all that was torn asunder by their own political team. I saw all this blatant hypocrisy delivered with a straight face for the edification of some crusty old guys in their seventies, dozing in their Lazy Boys, and I burst out laughing! The obvious is grinning in our faces: we win. We win sooner or later, no matter what happens, because it’s impossible to sustain this level of shallow self-pity and tribalism under an evolutionary infusion. I laughed until tears trickled down my cheeks.

Turns out laughing massages your internal organs and gives them the equivalent of a good jog, so my sense of humor got a little exercise despite itself. In my experience, laughing lightens your mood, it inspires your day, and it leaves a cheerful, creative vibration buzzing around you. You can’t be afraid and laugh, at least not at the same time. There are different kinds of humor, of course. You can laugh with someone or you can laugh at them, and if you listen carefully, you can tell the difference. The former is encouraged by grown-ups everywhere, while the latter is to be grown out of as quickly as possible, like an adolescent propensity to find [fill in the racial slur] jokes irresistible. But growing up happens to even the most self-absorbed of us.

Stewart and Colbert will be back next week and no one will be more pleased than I. Until then, I’ll leave you with a laugh or two, in case you need them: you may sponsor a uterus here and sign the unicorn petition here. This is the kind of humor the left does best; the kind that makes you think, not wince. Last, I’ll quote from a venerable Missourian, Samuel Clemens — Mark Twain himself, whose noble bust now shares space with that of infamous rascal and muckraker, Rush Limbaugh, in our state capital — speaking truth as he knew it and reminding me that he learned it in my neighborhood:

Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn’t any. But this wrongs the jackass.

To which I can only say amen, and remind you that s/he who laughs last, laughs best; and if that laughter is bubbling up from deep inside — unselfconscious and unrestrained, rancorless and genuine — have no doubt about who that will be.