S/He Who Laughs Last

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” –George Orwell

Laugh, and the whole world laughs with you. That’s the old saw about laughter that proves its point indelibly when we watch video of a baby with the giggles. Just the sound is infectious, lifting our spirits and daring us NOT to laugh. Our lips twitch into a smile, then a grin, and before we know it, sound is bubbling up out of us in a joyous expression of enjoyment. And the best of it? Like yawning, laughter is a shared experience, drawing us in and connecting us to one another and the absurdity of human behavior. I ask you, who couldn’t use a little laughter — aerobics for the soul — in a time of so much sorrow, surrounded by so many clamoring voices spoiling for a fight?

Granted, there doesn’t seem to be much to laugh at lately, what with Ukraine coming under fire, Putin hinting about the use of nukes and NATO pledging to gather “rapid response” resources in Poland lest there be Russian aggression against any alliance country. Our new ‘cold war’ has succeeded in reactivating NATO. Hot these last five months, the action in Ukraine seems to have cooled a bit, but not by much. A cease-fire agreement signed this week offers no guarantees, as the pro-Russian rebels are determined to take more of the Ukrainian coastline. And while the cease-fire between Israel and Palestine seems to be holding, Israel’s seizure of 1,000 additional acres of Palestinian territory — reported as punishment for the kidnapping of the teens last month — appears to be stamping an official seal on the end to peace talks. There are about half a million Israelis, and over two-and-a-half million Palestinians. Think about that picture, about what that 1,000 acres represents. Talk about family feuds!

And no pleasure to be taken in the most recent beheading, which seems little more than a double-dare from ISIS, flying its black pirates’ flag above the slaughter left on the battleground in the Middle East, eager to legitimize themselves by engaging American military one-on-one. Sadly, that’s the kind of chest-thumping America can’t seem to resist responding to, leading Joe Biden to follow up Obama’s pledge to deal aggressively with the militants by announcing that we’d follow them to the gates of Hell. Most of the soldiers who just came back from that region will attest to the description, and nope, none of them are laughing now. Maybe Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld shared a guffaw, watching Obama’s failed attempt to pull the American footprint out from the shattered shards of the Pottery Barn that is Iraq, but a war-weary nation sure ain’t amused.

The Ebola epidemic isn’t a laugh a minute, certainly, and — because those American missionaries who survive it by coming home for treatment are staunchly evangelical and effusively grateful to the Most High without acknowledging the Western protocols of modern medicine that lifted them out of emergency — it’s taken on an Apocalyptic tone. Ebola’s rapid spread across most of Africa is more a product of poverty and ignorance than Gawdly wrath, if one has “eyes to see,” as reminded by the biblical injunction. Good sense goes a long way, as illustrated by reports that the high incidence of rape in India would take a nose dive if there were proper toileting facilities available for more than 50 percent of its citizens. Privacy! Hygiene! Personal accountability! What a concept in the 21st century, eh? It’s worth taking a moment to consider just how little advancement many of the countries fighting modernity have made, emblematic of how differently we — and they — understand ourselves and our world.

And we all delight in breaking ourselves down into special interest groups, don’t we? Narrowing our focus each time we find some new way to define ourselves? We’ve all but split our interests in half, here in the U.S. of A., some of us for progress, some against. For instance, the Affordable Care Act is under attack on a daily basis in this nation, years after the fact. This is, once again, a tribal event and a matter of regressive political stance. The bigger picture — that for-profit insurance carriers may no longer take advantage of customers due to the oversight of the government agency that regulates them — becomes obscured when individual groups (in this case, states in the red category) feel their power (and perks) in danger. This is, essentially, the ‘no trust in big government’ argument that prefers the ‘small pond theory,’ i.e., the Federalist position asserting that each state has autonomy, wielding its own authority.

That was illustrated last month when the District of Columbia Circuit Court ruled that the 36 states using the federal health insurance exchange were ineligible for subsidized insurance, calculated to serve low- and middle-income families, even as — on the same day — a Virginia federal appeals court panel ruled the opposite way on an identical case. Those eager for an end to ‘Obamacare’ were pleased as punch, hoping to kick their case up to the Federalist-heavy Supreme Court for a final ruling on the issue of subsidies, finally crippling ACA beyond repair. Instead, the D.C. Circuit Court will rehear the case, Halbig v. Burwell, in December, dashing the hopes of the radical right.

Yes, it’s hard to take a laugh-break, these days, when the laughter we hear seems somehow rueful, or sullen, embarrassed, or even mean-spirited. There’s just so much serious business going on. Little to find charming, or witty or clever. Little to point to as silly or whimsical. And more, even here on these shores where the regressives consider the progressives the enemy to truth telling, saying what seems evident without pissing everybody off is not just an art form but an experiment in radical honesty. It’s a no-brainer that this kind of information goes down best with something self-depreciating, or a bit of sass, or an oh-so-obvious example that can be scorned but seldom questioned.

This week, the queen of the one-liners passed on. Joan Rivers, 81 years old and seemingly unafraid of the scalpel during at least 30 of them, suffered a heart attack during an endoscopic procedure. Her name and picture (she would approve) are everywhere today, her waspish quotes repeated with glee by those who never would have had the guts to say them in public. She was unique, they tell us, an original. And she was, in lady form, anyhow; she said she’d fashioned herself after her inspiration, the late, great Lenny Bruce, who was a consummate, and doomed, truth-teller.

There’s only one name-brand comic left from that era who practices unvarnished candor like Joan did, or has that kind of chutzpah: Don Rickles, who was able to poke Sinatra in the eye, even in his most powerful Rat Pack days, until he wept with laughter. I’m not counting Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, who shows up at roasts and took pleasure in pooping on presidential politics, or Roseanne Barr, who perpetually runs for president on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket (and wrote a good piece, here, candid about her discomfort with some of Joan’s wit, which I shared). Both Thunder and Roseanne can sling a one-liner, but neither have Joan Rivers’ kind of ‘presence.’

Joan had a sense of herself. It takes a good deal of smarts to be that salty, to make your name by poking fun at your own schlubbiness back in the mid-60s, while simultaneously transforming yourself into the stylish CEO of a costume jewelry empire and recreating yourself — along with daughter, Melissa — as the female version of Mr. Blackwell (plus some) in the 21st century. It seemed she’d live forever, having survived a number of devastations in her lifetime, but she was always game and NEVER politically correct. She said it like she saw it, never apologized for her riff, and soldiered on like a preening Phoenix rising, never losing her signature, and often outrageous sense of humor. Said Joan:

“When I die (and yes, Melissa, that day will come; and yes, Melissa, everything’s in your name), I want my funeral to be a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action … I want Craft services, I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene!

“I want it to be Hollywood all the way.

“I don’t want some rabbi rambling on; I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents. I don’t want a eulogy; I want Bobby Vinton to pick up my head and sing “Mr. Lonely.” I want to look gorgeous, better dead than I do alive. I want to be buried in a Valentino gown and I want Harry Winston to make me a toe tag.

“And I want a wind machine so that even in the casket my hair is blowing just like Beyonce’s.”

While drinking my morning coffee, I heard Kathy Griffin tell a story of accompanying Joan to England where they spent two days with Charles and Camilla. Turns out the royals loved Joan, who certainly had appreciation for their formal and lavish lifestyle. Griffin, who fancies herself a Rivers protégé, said that Charles quipped, “Without newspapers and comedians, who would keep us honest?” Well, we can’t feel quite so confident about the newspapers these days, but comedy seems to keep up: Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert, Bill Maher, Louis C.K. — and frankly, just about anyone on Comedy Central. OMG, is it possible that South Park has been on weekly for 17 years and still manages to make me either roar with laughter or gasp at its irreverence?

The world’s pretty dark right now, and so is our comedy. Graveyard humor, it’s called, dark and unsanctioned by the politically correct, who are afraid some truth might leak out. And even though it appears counterintuitive, when we poke fun at the darkness, at the things that threaten and disturb us, there’s a laugh in there somewhere, waiting to erupt, and we discover we aren’t quite so afraid. It’s the very human elements of comedy/tragedy, the essential polarization that keep us in-fighting and looping in judgment and self-recrimination. It’s that almost schizoid internal dialogue that provides the fodder for great stand-up comedy, and the deep realizations about ourselves and our society that provide it. Somewhere inside, we aren’t quite so serious. Somewhere, deep within, we know what we do here is just pretend — just ‘practice,’ to learn, to stretch, to experience. If we are unable to laugh at our selves on this journey, all is lost.

But we can!  Ten years ago, when I started writing for Planet Waves, one of my first posts was a rant about Dubby’s misplaced confidence in Shock ‘n Awe, his tone-deaf understanding of what 9/11 was all about. I said you can’t bomb an idea. The years since then have proven that we can’t argue our way out of one, either, especially with the amount of ‘truthiness’ practiced by those on the right side of the political spectrum, to whom science is opinion and logic smacks of secular bias. But there IS something that can peck away at whatever cannot stand up to close examination, whatever is unwilling to take itself less than seriously, unable to withstand the sharp pinch of ridicule. The pen is mightier than the sword, especially if it’s writing a comedy routine.

And — lo and behold — it turns out that the Middle East has a well-developed sense of humor, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the wealth of wisdom its writings have provided down through antiquity. There is a good deal of derisive satire aimed at the Islamic State, coming out of, among others, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Syria. Read this short article to get an encouraging sense of how mainstream Muslims see ISIS (it’s always encouraging to discover that the dangerous ‘hadji’ PR is, indeed, nonsense). This was spot on, I thought, as shown on a Lebanese television broadcast:

In one skit produced by the “Ktir Salbe Show,” a taxi driver picks up a jihadi who rejects listening to radio because it didn’t exist in the earliest days of Islam, a knock on the Islamic State group’s literal take on the Quran. The driver offers to turn on the air conditioning, but that too is rejected. The jihadi finally criticizes him for answering a mobile phone.

Fed up, the driver asks: “Were there taxi cabs in the earliest days?”

“No, 1,000 times no!” the passenger answers. The driver responds by kicking out the jihadi and telling him to wait for a camel instead.

Bombs may well ‘downgrade’ the Islamic State but won’t ‘destroy’ it, no matter what our president hopes for. Humor, though? Humor can cut it off at the knees. There is nothing so subversive as satire, nothing — ask Orwell — as revolutionary as truth.

As these things go, the world will not always be so dark. These things have a way of smoothing out eventually, and in this remarkable time of shift from the Piscean Age into a new iteration of humanity, the darkness must come before the dawn. You’ve heard about the windows that fly open when doors close? There is a beginning in every ending. A birth in every death. A laugh to be found, even in sorrow. Truth be told, the kind that tickles the funny bone and kicks your ass at the same time adds a breath of fresh air and a mental clarity that you didn’t know was missing.

Let’s ask Joan what she thinks about that hypothesis:

“I have a wonderful psychiatrist that I see maybe once a year, because I don’t need it. It all comes out onstage.”

Need more baby belly laughs to brighten your day, prompted by nothing more than delight in being alive? Can we be that present, that innocent, that unencumbered for just a moment, letting everything else go besides the unabashed ridiculousness of our human foibles and the remarkable generosity and tenderness of our opened hearts? Can we be more in tune with the glorious possibilities of life than with the ominous portent of death, just one more prank the universe seeks to play on us, because we believe it possible? Maybe that’s the biggest laugh of all.