All The Laughter That Matters Most Is Right Now
There’s a lot going on out there… the Democratic control of Congress of course (pushing a long list of social programs and ethics reform), scientists convening in Paris this week to file the definitive report on global warming, the public’s stone-faced reply to Bush’s re-escalation in Iraq, and my personal favorite, the new Congress’ decision to fully fund what was promised (1.4 billion dollars) in aid to Africa.
How do we attribute this wave of progress? I have a theory. It’s laughter. Lots and lots of laughter.
Follow me on this. For 5 _ years, our country has been assaulted by the political right and their brand of entertainment, embodied perfectly by Fox News, a mixture of fear mongering and blame for 9/11. As big media corporations raced to consolidate and bring you war coverage like a football game (until we started losing), shunning hard news, corporations and politicians made a mad grab for money and power. Their weapon? Nothing all that creative. Republicans have always done well convincing white voters that the majority’s power/wealth status was under attack by gays (religion!), blacks (crime!), Mexicans (your job!), but now they had the ultimate weapon, Muslims (your very lives!). The political left basically caved. Nothing funny there you say. Rightly so, but wait, have you noticed something?
We all started snickering in spite of them. This undercurrent of giggles began escaping (along with all that pent-up fear of others) a few years into the war in Iraq. Goodness knows we needed a laugh. Perhaps it was really just a big desire to question reality, and ultimately, to expose all of the open hostility toward most people who are not white.
But wait you say. Aren’t more and more Americans calling themselves “not-white” these days? Yes! And they are the ones laughing the hardest. Read on.
I’ll give partial credit for the recent tidal wave of good humor to the staff at the British version of the sitcom, The Office. Ricky Gervais created a modern day Archie Bunker in his version of the worst boss ever, but with a twist. He made the boss CLUELESS. The idea of an unknowing bigot (a person insensitive because they just don’t know better) makes the humor painfully real. In the American version, Steve Carell plays an office manager at a paper company named Michael. Michael gets written up by HR for “outing” an employee named Oscar (over and over again). Oscar then gets a paid vacation because of his boss’ antics. When Oscar returns, Michael wants to throw him a party, and assumes Oscar (who is Hispanic) will want a “Fiesta!” with Mexican food, music, and decorations. Oscar tells the camera that he hasn’t complained about this stereotype yet because he is holding out for a big-screen TV.
Comedy Central, already home to Jon Stewart’s the Daily Show (never afraid to make fun of the Republican’s shameful tactics) added three new additions to the genre. Silverman, a new show, finds Sarah Silverman, a Jew, spouting all kinds of cringe-inducing anti-“other” rhetoric. The Naked Trucker & T-Bones Show takes the basic laughter formula found in the Will Farrell movie, Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and places two itinerant blue-collar types into absurd schemes in which repeated failures demonstrate the limits of their own narrow thinking.
The coup de tat has been The Colbert Report. Stephen Colbert lampoons the political right every single night by taking the rhetoric on Fox News and tweaking it up just one notch. To the casual observer from a certain political perspective, you could almost agree with everything Colbert says, until he says something that will dawn on you that YOU are the one being made fun of. Remarkably, Colbert was invited to do his shtick at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner and simultaneously needled the President and the press. No one who attended laughed very much, and yet, Colbert’s performance is now one of the most popular viewings on the public’s video forum, You Tube. Incidentally, the press has invited Rich Little, an anti-political, self-described Republican, to host the next dinner (so much for liberal bias in the media).
But wait you protest, I still don’t see what is so funny about racism, sexism, or homophobia? Why do the liberals, who conservatives love to chide for political correctness, like this kind of humor? The answer is simple. It plays well with liberals because its funny, its truthful, and, above all, it has a moral message.
Hands down, the winner of this new genre of comedy is Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen, in reality, is a Jewish/British comedian. Unless you live on a pop-culture-free planet, you know Cohen is the man responsible for the movie and character, Borat, the anti-Semitic reporter from Kazakhstan, who travels to America to understand our culture. Delightful for its premise alone, Cohen mixes script and reality to foil Americans into revealing all of their inner-ugliness. The moral message for the audience is clear… “Am I like that?”
The critical thought Carell and Cohen force upon their audiences begins to translate into greater awareness. As Americans began to laugh at all the meanies, politicos, and jerk-os in our society, they also just got fed up with the real ones in power. The Democratic Congress owes much of its success to anti-Bush sentiment, it’s true, yet Congress owes part of its success to all of those making us laugh as well.
How do we attribute this wave of progress? I have a theory. It’s laughter. Lots and lots of laughter.
Follow me on this. For 5 _ years, our country has been assaulted by the political right and their brand of entertainment, embodied perfectly by Fox News, a mixture of fear mongering and blame for 9/11. As big media corporations raced to consolidate and bring you war coverage like a football game (until we started losing), shunning hard news, corporations and politicians made a mad grab for money and power. Their weapon? Nothing all that creative. Republicans have always done well convincing white voters that the majority’s power/wealth status was under attack by gays (religion!), blacks (crime!), Mexicans (your job!), but now they had the ultimate weapon, Muslims (your very lives!). The political left basically caved. Nothing funny there you say. Rightly so, but wait, have you noticed something?
We all started snickering in spite of them. This undercurrent of giggles began escaping (along with all that pent-up fear of others) a few years into the war in Iraq. Goodness knows we needed a laugh. Perhaps it was really just a big desire to question reality, and ultimately, to expose all of the open hostility toward most people who are not white.
But wait you say. Aren’t more and more Americans calling themselves “not-white” these days? Yes! And they are the ones laughing the hardest. Read on.
I’ll give partial credit for the recent tidal wave of good humor to the staff at the British version of the sitcom, The Office. Ricky Gervais created a modern day Archie Bunker in his version of the worst boss ever, but with a twist. He made the boss CLUELESS. The idea of an unknowing bigot (a person insensitive because they just don’t know better) makes the humor painfully real. In the American version, Steve Carell plays an office manager at a paper company named Michael. Michael gets written up by HR for “outing” an employee named Oscar (over and over again). Oscar then gets a paid vacation because of his boss’ antics. When Oscar returns, Michael wants to throw him a party, and assumes Oscar (who is Hispanic) will want a “Fiesta!” with Mexican food, music, and decorations. Oscar tells the camera that he hasn’t complained about this stereotype yet because he is holding out for a big-screen TV.
Comedy Central, already home to Jon Stewart’s the Daily Show (never afraid to make fun of the Republican’s shameful tactics) added three new additions to the genre. Silverman, a new show, finds Sarah Silverman, a Jew, spouting all kinds of cringe-inducing anti-“other” rhetoric. The Naked Trucker & T-Bones Show takes the basic laughter formula found in the Will Farrell movie, Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and places two itinerant blue-collar types into absurd schemes in which repeated failures demonstrate the limits of their own narrow thinking.
The coup de tat has been The Colbert Report. Stephen Colbert lampoons the political right every single night by taking the rhetoric on Fox News and tweaking it up just one notch. To the casual observer from a certain political perspective, you could almost agree with everything Colbert says, until he says something that will dawn on you that YOU are the one being made fun of. Remarkably, Colbert was invited to do his shtick at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner and simultaneously needled the President and the press. No one who attended laughed very much, and yet, Colbert’s performance is now one of the most popular viewings on the public’s video forum, You Tube. Incidentally, the press has invited Rich Little, an anti-political, self-described Republican, to host the next dinner (so much for liberal bias in the media).
But wait you protest, I still don’t see what is so funny about racism, sexism, or homophobia? Why do the liberals, who conservatives love to chide for political correctness, like this kind of humor? The answer is simple. It plays well with liberals because its funny, its truthful, and, above all, it has a moral message.
Hands down, the winner of this new genre of comedy is Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen, in reality, is a Jewish/British comedian. Unless you live on a pop-culture-free planet, you know Cohen is the man responsible for the movie and character, Borat, the anti-Semitic reporter from Kazakhstan, who travels to America to understand our culture. Delightful for its premise alone, Cohen mixes script and reality to foil Americans into revealing all of their inner-ugliness. The moral message for the audience is clear… “Am I like that?”
The critical thought Carell and Cohen force upon their audiences begins to translate into greater awareness. As Americans began to laugh at all the meanies, politicos, and jerk-os in our society, they also just got fed up with the real ones in power. The Democratic Congress owes much of its success to anti-Bush sentiment, it’s true, yet Congress owes part of its success to all of those making us laugh as well.
posted by Not Why, Why Not? @ 10:29 PM
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