Where Has Our Sense Of Humor Gone?
By MIKE MANNO
“Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners” — George Carlin.
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The best humor, they say, is based in reality. If that’s true, then George Carlin hit one out of the park.
For the last several years I’ve noticed that we’ve stopped laughing at — or with — one another. What was once a great American sense of humor, especially involving current events, has apparently been replaced by systematic dowdiness. We used to be able to poke fun at ourselves and others in a friendly sort of way like we do with our families and close friends.
So what has happened? Well, my guess is that our overreliance on mandated political correctness as well as our self-imposed avoidance of micro-aggressions has a lot to do with it. You see, we’ve become a culture that is so ultra-sensitive, and we take things so seriously, that we have created a nation of faux victims who are ready to negatively react to anything that can be interpreted as an insult or an affront regardless of intent.
And the result is that we now either don’t speak frankly with one another, avoiding certain subjects, or we confine our humor to those who we think agree with us politically or sociologically, which results in humor that is one-dimensional and laced with a bitter political point.
Over the past few years, a number of comedians have withdrawn from certain venues, mainly college campuses, due to what they feel is an overly sensitive public.
Jerry Seinfeld, for one, has stopped playing colleges,
“They’re so PC,” he said. The students don’t understand racism and sexism, he said. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist,’ ‘that’s sexist,’ ‘that’s prejudice.’ They don’t even know what they’re talking about.”
“Let me give you an example,” he said a few years ago. “My daughter’s 14. My wife says to her, ‘Well, you know, in the next couple of years, I think maybe you’re going to want to be hanging around the city more on the weekends, so you can see the boys.’ You know what my daughter says? She says, ‘That’s sexist’.”
Comedian Adam Carolla put the problem in a nutshell: “Nothing kills comedy quite like people who are constantly offended. It’s impossible to be funny if we’re not allowed to poke fun at each other and that’s what’s happening with a new generation of people who seem to be offended for a living. If we can’t have fun with one another, than we lose our humanity. If free speech goes, then our basic freedoms will follow soon after.”
Another comedian who agrees is Larry the Cable Guy: “[PC’s] gotten way outta control. You know, I really think that we’re at a point in this country where people really need to take the thumb outta their mouth and grow up a little bit and realize there’s a lot bigger problems out there than what a comedian did a joke about.”
There once was a time when the late-night comedians, like Jay Leno and Johnny Carson, were equal opportunity offenders, pointing to the foibles of our political leaders, Hollywood heartthrobs, and various groups, and we could all laugh together — even those who were the butt of the jokes. The offense was taken for what it was: pure unadulterated humor and the conservative who got his today would laugh along with it because he knew that tomorrow it would be his liberal opponent’s turn in the comedic dunk tank.
You see, it was all in fun and everybody knew it.
But all has changed in the era of hyper-partisanship and late-night attacks that ridicule anyone who thinks differently and anything that stands for something today’s new comic opposes. No longer is humor nonpartisan; it has taken on a very sharp partisan edge fueled by the polarizing politics that rewards and elevates those who can claim “victim” status. As columnist Froma Harrop put it, “Americans seem to have lost their sense of humor, becoming late-night angry, frustrated, and sick with anxiety.”
Thus it is no longer possible to joke about religion, vegans, animals, cops, and feminists (just to name a few) that we once were happy to poke fun at. Now any word or thought that can be interpreted as hostile is verboten because our cultural leaders (academia, Hollywood, and the media, primarily) have conditioned us — like Pavlov’s Dog — to spin everything in such a way that we become a victim of the speaker’s words, regardless of the speaker’s intent.
Instead of accepting everything as humor, we now look at everything defensively; every statement, question, or joke now becomes a micro-aggression aimed directly at our vulnerabilities. “It isn’t funny anymore; it makes me a victim.” It’s only allowable if it is directed toward a non-victim group, like Christians or white men, who are responsible for our victimhood, because, as comedian Russell Peters put it: “They’ve drilled it into your head that you’re not supposed to laugh at this.”
Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, said, “It’s a time in our culture where people love to pretend they’re offended.”
And comedian Jim Norton added, “Being outraged and upset and feeling bullied or offended are not only things we enjoy, they’re also things we have become thoroughly addicted to….I choose to believe that we are addicted to the rush of being offended, the idea of it, rather than believing we have become a nation of emasculated children whose only defense against the abyss of emotional agony is a trigger warning.”
So just how do we get out of this trap? We have to lighten up, smile, laugh, and understand that not every joke is meant to hurt. Teach your children to put their defenses down and learn to laugh at themselves and you. Teach them that laughter is God’s gift for a long and happy life.
One of my old Philadelphia cousins tells the story of a man he knew whose best friend hated the Italians, despised them. One day they were visiting the Jersey shore and took a walk on the boardwalk. There they ran across an organ grinder. The bigot stopped, looked at the man, then reached into his pocket and dropped a silver dollar in the monkey’s cup.
Why, he was asked, as they continued their walk, did he drop a dollar when he hated Italians so much?
“Because,” he replied, “they’re so cute when they’re little.”
I’m Italian! It’s a joke, it’s funny. Laugh. Get over it. Reclaim your sense of humor. The mental health of the nation needs it.
(You can contact Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com.)
