How About Laughing For A Change

What do you think is funny? 

This has always been a question that demonstrates a lot of what a person is about. Personally, I have problems with people who don’t like Mel Brooks. Doesn’t that say something about them? Not that they are wrong, just that they are different. If you see nothing funny about. “The Producers”, you may have won the Nobel Peace Prize and your son can certainly marry my daughter, but we still have stuff to talk about.

We are now in a period where it appears that we have lost our collective sense of humor. Here’s the question – can we no longer laugh about ourselves?

For example, I’m Jewish. To be clear, no one will name a synagogue after me. I have my issues with religious and ethnic identity. But I do identify as Jewish. It was on my military dog tags. And yet, I have no problem laughing at jokes about Jewish stereotypes.       Like the one about the Jewish restaurant in the Catskills:

One guest: The food here is terrible.

Second guest: Yeah. And the portions are so small.

Now, that’s funny. Should a Jew be offended even if the joke is told about a Jew? Even if it is told by a non-Jew? Why is something that is funny less funny depending on who tells it? Humor emanates from the exaggeration of a truth. Stereotypes are similarly exaggerations of a truth. A humorous use of stereotypes equals funny.

Yeah, sometimes a joke like that can be told with bad intention. But it seems now that we have become so thin-skinned and so overly sensitive that we impute bad intention to everyone.

We are too easily outraged. There was a time when the word, “outrageous” was synonymous with “funny.” Funny people were often described as “outrageous,” as in, “How hilarious was Irv last night? He outdid himself with his outrageous stunts.” Of course, the root of “outrageous“ is “outrage.”

Now let’s talk about Dave Chappell. His new Netflix special is the subject of controversy because of the “outrageous” things he says. 

For example, while suggesting that Mike Pence is gay, Chappell supposes Pence offering this prayer, “Please Jesus, make those buttholes ugly to me.” Now that’s funny. It may very well offend Mike Pence, but what rational person would care about that? It is, like all humor, an exaggeration of a truth – that the ultra-religious Pence would pray to pray to not be gay. (Sorry to explain a joke. Nothing makes jokes less funny than explaining them. And I’m sure you understood it anyway).

And then there was the one where Chappell was told by a fan that, “They’re after you.” He responded, “One they or many theys?” This reference to the pronoun changes requested by non-binary people, its timely, clever, and funny. It does nothing to demean anyone.  In fact, the same question in the same words could just as easily have been asked by a non-binary person.

Look, I’m not saying that nothing is outrageous or offensive.  We have lived through four years of an outrageous and offensive President. I’m talking about humor. I’m talking about being able to laugh at ourselves, even when the laughing is about who we are. Will a non-prejudiced person really become prejudiced after hearing a comedian’s joke? If anyone who watches Dave Chappelle’s show takes from it that there are people worth hating, then those people already had pictures of Josef Mengele hanging on their wall. And if you think that last sentence is funny, it makes my point. It is because it is an exaggeration of a stereotype.

C’mon. loosen up.