Funny Business

I’ve been reminded a lot recently about the importance of humor in one’s personal life. For me it’s always been an easy way to defuse a potentially tense situation, liven up an excruciating meeting, or simply get a reaction out of someone. While this type of humor can be an antidote to a distressing situation, humor in public life is often more like a stick of dynamite. It can be useful, but it must be handled carefully.

In the wake of September 11^th, the death of irony was declared in the same breath as the rebirth of patriotism. Two weeks later, The Onion ran the headline “American Life Turns into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie.” Thankfully, irony and humor were still alive and well. Humor can help us make through even the darkest days, both in our private and our public lives. As the Pope said in an interview this week, “I'm not a man who constantly thinks up jokes. But I think it's very important to be able to see the funny side of life and its joyful dimension and not to take everything too tragically.”

As I see it there are three distinct types of humor that most often come into play in public life: communal humor (we’re all laughing together), self deprecation (you’re laughing with me), and ridicule (you’re laughing with me at someone else). There is space for all three, but before any of them should be attempted, you had better be sure you know which one you’re striving for.

Communal humor is probably the most benign of these three. Think of this as telling a joke at the beginning of a speech or presentation to break the ice, get the audience laughing and relaxed. Communal humor is also found at public performances, including theater and film, where you get to share laughter with a group of strangers. Of course, as anyone who has ever performed knows, comedy is hard to pull off, so even communal humor should be handled with care. Those with highly attuned senses of humor often venture in the second type of humor, self-deprecation, when attempting to break the ice.

Self-deprecation is one of the most effective types of humor in the political arena. It humanizes political leaders, and connects them to whatever audience they are trying to reach. In recent years, Ronald Reagan was the standard-bearer for self-deprecation, using it effortlessly to great effect. Self-deprecation is so powerful because it demonstrates one of the most important (and rare) qualities of a leader – humility. A willingness to laugh at one's self, and in the process admit one’s shortcomings, can both defuse criticism and show honesty.

Finally, there is ridicule. By ridicule, I do not mean simply being mean or insulting to someone else, but rather using humor to expose faults in the logic of an opponents argument, or expose hypocrisy. Despite my desire to see issues-based campaigns that are free from ad-hominem attacks, I believe that ridicule of this kind does have a place in public life. One of the most memorable uses of ridicule in the public arena was the late Lloyd Bensen’s quip that Dan Quayle was “no Jack Kennedy.” Obviously, this is a bit of a fine line, that same year Texas Governor Anne Richards brought down the house at the Democratic National Convention by saying that George Bush was “Born with a silver foot in his mouth.” I would say this extended beyond the bounds of ridicule and was simply an attack, no matter how big of a laugh it got.

Which brings me to Senator George Allen of Virginia. By now I’m sure many of you are aware that the during a campaign appearance in southern Virginia, Allen pointed out S.R. Sidarth, who was videotaping the appearance on behalf of Allen’s opponent Jim Webb. He called Sidarth, who is Indian-American, “macaca” and welcomed him to “America and the real world of Virginia”. You can see the video here.

Clearly, Allen was going for a moment of communal humor, but ended up venturing into the realm of ridicule, falling short and ending up in that abyss where failed jokes go die. Only, in Allen’s case this failed attempt at humor has come back to haunt him in a big way. Initially, no one was quite sure what to make the “macaca” comment, but everyone seemed to sense that it “sounded vaguely racist.” The origins of this word have been traced back to a type of monkey (which accompanied most initial reports), to the fact that it is a slur used to refer to native north Africans by Europeans (Allen’s mother is from Tunisia), to an explanation that the word is a mash-up of “Mohawk” and “caca” (you all can do the math on that one). Allen eventually apologized, not necessarily for the comment itself, but to anyone who was offended by the media’s misinterpretation of his comment.

Of course, the irony here is that Allen has now opened himself up for some genuine ridicule for this remark. Leaving aside the question of whether the remark was racist, Allen (who was born in California) welcoming Sidarth (who is a native Virginian) to Virginia is certainly grounds for some arrows of ridicule to be slung his way.

The Daily Show is the most well known purveyor of such ridicule, and its sharp wit has thrust host Jon Stewart into the political spotlight. Stewart’s humor flies in the face of the “fair and balanced” news media, who often are so concerned about appearing biased that they temper any criticism of a particular party with the assertion that the other side is in some way guilty as well. He surely has a liberal bent to his personal politics, but in his humor he looks for the best laugh regardless of party. The Daily Show’s send ups of the politics of sound bites is some of the sharpest coverage I've seen of partisanship over the past few years – lining up dozens of spokespeople repeating the same lines word for word on the Sunday talk shows, or the subtle change in the language of Iraq war supporters from “Stay the course” to “Adapt and win.” When Stewart is at his best, he doesn't actually make jokes, he simply sets the stage and let the clips speak for themselves.

Stewart succeeds because he tempers his ridicule with a healthy dose of self-deprecation, and reaches for our common frustrations with political leaders in an effort to create some communal humor out of the partisan divide. In the battle to reclaim a healthy public life, this is a valuable weapon, and hopefully through the common places of humor, well used, we can start laughing more and more with each other rather than simply at others.