WHERE HAS ALL THE HUMOR GONE?

“WHERE HAS ALL THE HUMOR GONE?”

ROBERT ISENBERG

There was a time when there was some humor in politics. There was a time when comedians were very funny about politics.

Will Rogers made a handsome living telling political jokes. Some of them even resonate today.  For example, he once stated, “Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing. It was the closest our country ever came to being even.”

 He also noted, “I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat!”

And is said to have reported, “I don’t make up jokes, I just watch the government and report the facts.”

Stephen Colbert watches President Trump and reports what he says. Is it funny?

Perhaps, I guess if dark humor is funny than perhaps it’s funny. Colbert shows Trump mentioning that there were “fine” people on both sides in Charlottesville. One side boasted Neo Nazis, KKK alumni, and White Supremacists. This group was carrying torches, flags with swastikas and crying out racist remarks.

What’s funny here? Is it funny that our president can actually say that “fine” people are in such a group? Then elaborate by adding, “And you know that too!!”

 I wonder if even Will Rogers could find humor here.

There was a time when politicians dropped lines that some of us thought were funny. For instance, President Johnson complained, “If I walked on water in the morning, in the afternoon the press would comment, ‘it’s because I couldn’t swim.’

President Kennedy was a master at self-effacing humor. His wit sparkled over with such gems as these: “My dad called me and shouted, ‘Don’t buy one more vote than necessary, I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide!’”

 Regarding appointing his brother Robert to be the attorney general of the United

States, President Kennedy quipped, “I don’t see anything wrong with giving Bobby a little legal experience before he goes out on his own to practice law.”

The concept of humor was a huge factor in Kennedy’s quest for the presidency. So much so, that he actually hired Mort Sahl. Sahl was one of the younger comedians of that time. I remember that Sahl was credited with saying that President Eisenhower had kept us out of Mars.

Bob Hope, much like Will Rogers, used political material very successfully. One of my favorite lines of his was, “I didn’t realize how poor our economy was, until I received a Care Package from an Ethiopian.” At the time, and still now, Ethiopia’s economy was in desperate straits.  

In deference to President Trump he did utter one line during the campaign that caused me to smile. He said he didn’t understand why Michelle Obama got so much credit for her speech and that his wife Melania got dissed for the same exact speech.

Trouble is, I’m not sure he was joking.

The entire presidential race was mostly humorless. The theme was insults and barbs. Hillary was for the most part devoid of any humor. Her only attempts were to comment that this was the first time she ran against anybody whose hair was more controversial than hers. She also grieved that Trump would probably rate the Statue of Liberty a three.

 SO I SAY, WHERE HAS ALL THE HUMOR GONE?  LONG TIME PASSING. LONG TIME AGO.