Up & Away
I approach this blog post each week meaning to write something funny, but lately the events of the world since the previous post have been just so damned important that it is hard to ignore them. I sit down to write comedy and I think, what’s funny about racism, police brutality, dishonest leadership, pandemics, authoritarianism, and climate change?
But that’s precisely when the human instinct for humor is most important; as a self-soothing secret weapon. We use it when we’re frightened, when we’re in grief, when angry, pissed off, depressed, nervous, and any other uncomfortable human emotion you can imagine.
But the truth of the equation “comedy = tragedy + time” needs to be honored. Which simply means this: No one is in the mood for a funeral joke if they’ve recently attended a funeral, but at a different time in their life, almost everyone can laugh at a cartoon about a funeral with a mime in an invisible coffin.
Along this line of reasoning, one can truly say there is nothing that is off-limits for humor—eventually, anyway. Almost anything is safe after enough time has passed.
This is also the reason why racist jokes are still so offensive—racism still exists to such a degree that we are nowhere near close to being able to say enough time has passed.
To be clear, though, the victims of racism can and do make jokes about racism. As I mentioned above, that’s how humans deal with crises and stress. But the perpetrators of racism cannot make these jokes under the same rule. Here, we’re in the territory of another comedy rule: Punching up vs. punching down.
For white men, who are and have been, without debate, the supreme power holders in American society, to tell racist or sexist jokes is to punch down. Only a cretin, a coward, an insecure child would hurt someone and then laugh about it. And then hurt them again.
But that begs an interesting question: Is a racist’s need to use racist humor yet another example of how humans use humor to cope with crises? Is it possible that the racist is, in fact, a frightened, insecure, emotionally-damaged child who can only find self-worth by diminishing others? And are his racist jokes a way of laughing about a part of himself that he knows is wrong and toxic? Could he be self-soothing, too? Joking about his own cancer?
To me, this is the most concerning thing about the alt-right and their president; their hatred is born of fear and wounds. And everyone knows how dangerous and irrational frightened, wounded animals can be.
They crow and strut with great bravado, of course, but their fear is evident in their stockpiling of weapons, their need for ever-bigger armies and better-armed police, their blind and unyielding support of soldiers and policemen and authoritarian leaders, their admiration of draconian laws and prisons, their love affair with walls and barriers, and their head-under-the-covers denial of climate change. The list of their fears goes on and on.
I’m very grateful that I’m not among the terrified and I only hope I live long enough to see the comedy equation above become true about the current Tower of Terror we’re living through. We’ve already got the tragedy element of that equation, all that remains is time and we’ll all laugh our asses off, right?
In the meantime, let’s use our secret weapons to chuckle at Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from this week!…
I suspect a lot of dogs only go to therapy because they’re allowed on the couch.
Wasn’t one Big Bang enough? When are these scientists going to stop playing god?!
You know what they say: If frames were toilet paper, pictures would fall off the wall. Food for thought.
If I told you those were loofah sponges and not potatoes, would it make this more or less funny?
If you’re up for more monster talk, see what Wayno has to say about this and all of these cartoons on his weekly blog post. Don’t forget to come back and finish this one, though!
This is a reference to how female mantids eat the head of the male after they mate. Humans have divorce attorneys for the same purpose.
Some people call very large pills “horse pills”. Some folks have asked.
That marks the end of this week’s pillow talk, Jazz Pickles. I hope you’re all tucked in safe and well and happy. If you like what we do and that we do it without a paywall or ads, please consider having a peek at some of the links below. Any little thing helps keep the campfire burning at Rancho Bizarro.
Until next time, be smart, be grateful, be kind, and find something to laugh about every day. Even if only maniacally.
…Daily Bizarro IN YOUR EMAIL + archive access
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels