Humor and the Art of Dissent

Is satire wasted on the American public? Al Franken writes a book called "The Truth with Jokes" and has to highlight the jokes as to not confuse the audience. To quote his footnote on the bottom of page 28, "After my last book some of the younger and/or less bright readers complained that they couldn't tell when I was joking and when I was merely reporting true things in a comedic manner."

The Republican National Committee has urged the membership to watch the television program 'King of the Hill" to get an idea of the make up of the constituency as if an alley full of beer swilling cartoon morons paints an accurate picture of the voting public. I watch 'King of the Hill' it is a bald faced parody of suburban idiocy and quite a funny yet affectionate lampoon of Middle America. How can you miss the joke?

We obscure the obvious through sheer gullibility. People are willing to take everything projecting from the plasma screen at face value. We idolized and identified with the whining, self-centered bunch of characters portrayed on the immensely popular satire constructed by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. We fell in love with a bunch of vacuous sluts on "Sex and the City." Homer Simpson is a heroic figure in some households.

If the satire gets more complicated than Mad Magazine quality humor most of the jokes are flying by the American public. I knew idiot hippies who thought 'National Lampoon' was a political manifesto and that 'Mr. Natural' was a dyed in the wool guru. I'm afraid to think of what the national perception is of 'Zippy the Pinhead.' If we lose the ability to laugh at ourselves and the capacity to understand just why we are so funny then we are lost. The smirking, self-important smugness that passes for a Bush chuckle or a Cheney smile is a fundamental denial of everything funny.