What's Happened To Our National Sense Of Humor?

In our as-fast-as-the-Internet culture, it's hard to believe that it's been less than a month since people have been talking non-stop (online, at least) about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards ceremony.  The conversation seems to have died down, at least for now, with Smith having resigned from the Academy and accepted a 10-year ban from Academy events (although not from nominations).  And I don't have much to say about the incident itself when it comes to the who's-right-and-who's wrong question.  But I have a few thoughts about what this incident says about the nature of American comedy at this point, and, beyond that, about the state of comedy reflects the state of American political culture.

First, just to be clear about the incident, which shocked me as much as it did anyone, I hold no brief for either Smith or Rock.  I do, however, feel greater disappointment regarding Smith's behavior, not only because of my up-until-then respect for him, both as a performer and a person, but also because his failure here was both as a performer and as a person.  As a person, he initially laughed at the joke Rock made at the expense of his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and the medical condition that took her hair from her.  His opinion of the joke changed only after he saw how she reacted to the joke, and decided to get ahead of any confrontation he might otherwise have had with her about it.

But here's where he really went wrong.  He's a stand-up performer.  He doesn't need a script.  Instead of turning the Oscars into a crime scene (something the Academy did not handle well, for that matter), he could have gone up to Rock and found a way to critique what he was saying that would have put the mean-spirited nature of the joke front and center.  A rap.  A joke.  Even a short monologue.  The Will Smith I had previously come to admire over the past several decades could have done this easily.  That Will Smith, who belatedly made an appearance later in the ceremony accepting the Best Actor Oscar for "King Richard," was missing in action at a point when, for everyone's sake, having him there was absolutely essential.

And Rock?  Well, in this instance, he's the victim of a crime.  And there seems to be a consensus that he did not know that Pinkett Smith was suffering from alopecia.  On the other hand, Pinkett Smith has talked publicly about her condition, and Rock knew about the existence of the disease and what it does to hair.  Judge for yourself whether or not he should have suspected that the joke might have been over the edge of public respect, if not good taste.  Legally, it doesn't matter; verbal provocation is not a defense Smith would be able to assert in court, should this ever come to that point.  Nor should it be; society rightly expects people, especially those in the public eye, to take the occasional misspoken word. 

But over the edge of both respect and taste is where a lot of contemporary comedians live.  And, at least in my mind, Rock is a notorious example, which is why I mentally rolled my eyes when I heard him being introduced that night.  I knew something bad and potentially embarrassing (if not worse) was going to happen.  That's what Rock does.  In previous years on the Oscars, even when I agreed with the basic point he was making (e.g., referring to Elia Kazan as a "rat"), I cringed at the way he did it.  The viciousness of the style overwhelms the truth that makes the observation funny in the first place.  And, statistical probabilities in life being what they are, you can only sail over the edge so many times before the trouble you're looking for shows up and says "Hi there."

Putting aside the culpability of either man in this fracas, both of who lost something in the process, the question that jumped out at me here is this:  what's happened to our national sense of humor?   Perhaps it would be easier to answer that question with a few observations about the nature of humor itself.

Good comedy is comedy that laughs at everyone, even itself.  By which I mean, not all humor is so-called "insult" humor.  The history of comedy, especially prior to the mid-point of the last century, is filled with comedians who found ways to laugh at themselves every bit as much, if not more so, than others.  You can probably think of examples within your own experience.  For me, my personal favorite will always be Groucho Marx.  One minute in a Marx Brothers film, he will be deflating one or more of the pompous/clueless characters around him; the next minute, he will allow Chico to set him up as the butt of a joke (and, sometimes, even still comeback after that with a wisecrack).  For that matter, this is why ethnic humor is only funny when the comedian telling/performing it is a member of the relevant ethnic group.  By definition in this instance, the comedian is laughing at himself/herself/themselves.

Good comedy is about universal truths, about things we all agree upon.  People shouldn't be unfair.  Or lie. Or cheat. Or steal. Or pretend to be something they're not.  Comedy that not only works but lasts across time does so because the objects of its aim are things that are basic to the human condition, not a particular person, place, or moment.  This is demonstrated by the fact that our comedy culture, like the rest of our society, is made up of people from all other the globe.  At its best, comedy makes all of us laugh at the same things.

Good comedy, by virtue of its universality and self-deprecating nature, brings people together.  Audiences feel reassured and comfortable when they know that everyone is laughing for the same reason, and the laughter is being generated by someone who is not aiming to target a particular person or group in favor of another.

Here is where I need to allow myself the luxury of being explicitly political to make my point.  Perhaps above all, good comedy doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. Like, say news.  Just as news should not pretend it is entertainment, lest the line between fact and fiction be blurred to the point of obscurity.  I will confess that I have a nakedly political reason for mentioning this.  Fox News stays protected from defamation laws while producing patently defamatory material by classifying itself as "entertainment," while making sure that its presence in your cable subscription is ensured by calling itself a "news" network.  Fox should be forced to make a choice.  Either your cable bill will go down, or our political discourse will be polluted with fewer lies.  Either way, we win.

But it's no exaggeration to say that more than three decades of dishonest propaganda from the likes of the late Rush Limbaugh and his sordid professional progeny has done more to coarsen, polarize, and ultimately destroy the fabric of humor in our society.  Yes, there has always been satire, and sometimes pointed satire, and that is as it should be.  But, at its best, it has been produced by people who were open in their aims, and who understood that their targets had a right to fire back.  They didn't try to hide behind a lofty facade.  They could, to use a well-worn cliché, take it as well as dish it out.  And, as a result, conservative cowardice has infected, coarsened, and nearly destroyed the culture of our humor in the same way that it has destroyed the culture of our politics.

To come back to the Oscars for a moment, this is one reason why so many of the "jokes" written into the script of the show don't land.  They don't feel like jokes.  They feel like a series of punches in the nose.  The laughter in the live audience that those jokes do generate feel as nervous as they feel obligatory.  And that observation alone makes me wonder:  when was the last time any of us laughed out loud, because something was so funny you couldn't help doing it?  I can't in my case.  Can you?

Maybe Smith and Rock landed in the middle of this controversy because the rules of the road when it comes to comedy have been hijacked by people who see it as a weapon, rather than as a kind of balm.  Maybe, when the only rule of comedy is to bring your sharpest knife and assume a knife fight will break out, no one should be surprised when blood ends up on the floor.  I think neither man should have their career destroyed over this, and, as far as their relationship is concerned, I hope that they find a way to repair it.  We all would benefit if they do so.

But we would all benefit as well, if we could somehow find a way as a society back to the kind of humor that at its best is characterized by humility, by honesty, by universality, and, frankly, by inventiveness.  Yes, George Carlin and Lenny Bruce liberated our use of language, and bless them for doing it.  But their purpose in doing so was to expand the range of humor, not to make comedians slaves to pushing emotional buttons.

Our national sense of humor has traveled a long way down a bad road, and two of our most celebrated comedians have suffered as a result, along with the Academy, its audience, and movie audiences as a result.  Can we find our way back?

The answer to that question might actually say a great deal about whether our culture, and our nation, can survive.

The Midterms And The Media

In my haste to get last week's post published, I neglected to make a few additional points about the media's role in it, now and for the next several months.  In addition, there was one tragic story this past week with a media-related angle.  So I take this week's opportunity to blog to make the points, and reflect a bit on the story.

I've written more than once about the fact that the corporate media, including legacy publishers and broadcasters, exercise their freedom of the press not on behalf of their readers and viewers, nor by giving the full reign of that freedom to their employees on the front lines of the news, but solely to protect the property rights of the media's owners.  That is, not only their rights in the media itself, but the other assets they own in an age where 1% of the nation controls all aspects of our economy.  But, for the most part, they have done so on the proverbial QT, hoping that most of us won't notice.

That, however, may have changed recently.  CBS News, the former platinum standard of broadcast journalism that pursued the truth of what matters without fear or favor, announced that they were hiring a former Donald Trump henchperson, Mick Mulvaney, to provide commentary during the upcoming election season.  Why Mulvaney in particular?  Well, as it turns out, CBS is betting that the Republicans will win big, and they need to preserved their "access" to the powerful in the event that happens.  That's right:  it has nothing to do with any election expertise, or other journalism credentials, that Mulvaney might have.  It's all about making it easier to line up GQP talking heads to offer "puff pieces"--or, to be more candid, lies--in lieu of doing the job that the First Amendment supposedly protects:  the job of giving the public everything it needs to know about who is governing them.

Leaving aside the question of whether Mulvaney has the ability to do this at this point, given his own abrupt departure from the Trump administration, this brazen currying of favor with those who are only prospectively powerful would be laughable at best and a constitutional betrayal at worst if it came from a news organization with a lesser lineage.  That it comes from the network of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Dan Rather is a disaster that will resonate for a long time.  Assuming, that is, that it isn't surpassed by something worse.  And, as former Representative and current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is fond of remining his viewers, it can always get worse.

If you had any doubt that the media is not as "liberal" as conservatives are constantly screaming, the Mulvaney hiring should end them once and for all.  This brazen move by CBS was made openly, without any concerns about public backlash.  It's now up to all of us to ensure that there is one.

And all of us, as it turns out, includes at least some conservatives, such as the former contributors to the late "The Weekly Standard" who now publish thebulwark.com, a Web site devoted to salvaging our democracy and, in the process, beginning a saner political dialogue.  For that reason, they are in what is for them the uncomfortable position of rooting for, and providing guidance to, Democrats for the sake of bringing an end to Trumpism.  Here is an example of a post from that site by Mona Charen, a syndicated conservative columnist whose pieces have, in the past, provoked several letters to the editor on my part that, in hindsight, were far harsher than they should have been.  In her own way, by emphasizing the need for Democrats to stop dithering amongst themselves and focus on selling their accomplishments to date, she is reinforcing the point that the press is not going to do the Democrats' heavy lifting for them.  And Democrats absolutely need to have that point reinforced.  My thanks to her for doing so.

I will add one observation, regarding her post.  She notes the disapproval rates of both parties in the polls, and correctly points out that Democrats fare worse than Republicans in these polls.  I would just note that the difference between the two is exactly 4 percent--essentially a statistical tie.  This is consistent with what I have observed previously about generic congressional polls.  That hardly guarantees a Democratic victory in November, but it does make it clear that, no matter what CBS may think, the game is far from over.

Finally, and sadly, I note the untimely and devastating passing this past week of Eric Boehlert, a well-known media critic who, for decades, decimated the legacy media's coverage of Democratic presidential campaigns, exposing not only their falsehoods but also the craven and frankly unpatriotic motives behind spreading those falsehoods.  I can do no better, for his memory, for providing a measure of comfort to all those who were fortunate to know or work with him, and for reminding all of you that today's American press is not a friend to either you or democracy, than to provide this link to one of the many, many deserved tributes to him, his work, and his memory.

May we all honor all three of those by applying a line from the Terminator movies to what we do from now until Election Day:  no fate but what we make.  Everything good about this country is on the line this time; all of us need to act like it.

Let's prove them wrong.  Let's prove to ourselves that the people truly run this country.

Is It Too Late For Democrats In The Midterms?

Well, as everyone knows, the midterm elections are seven months away, which means that everyone interested in politics is either doing a lot of polling or poll-watching,  I'm no exception, except that I've already been at it for seven months.  I can't say that I'm surprised by the across-the-board expectation that the odds of victory in November favor Republicans over Democrats, both in congressional and state races.  But, while I'm not surprised by it, I'm not buying into it.  At least not just yet.

In the predictions game here, leading the charge in the legacy media is, of course, Chuck Todd of NBC's "Meet the Press."  Unlike the days of his predecessor, the late Tim Russert, Todd's hosting of the show has had a transparently obvious GQP to it, both in guest selection and interpretation of poll results.  Not surprisingly, his views on 2022 follow this bias, as he demonstrated in a recent MTP program.  He cited two reasons for believing that there will be a red blowout at the polls this fall:  Joe Biden's low standings in the polls, and what pollsters like to describe as the "enthusiasm gap"; that is, the net difference between respondents of each party, as self-reported, regarding their enthusiasm about the election.

Ever since the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, Biden's previously-high poll numbers have been crashing to earth.  There was a brief period after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Biden's subsequent State of the Union message, where the favorability-unfavourability narrowed in Biden's favor.  But that period seems to be over, and, as of now, the President is doing well to climb a few percentage points above 40%.

But polling is, as much as anything, about analyzing trends as well as moments.  And, in this context, it's worth using as a starting point for discussion, the fact that Biden has had thus far, by many conventional standards, a successful Presidency.  Employment is up, the pandemic is winding down, infrastructure is being rebuilt, and our standing as an international leader has been restored to a significant degree, as witnessed by the unity of NATO in standing strong against Vladimir Putin's destruction of Ukraine.  And, yet, Biden--and, for that matter, the Democrats--seemingly get absolutely no credit for any of it.

But all of this begs a rather obvious question.

If Biden's low standing in the polls, combined with the "enthusiasm gap" those polls claim to measure, are real harbingers of Democratic disaster, then why do polls that measure a party preference for control--the so-called "generic congressional ballot"--consistently show a dead heat between Democrats and Republicans.  Because they do.  There's no "enthusiasm gap" to be found their, nor any evidence that whatever animates voters' current dislike for Biden moves them to reject his party.

And this is consistent with what happened during Barack Obama's first term, and the fight over enacting health care reform.  The longer that fight went on, the more compromised the legislation became, the more political and personal energy was sucked out of Obama's supporters, the more those supporters despaired of his ability to fight for the causes that had moved them to vote for him in the first place.  And so, when health care reform was finally enacted, it did not poll well at all.  Overwhelming majorities disapproved of what Obama's opponents derisively referred to as Obamacare.

But drilling down into those poll results shows something more complicated.  Many of the people who disapproved of the bill did so not because they thought if was a government takeover of health care, but because they thought that it didn't go far enough in getting the federal government to ensure health care for all.  And today, unsurprisingly, Obamacare polls well, as those who opposed it from the right begin to see its long-term benefits, while those who opposed it from the left correctly see it, as Obama did, as a base from which coverage can be expanded even further.

Is the real enthusiasm gap for Biden coming from the left, as those voters perceive him as operating has he has traditionally, as a moderate Democrat?  Does that lead them to view him as playing Charlie Brown to the GQP's Lucy, as they Obama did?  Is this based on the failure to enact the progressive infrastructure bill, the so-called "Build Back Better" bill, now unlikely to be enacted in any form prior to the midterms, even though that failure is based entirely on two self-dealing members of the Democratic Senate caucus?   I'm comfortable thinking, based on the Obamacare experience, that the answer to that is "yes."

Which means that it's important not to learn the wrong lesson from current polls, as Democrats and their supporters did in the 2010 midterms.  They need to reject the fantasy of tacking to some imaginary, non-existent "center" and understand that the pathway to success lies in reassuring their core supporters that neither they nor their goals are going to be abandoned.  They need to be not merely in the media, but in their states and communities, preaching that message and listening with respect to the frustrations of those supporters.  And when they come back to Washington afterwards, they need to fight in every non-violent way for the goals that got them sent there in the first place.

What is the likelihood of all that happening?  Well, I wish I could say it was great.  But, when I read think pieces like this one, I have a very hard time doing so.

The problem with the reasoning in this article, as is the case with so many like it, is that it treats progressive voters, who tend to be young voters, as disposable, as though it's possible for Democrats to win elections without them.  It also overlooks the fact that many progressive concerns are not merely concerns shared by a broader coalition of voters, but are also, in the case for example of climate change and voting rights, existential in nature, whether with respect to democracy, or life itself.  

Young voters are not simply the heart of the Democratic core now, but the leading edge of its not-too-distant future core.  They aren't motivated by caution, any more than their counterparts in earlier generations were.  They want what those counterparts wanted:  a better world for everyone, and not just for themselves.  They don't want to be told that the future is being held hostage by two Democratic Senators with a talent for presenting their self-interests as the interests of their constituents.  They want, and expect, Biden and the members of his party to work visibly night and day to find a way forward.  They don't want to be told that they need to get along with a party that wakes up every morning and finds new and more exciting ways to terrorize them, shoot them, call them perverts and take away their right to vote.  They need to feel that Biden and Democrats care because, right now, they see Democrats as looking for excuses for failure, and all that makes them do is want to stay home on Election Day.

And young voters understand much more clearly than the rest of us that the coming midterms are not a routine election, one where expectations can be measured against the past, or in the context of a nation where "normalcy" is the rule of the day.  Nothing is normal about this election, anymore than anything is normal about this nation right now.  One of our two major parties is at best operating as a criminal conspiracy, and at worst like a cabal of agents for a hostile foreign power.

What Biden is doing for the center is in fact what he should be doing to rally his base.  Start with termination of the so-called Title 42 expulsion program, to allow refugees to go forward with their asylum petitions here in the U.S.  It's hypocritical to talk about being "over COVID" and then use COVID to indulge in the great passion of the American right:  bigotry.  All the more so given the current news on the employment front.  Clearly, we need more workers than we have.  What have we done to address situations like this one in the past?  Hint:  It rhymes with "immigration."

There are any number of executive actions Biden could take.  Cancel student debt.  Declare climate an emergency under the National Emergency Act.  Offer temporary protected status to all undocumented non-criminally charged immigrants, and use that as leverage to force Congress to pass CIR.  Boost workers' rights.  Lower drug costs.  The Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives has put together an entire list of possibilities, as has the progressive magazine The American Prospect. 

Why not do at least some of these things?  Because of fear that they may backfire?  Then, as FDR famously said, try something else.  Fear is a terrible governing strategy:  people may not understand the intracacies of legislation or regulations, but they can smell fear, and they will turn away from leaders who exude it.  Besides, surrendering to fear is worse than bad politics; it is a derogation of duty and one's oath of office.  Leaders are elected to lead, not shiver.

Is it time for Biden to declare war on the GQP, the way he has (up to a point) with Putin?  Don't take it from me, take it from AOC.

Is there the likelihood that it's too late for that to happen?

Biden and the Democrats hold the answer to that question in their hands.  But, to the extent that progressives can make them feel America's pain before November, so do we all.