Why Washington needs a laugh
The Kennedy Center on Sunday hosts the 14th Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor — our national award for humor. It honors people who have had an impact on American society in ways similar to Mark Twain, the perceptive social commentator and satirist who helped America laugh at its leaders and itself. This year’s honoree will be Will Ferrell.
At last year’s event, for Tina Fey, Steve Martin said this was a night when Washington, becomes a comedy Mecca. He paused a beat. “And,” Martin continued, “we all know how funny Mecca is.”Continue Reading
Like all great humor, his joke stemmed from truth.
Why is it that Washington evokes all sorts of laughter, but does so little laughing itself?
In part, it’s because troubling times usually cause someone to claim that mirth is passé, or inappropriate, or just over.
But Jon Stewart was closer to the mark when he said, after Sept. 11, “A country that allows for open satire [demonstrates] the difference between closed and open. The difference between free and… burdened.”
And Washington could use some unburdening.
Humor in Washington has always been fraught — usually relegated to a very limited time and place.
That time? In the first three minutes of a speech.
And the place? A select group of dinners, like the Gridiron Club, and a cluster of correspondents banquets, where politicians are expected to poke fun at themselves and others.
There is a reason that members of Congress – of both parties – are held in lower public esteem than ever before. The political discourse is so rancid, and the players seem so unlikable. Humor could help alleviate both.
But humor, a social lubricant and general elixir of likability in so many other facets of life, seems to make few appearances in the life of Washington.
This is in part why Mo Udall called his autobiography, “Too Funny to be President.” (We’ll leave it to political scientists to tell us whether this was his only electoral stumbling block.)
It’s in part why Bob Dole, famously funny behind closed doors, seemed dour in public. He published his book, “Great Political Wit.” only after he left office.
The best humor does two things: First, it says with a smile things hard to say with a scowl. Second, it walks right up to the line of propriety.
The challenge –and the risk – is that sometimes you only see the line once you’ve crossed it.
Witness President George W. Bush, in 2004, at a radio and television correspondents’ dinner, narrating a slide show in which the running gag was his inability to find weapons of mass destruction. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) called it a “stunningly cavalier” attitude toward a war that was costing U.S. lives — and he was right.
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