December 06, 2004, 9:53 a.m.
Ho Ho Holdout
Florence Invades Amerryca.

EDITOR'S NOTE:
EDITOR'S NOTE: Herewith America's Curmudgeon rages about the lunacies of bad humor run rampant, from sea to knee-slapping sea, all faithfully reproduced from her November 11, 1996, "Misanthrope's Corner" column in NR. It's a Florence Classic — enjoy!

Why not enjoy the Queen of Kings in all her no-fools-suffering glory is STET, Damnit, The Misanthrope's Corner, 1991 to 2002, a wonderful book in which NR has collected and republished each and every one of Miss King's beloved columns. STET, Damnit is available only from NR, it makes a wonderful gift, and may/must be ordered (securely!) here.

"YOU can pretend to be serious," wrote Sacha Guitry, "but you can't pretend to be witty." True, you can't pretend to be witty because wit is dry, subtle, lacerating, cynical, elitist, and risqué — all impossible to fake. Humor, on the other hand, is broad, soothing, positive, inclusive, and smutty — to make sure everybody gets it. Pretending to be humorous is easy and a great many people are doing it.

The "happy talk" associated with local news has now permeated the media. Network anchors are stretching and straining for jokey leads, none with more gravid insouciance than Dan Rather, whose ineffable opening statement, "President Clinton was as relaxed as a pound of liver," earned Dan the Cyrano de Bergerac Award. "Oh, sir, what you could have said, had you some tinge of letters or of wit. But of wit you never had an atom, and of letters you need but three to write you down: a-s-s."

No yuk is left unturned, even in the unlikeliest places. Crime shows and violent movies, once limited to a few stoic wisecracks, now brim with constant quipping, banter, genial insults, and playful asides. This is not comic relief, which is defined as a separate scene or subplot, but comic accompaniment for murder and mayhem.

Even the print media have joined the bray. Newspaper headlines increasingly run to juvenile puns ("Katie Kicks Dole's Butt"), while ads are silent versions of the basic elements of hysteria. Models in print ads used to smile to show their pleasure in the product, but now as they gather round to exclaim over the computer or the fridge or the optician's wide selection of frames, they simulate bladder-busting laughter; heads thrown back, eyes bulging, mouths stretched into rictuses, both rows of teeth exposed all the way back to the molars. The computer isn't that funny. The user's manual is, but they're not reading it.

Americans now ache to be funny the way previous generations ached to "sit down and play the piano without notes," as matchbook ads used to promise. It was guaranteed to make you the life of the party; all you had to do was forget about being tone-deaf and send away for 12 easy lessons on how to play the piano without notes.

The hopes of today's would-be comics are just as unrealistic, but they are sustained by a powerful influence that did not exist in the matchbook era. After nearly fifty years of television, our population now contains more people who have listened to laugh tracks all their lives than people who haven't. It has trained them to laugh when somebody says something funny whether it's funny or not, and to expect every bon mot of their own to be greeted by gales of mirth whether it's bon or not.

Being funny is now part of the American Dream. You know what that means: everybody's got a "right" to be funny. Don't laugh; anything is possible in the land of liberty and penumbras for all. It would be easy in today's climate to invent agendas for outcome-based humor and comparable-worth jokes and connect it all up to self-esteem. The Norma McCorveys are ready and waiting, as an observer of life among the Yuks can testify.

A few weeks ago I was in a variety-store checkout line whose cashier was yukking it up with a desperation reminiscent of those poor souls who knock themselves out on a first date to be sure of getting a second. To a customer buying a red shirt, she caterwauled, "Better not wear this around a bull!" and then bellowed with laughter. The customer was momentarily taken aback but quickly rallied, saying gamely, "I don't know no bulls, but my husband's full of it!"

Encouraged, the cashier let loose with a hearty guffaw and stepped up her efforts. "Looks like it's curtains for you!" she told a woman buying a curtain rod. To a woman buying three paring knives she said, "Gonna cut up, huh?" Then it was my turn. I put my pancake turner on the counter and braced myself.

"Ready to flip out?"

"Any minute now."

I said it in the spirit of "Fine, thanks," a conventional rejoinder to round off the exchange and ease my escape, but the cashier heard it as a cue. Suddenly a great wheezing rumble rose up out of her and exploded in a yelp of mirth that was almost feral. Having a perfunctory comment received as devastating wit is embarrassing. I shifted feet and tried to strike a nonchalant pose while other customers peered around the gum stand to get a better look at us; one of them whispered, "What happened?"

This question is best answered in one of those upbeat human-interest segments about ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things. I imagined the cashier being interviewed while walking through a field with Charles Kuralt, explaining why she wants to turn the housewares department into a comedy barn. "Yeah, healing power," she agrees, as he prompts her gently. Then, as both pick weeds and chew on them to look sincere, she flashes her hectic grin and says, "I just want to show that everybody has a sense of humor."

It's not a bad idea in a time of mounting social tension and incipient civil insurrection. Like most Americans, the cashier's definition of a sense of humor is based on our national ideal of the chortling toastmaster "putting people at ease." This is how she sees herself.

She was so busy playing toreador with the red shirt that she neglected to fold it, so busy sharpening her one-liners that she dumped the knives blades-first into a plastic bag they could slice through, but good service is not what our jesters are striving for. Their object is a universal feeling of safety and security — beginning with their own — which they try to achieve by neutralizing everyone who crosses their path.

Americans are behaving like people subconsciously obeying the dictum, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," but since the first two will kill you, we are pouring all of our inchoate fears into being merry.

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