Americans react to wit as Dracula to the Cross. Wit is undemocratic. Its standard modifiers, rapier and stiletto, were weapons of Renaissance aristocrats. The last witty civilizations, eighteenth-century France and England, were also the last aristocratic civilizations. After them came the deluge of democracy and the rise of the middle class. Both found their natural homes in America, where the double entendres and bons mots of biting wit fell victim to the desire for respectability and the restraint demanded of the socially mobile. Pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is a good way to choke; living in dread of saying the wrong thing, Americans rejected wit and embraced that favorite of the self-made man, the tall tale.
Next came the melting pot. Diversity may be good for the body politic but it spells disaster for the funny bone. Wit and its handmaidens, satire and parody, require a strong point of view, a common ground, and a ruthless audience—conditions that conflict with the miasmic national squish we call “consensus.”
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