by Malcolm Lawrence
Editor-in-Chief
Babel: The multilingual, multicultural
online journal and community of arts and ideas.
I am not usually a funny writer. Bitter and cranky, yes; funny, sometimes.
But I do like to read funny, smart bloggers, if for no other reason than it
relieves the feelings of depression one experiences being a passenger on the
USS America with a crew of drunks and fools steering us at the rocks, at
full speed. But during my recent researches into the squalid waterfront
bars and seaman’s whorehouses known as the right side of the blog world, the
question hit me: Why is it there are so few funny conservative bloggers?
On the left side, there are probably a half-dozen top bloggers who are
consistently funny and provide excellent commentary and criticism. In no
particular order, and just off the top of my head, we have Fafblog!, The
Rude Pundit, World O’ Crap, Alicublog, Fanatical Apathy, Sadly, No!, Tbogg,
The Poor Man, and James Wolcott. All consistently funny - often brilliantly
so - without devolving completely into the silly. (Occasional diversions
into the silly are fine.)
In addition, many top bloggers who don’t write humorously all the time often
display brilliant flashes of it - just for example, the farmer at Corrente
with The Devil is Dead. Me and Pete Killed the Devil, Belle Waring’s If
Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride … A Pony!, and Michael Berube
starring in Blogging From The Republican National Convention.
I am sure there are others that I am missing, but that’s the point. It’s a
pretty substantial bunch.
On the right, though, there is a noticeable absence. There are IMAO,
Scrappleface and, I suppose, Lileks. Outside of them, it’s all
self-righteousness and persecution complex, all the time. And outside of
the three listed above, when a conservative blogger does employ humor, I
find that usually it’s in retelling a joke they read somewhere else.
Is there a genetic link between humor and political outlook? Is there just
some birth defect that prevents right-wingers from being funny? In my
apology yesterday, I sarcastically asserted there was such a connection, but
now I think I may have been right at that. Perhaps people who are born with
a natural disposition to see the humor in life, and to be able to laugh at
themselves, may develop a sense of empathy and compassion that leads them to
liberalism. The key to successful humor, after all, is to be able to see
things from other people’s perspectives - a liberal trait that conservatives
deride variously as “relativism” or “objectively pro-terrorist”. So
conservatives may have a genetic makeup that makes them less able to
appreciate what’s funny, and consequently take themselves very seriously and
see the world as a dour, threatening place, with all these other people
having a good time and laughing - sometimes at them. This explains a lot, I
think, and deserves further research.
More
Oh, and some of the comments are too funny, like:
My young daughters, 6 and 7, took my phone, hid in their room, and called my
ex to complain that I had turned into a zombie. They couldn’t keep serious,
and in the end turned into a fit of giggles. The ex asked the 7 year old
what daddy thought of that, and the 7 year old said daddy didn’t mind, or so
I have been informed. So the ex played the tape of the phone call complete
with zombies and giggles and arrows on the back explaining each one to the
court psych and the ex complained that I had rotten values and was a danger
to the kids.
So I told the court psych that while I once had a problem with my zombieism,
that was only as an adolescent, so if the kids were complaining I was a
zombie, they were probably playing a joke on me. But that there was a
serious matter here we needed to discuss. What was the best way for the kids
to understand their mom has no sense of humor? I am letting them learn it on
their own, but maybe the psych should warn them for us all.
Posted by: Moses Wine | August 9, 2005 12:20 PM
I read about a German complaining in the ’60s that they didn’t have any good
comedians, like the US did . . . because they killed them all.
Posted by: md | August 9, 2005 12:30 PM
Malcolm Lawrence
Editor-in-Chief
Babel: The multilingual, multicultural
online journal and community of arts and ideas.
Babel says: “Worrying can help you prepare.”
