Don't Stop the Laughter
by Wendel Potter
Sept. 5, 2005
At what point exactly are we supposed to lose our sense of humor? Is there a time to throw up our hands in despair and declare laughter to be null and void?
And more importantly, who decides?
The nightmare spawned by Hurricane Katrina last week was no less a tragedy than 9/11. In the end, the death toll might even prove to be miserably higher.
Only the circumstances are different. The 9/11 devastation was planned secretly and orchestrated methodically by mad men.
Ironically, no man designed and developed Katrina. She was a force of nature.
But Katrina was no surprise. The country knew she was coming.
This country, being what it is, pulls together at a time like this and good people do good things for those who have been victimized. That's the force of our nature.
And then, life goes on. With the price of gasoline gouging us in the wallet, it goes on at a much higher rate per gallon, but it does go on.
Without a sense of humor, it may come to a dead halt.
Sheila Moss, a writer in Tennessee with a much fancier Website than mine, and who is billed as the funniest columnist on the Net, began her column yesterday, "I couldn't write humor this week." She concluded with, "I will write humor when I am not thinking about babies dying from dehydration, old people left to rot in the streets, and when there is food, water and shelter for the surging masses of humanity with the standards of common decency that we have all come to see as right."
After setting the bar that high, Sheila Moss may never write humor again. This is, after all, life that we're living.
For nearly ten years, I wrote a weekly column here in central Nebraska for a daily newspaper, The Grand Island Independent. My job was to be funny.
My idea of funny didn't always happen to be the publisher's idea of funny. It was those two distinct ideas of what's funny that butted heads a few months ago and ended up with me being dismissed and landing here on this Website where I have the plum assignment of writing whatever I want. And it doesn't pay much less, either.
At the newspaper, I was known as a Humor Columnist. But during my tenure, I did write a few serious pieces.
It wasn't that things weren't funny on those particular weeks. I just consider myself to be much more than a comedian at the computer keyboard. I'm a writer. Sometimes, I'm just inclined to write seriously about serious topics.
But to decide that things are so serious that it will be a long time coming before I write anything in a humorous vein again would be a bit drastic. That just wouldn't be in my nature.
There's nothing funny about flying planes into office buildings or hungry, thirsty homeless people being raped and robbed at gunpoint in a city that's flooded with filthy water, disease, nauseating stink, and floating corpses.
But that's on the grand scale. That's on the news. We can't help but be exposed to it.
Yet, every day of every year there is tragedy in this country that touches lives. Whether it be a terminal illness, a fatal single-car smash-up, a wanton act of murder, a homeless family in a cardboard box on a beach, an abused child, a battered wife, a father of six standing hopelessly on the unemployment line, a scared pregnant teen, or just a sad school boy who cries himself to sleep because he didn't get picked for the team...it makes no difference...there is grief all around us.
Somebody's always getting hurt. There are always tears and broken hearts and there always will be. It's just that most of it doesn't make it to CNN. That doesn't make it hurt any less for those involved.
So should we stop being funny?
Phyllis Diller once said that Bob Hope reprimanded her during her first trip with him to Viet Nam. They were visiting a hospital and the horrors of war were laid bare in those hospital beds. Phyllis' emotions got the best of her. Hope took the comedienne aside and told her, "You don't cry in front of these boys. That's not why we're here."
They were there to make people laugh. That was their job. Even with war and death and heartbreak all around them.
A lot of people in this country will suffer a tragedy in the next few days. Their circumstances will have nothing to do with terrorists or hurricanes.
Most of us will never hear their stories. Cable news won't give them the time of day. We'll never even know they existed.
That's the way it's always been. But did we stop finding humor in life because a rancher in Montana had an aneurysm?
For the families involved, the pain was no less real in Butte than it is today in Biloxi. We just didn't hear about it.
We all have our jobs. Everyone's job is to care. You can do that in your own way, whether it's a murmured prayer, a donation, or just feeling a pang in your heart for fellow men, women, and children who suffer.
And if you're a humorist or a comedian, you have a job to do. Be funny.
Don't cry in front of the people. That's not why you're here.
**Copyright 2005 Wendel Potter
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