...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

All joking aside: Rex Murphy surveys the sorry state of jesting both here and in our neighbour to the South. He concludes that we’re far worse off than they are since, when someone in the U.S. makes a joke that falls flat—say, like, when the New Yorker prints an “unfunny” cover—no one’s going to be forced to account for the faux pas to some humour-challenged commissar(s):

...The fracas over the New Yorker cartoon is yet another illustration of how defenceless Americans are in the face of outrages perpetrated by that league of hit men we know as editorial cartoonists. Poor Obama. All he can do is whine. If the U.S. had our system, he'd be filing complaints in five or six states alleging that he was held up “to hatred and contempt” and the New Yorker cartoonist would be out in Times Square selling his acid-pointed pencils to start a legal fund.

Speaking of which, the comedian in the heckling lesbian case is holding a fundraiser in Toronto tonight. He and his confreres in the chuckle industry want to raise a few bucks to bear the cost of officious scrutiny of joke night in B.C. They should be careful. Perhaps they could mail in the jokes to Barbara Hall, the Ontario human-rights czar, and get a pre-emptive ruling on their “hate-content.” There's no one quicker with an obiter dicta, as Maclean's has already learned.

Might save a lot of time and a few bills down the way.

They should also avoid any jokes involving sex, religion, politics or global warming. Outside those boundaries, I think they're safe. Chicken crossing the road jokes are safe. Assuming, of course, the fowl pedestrian is free-range and it doesn't meet a vegetarian halfway over. Absent those elements and I fear cries of chickenphobia will rear their squawking heads.

The really funny joke in all of this, however, is not going to come of out the mouth of any comedian. It is the dreary fact that comedians are the latest targets of Canada's human-rights commissions. Did you ever in your wildest dreams see heckling as the subject of a human-rights inquiry?

The mirthless sitting in adjudication over the mirth-makers, telling Canadians what they're allowed to laugh at.

My letter:

Back when there was still a U.S.S.R., Milan Kundera penned a novel—The Joke—about a university student who runs afoul of authorities in Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia when a joke he cracks goes horribly awry. The student, who wants to impress a nubile but overly earnest classmate, sends her a postcard poking fun at Karl Marx’s line about religion being the opiate of the people, only he substitutes the word “optimism” for “religion”, a dig at the enforced enthusiasm Communism imposes on society. The postcard is apprehended by authorities, who take their Utopian dogma very seriously indeed, and who know that humour and mockery are the most subversive forms of free speech. After enduring the kind of hilariously surreal grilling totalitarian courts are famous for, the protagonist is duly expelled and shunned.

Who knew that, forty years after Mr. Kundera wrote the book, Communism would be defunct, the Czechs would be free, and we here in Canada would find ourselves at the mercy of humourless apparatchiks who are determined to engineer a “perfect,” laughter-free society?

Looks like the joke’s on us.

Posted by: scaramouche at 12:07 | link | comments

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