There’s a spoken rule in comedy that you should only “punch down.” Make jokes about the powerful all you want but spare the struggling folks the added burden of puns. This is a deep misunderstanding of what a joke is. A joke is not an attack. A joke is a surprising observation. It’s a lens for looking at everything. Sometimes that thing can be a person. When my funniest friend mocked me to the point where I couldn’t breathe, I felt loved. He saw something true about me that I hadn’t seen myself. Most importantly, I liked that he was talking about me. This is the thing he was making fun of. Sure, there are unfunny mean-boss jokes that are simply insults wrapped in sarcasm. These are the ones that get laughs out of fear. You can tell these jokes are not funny because the insulter exclaims “I’m only kidding” and “Can’t you take a joke?” These are the same guys who use the word “take” during sex. That’s punching. And it’s a problem, whether it’s done up or down. Making jokes about the way Donald Trump looks is mean. It makes us all more lookist, more shallow, more wasting time thinking about Donald Trump. I get it, he’s orange. That’s not the problem with him. Ernie is orange too, but every time he makes a mess in his bubble bath Bert doesn’t yell, “Mop it up, you orange piece of shit!” And that’s not just because Bert is a power bottom. Sparing select groups of people from jokes is condescension. It’s believing that they’re not strong enough to enjoy the full range of human experience. This is a liberal point of view and, therefore, the view of everyone in comedy. Not long ago, liberals joked about everything. They made a sitcom about triage doctors on the front of the Korean War. They disrupted the New York Stock Exchange by throwing dollars onto its floor. They couldn’t stop pretending to have heart attacks.  Now liberals are holding back. Because they’ve embraced a simple-minded oppressed/oppressor philosophy, where every member of a group is bucketed permanently in one of those sides of the power dynamic, in every situation. In this battle, humor can be a tool for the oppressed, like an even nerdier version of David and Goliath than in that Christian Claymation show. This is the same idiocy that makes people say that certain topics are off limits for comedy. Pedophilia, the Holocaust, airline food. One of the funniest skits I ever read was about a guy who invites friends over and throws a Rape Mystery Party, cluelessly defending it with the logic that no one gets upset about Murder Mystery Parties. This isn’t a frat boy mocking rape victims. It’s an observation about our casual fascination with murder. Americans are so relaxed about murder we call it “foul play,” which equates killing people with stepping on the line when you serve. There are a lot of reasons people haven’t made a lot of jokes about Kamala Harris. The main one is that no one cares about Kamala Harris. But she’s also the first Black woman to be vice-president, which feels delicate enough that I capitalized that “B.” Even though she’s the vice president of the United States of America, the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy dictates that she’s in an unpunchable group so she shouldn’t be joked about. I think that’s disempowering her almost as much as Joe Biden is. So punch down. Punch left, punch right, and most of all, punch yourself. Punch babies, who will never remember it. Punch very old people by silently moving your lips and insisting that you’re talking. Because if we don’t treat each other like full human beings, we’ll never respect each other. Worse yet, Republicans might become the funny ones. Thank you for paying to read my column. Wait: This is for the people who didn’t pay? Then I owe you nothing. You are the ones contributing to the end of my career. If you want to pay an exorbitant amount of money to get one extra post a month – which often won’t even be that good – upgrade to a paid subscription here:
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Thursday, March 28, 2024
Punch Down
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