Why we are funny - conservatives

STOP ME if you've heard this one. A decade ago the urban cabaret proprietor realized he could provide cheap, attractive entertainment-no sets, no music, small cast-just by booking three or four stand-up comedians. And so was born that newest and most seductive leftist Agitprop outlet: the comedy club. About young comedians this much can be said with assurance: They're bright, they'll work for horse dandruff, and a funny thing happened on their way to the club-they all found liberalism. For each Chappaquiddick joke you'll hear, oh, five dozen about Republican malfeasance. That which has been made fun of can more easily be destroyed. Laughter-even laughter drawn ftom a reluctant audience-implies assent. Given enough time it can demoralize. No one likes to be associated with an absurdity.

I hit the New York club circuit last month. There is no more vivid index of a public figure's popular image than his status as useful laughingstock. Mid 1989 the joke meter stood so:

Ronald Reagan: doddery and inept, of course, but not malicious. ("Listen, he got shot and didn't even know it.")

George Bush: still tough to zero in on. ("For an imitation of Bush you need John Wayne's speech pattern and Liberace's voice.")

Barbara Bush: has disarmed everyone. ("She's so self-deprecating you can't make fun of her. I want to say, 'Hey, you're not that bad.'")

Dan Quayle: invaluable as a flakcatcher for Bush. ("Quayle: in emergencies he can be used as a flotation device.")

Mike Dukakis: thrown to the barracuda pack. ("Maybe Fred the Furrier will buy his eyebrows.")

In this era topical comedy is also a telling indicator of left-wing strategies to come. After all, both comedian and campaign manager proceed alike: they manipulate uncomplex premises that are open to elegant reversal or apt exaggeration. The comic, in effect, is floating a hypothetical leftist platform for laugh approval. And by that gauge our environment ranks first. ("Medical waste: I saw a dead doctor on the beach. And wait till that psychiatric waste comes in-couches all over.") The deficit is second. ("We could save money by not prin ti ng wanted posters-just put the crooks' faces on stamps.") Then pro-life people. ("Life is sacred, they say-so we have to blow you up.") Homelessness, interestingly enough, doesn't arouse the expected compassion. Or wit. ("No wonder we've got homelessness. It says on the Statue of Liberty, 'Send us the wretched refuse.' Take that damn sign down.")

The modern stand-up comedians liberalism shouldn't astonish anyone. He is himself a sentimental leftist conceit: the Little Prose, innocent and common-sensical, for whom manholes have been left open everywhere by some arrogant multinational corporation. He is meant to represent us at our best, powerless yet shrewd, doing a long double-take when confronted with human hypocrisy. This has been, more or less, the standard model since Aristophanes put Dikaiopolis in his Acharnians. And it is particularly American-laconic Yankee humor, Chaplin, Twain on Fenimore Cooper, H. L. Mencken, whatever. Hypocrisy and destructive behavior are seen as being not so much evil as stupid and overcomplicated. Unfortunately, despite his suffering and wisdom, Little Prole can never afford to attain happiness-because happiness lacks both conflict and comic tension. A perfect court will have no jester in it.

The reality, however, is quite something else again. Complication, for one, has become an unavoidable fact of modern existence. The truth might make you free-but it is more likely to turn you into a specialist. The comedian, who generalizes by trade, will more often distort truth than uncover it. Second, the comic tends to be bitter and disillusioned, not at all that cheerful naif. He is cynical, in particular, about family life. Sure, father and mother controlled a powerful small establishment and are, therefore, liable to satire-but that satire is often incredibly vicious. It has attained brazen perfection with Eddie Murphy's foul take-off on his alcoholic father. Even in childhood the comic felt he knew isolation and prejudice: his humor is an outsider's response to some unwelcoming environment,

But why are we-we conservativesso funny? It isn't hard to understand why we've been the butt of wit for so long: conservatives are perceived as rich, powerful, an establishment that persecutes Little Prole: Elmer Fudd, in fact, stalking the liberal, compassionate wabbit. Moreover, conservatives can take it-unlike, say, black women or paraplegic men, humor at whose expense is thought to be uncivil. But why are the most amusing jokes about us? George Bernard Shaw, I believe, once called Coriolanus a comedybecause characters in that play never change. Miser, fool, hypochondriac: the stock comic figure is one that can be defined by a single trait. Those very qualities that ennoble conservatism-religious faith, respect for tradition, consistent behavior-make us vulnerable to burlesque as well. In the liberal formulation, we do no "grow."