There is a lot of talk about democracy going the way of the dodo bird, which went extinct in less than 100 years. Our country has been around for almost 250 years, and maybe we are on the fast track to dump democracy. But what people don’t understand is that our collective sense of humor is marching off hand-in-hand with democracy. There is something democratic about a joke, particularly one told in front of an audience to entertain. It is my belief that In order to get a joke you must be able to take a joke. It is called a sense of humor.

Freedom to Laugh–or not to

We toss around the term “protected speech.” But what the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence don’t specifically mention or protect, is the freedom to laugh–or not to. It probably falls somewhere under under the Implied Powers of Congress buried in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: Congress has the right: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Somehow this implied power wormed its way over to quasi government agencies like the FCC. The FCC must be using an antiquated laugh meter from the 1930s to determine what is funny. It would not surprise me if we see the return of the laff box to cue us when to laugh.

Charles Douglass, a CBS engineer, developed the laff box, and according to the BBC, “When Douglass first ‘invented’ the laugh track in 1950, it was intended to help the audience watch, understand and feel comfortable with a relatively new medium. TV comedies adopted canned laughter to ease their viewers into a new kind of entertainment, even for shows that were filmed without live audiences.

British actor David Niven said, “The laugh track is the single greatest affront to public intelligence I know.” Humor is about intelligence–getting the joke sometimes takes a little knowledge of the joke.

I can only imagine what it was like to laugh in the 1600s during the Puritan rule in New England. I don’t suspect a community that would pillar its fellow citizens for social faux paus would want to induce laughter. Back then saying the wrong thing, for a laugh or not, could affect your standing in the community. For Instance, the New England Historical Society mentioned the poor fool who crossed the religious leaders of the day. It wrote, “the general court tried a man in Hartford for ‘contemptuous carriages’ against the church and minister. He had to stand upon a four-foot high block or stool on Lecture Day with a paper fixed on his breast with the words, ‘AN OPEN AND OBSTINATE CONTEMNNER OF GOD’S HOLY ORDINANCES.’ The purpose of his punishment: so others would ‘fear and be ashamed of breakinge out in like wickednesse.’” By controlling the comedian we are essentially controlling what we can laugh at.

Because of our diversity we have moved away from a Puritanical outlook on life. There was no insult comedy back then. The Puritans didn’t see anything funny about other (English) religions i.e. Quakers and surely not Catholics, encroaching on their holy ground let alone the town’s fool telling jokes. A night out back then was finding a warm pew and listening to Jonathan Edwards preaching that we are all “Sinners in the hands of angry God.” I am not sure if “The wicked deserve to be cast into Hell” or that “Divine justice does not prevent God from destroying the wicked at any moment.” It is my observation that the latter does not happen too often. In any case, there are not a whole lot of laughs there.

As a country we have learned to take a joke. In 1820 America there were no Polish or Italian jokes. Maybe the first Irish jokes showed up around the 1840s. There may not have even been “Knock Knock” jokes back then. As a nation in a depression we had the slapstick of The Three Stooges. By 1966 there was a book that dealt specifically with racial insults and slurs: Race Riots an Anthology of Ethnic Insults. (You can buy the book on EBAY for about $50.) This sort of observational insult humor is frowned upon today. No governmental organization banned the telling of ethnic jokes. It probably had more to do with the fact that people did not want to laugh at such jokes publicly.

It is all about the Idea

John Stuart Mill came up with this marketplace of ideas in his 1859 book On Liberty. The Middle Tennessee State University Speech Center writes: The importance of On Liberty resides in a series of powerful arguments defending the free flow of ideas in a marketplace of ideas, and in the belief that individuals can best make their own lifestyle choices, free from government intervention. On Liberty was thus an inspiration for future First Amendment theory.

We don’t normally look at “funny” as part of the marketplace of ideas but it is. Just look at any insurance company ad on TV. Who didn’t laugh seeing Doug chasing Emu out onto the football field and then getting pancake-tackled by a security guard. According to the Speech Center, “The marketplace of ideas refers to the belief that the test of the truth or acceptance of ideas depends on their competition with one another and not on the opinion of a censor, whether one provided by the government or by some other authority.”

What makes a joke work in the marketplace is the incongruous linkage created between misplaced elements or characters. Take insurance advertisement and their humorous sell job. Emu Limu and Doug are out there competing with Mayhem, Cavemen, geckos, ducks and celebrities for a laugh. There has to be some sort of “truth or acceptance” on the viewing audience despite what people believe about insurance companies. Insurance companies know they need to make us laugh; because in reality, their business is not really about laughing. I, for one, would find it quite funny if someone would squash the gecko. It would be hilarious to see how the insurance company would pay up.

Comic License

Here is where humor can get dicey, particularly for the comedian. The defining part of any joke is the laugh it gets. A comedian must have a good idea of the audience the joke is aimed at. As a member of the audience your individual sense of humor, and all the social and moral factors that form your sense of humor will decide how hard you laugh or what you think is funny. It is difficult to determine what an audience will laugh at on any given night. That in and of itself makes it almost impossible to regulate or license humor. So, humor, like beauty is in the eye and the ear of the beholder. It is an opinion–unsupported judgment.

According to Mill even a point of view needs a guardian. He writes, “Protection is also needed against the tyranny of prevailing opinion, which seeks to suppress dissent and enforce conformity.” The central concern of On Liberty is to find a way to draw the line between “individual independence and social control.” Censorship is not an option.

Mill argues “against censorship and in favor of the free flow of ideas. Asserting that “no one alone knows the truth, or that no one idea alone embodies either the truth or its antithesis.” Or, in this case what is funny or not funny. A crucial component of Mill’s belief is “that the free competition of ideas is the best way to separate falsehoods from fact.” (Free Speech Center Middle Tennessee State University) Again, what is funny and what is not.

Funny Money

But let us take laughter out of the realm of Constitutional theory and debate. Let us go back to 1776 and Adam Smith’s book Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; or better known simply as the Wealth of Nations. Many of Smith’s beliefs can trickle down to any form of economic endeavor.

In Smith’s book he outlines four key economic theories that determines a country’s wealth. One concept is the free market–the invisible hand that the economy uses to regulate itself–“that individuals pursuing their own self-interest would result in the best outcomes for society as a whole.” In the free market it is all about what moves off the shelves. Comedy is no different. if the joke does not get a laugh it is not in the best interest of the comedian to repeat something that hit the floor like an anvil. The comedian not only has to be funny, he or she has to be in charge of their own marketing. If it ain’t funny there will be one more starving comedian hanging on to his day job. It is not up to the government to determine if a joke “is too soon.”; or to determine what sells as humor. That is up to the audience–the market for humor.

A story with a humorous climax

And that is he real problem today. We just don’t know how to take a joke anymore. America in some way has lost its sense of humor, and hence our democracy. Political realities of the day have sapped our ability to take a joke. We are losing our ability to recognize a joke. Granted, not everything is funny to everyone. And yes some people will not get the joke. Others will get ticked off at the joke. I think our democracy depends on our ability to laugh. It is when we take things too seriously no laff box will get us on track.

As Mel Helitzer with Mark Shatz write in their book: Writing Secrets “Humor has played an important part in our lives for thousands of years, but scientist and philosophers are still working to understand what laughter means, why we tell jokes and why we do or don’t appreciate others humor.” They write “humor is subjective. And in today’s world of diverse opinions humor is more subjective than ever.”

With today’s incongruities people are more mesmerized in dealing with incompatible ideas, innuendos, facts, near facts, alternate facts and ever-changing norms and awareness, getting to a punchline of a joke goes beyond a priest, a minister and a rabbi walked into a bar…