Why Liberals Have No Sense of Humor

Toward Tradition weekly e-mail | October 2002 | Rabbi Daniel Lapin

[Garbo]

How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: That's not funny

[Garbo]

Laughter is one of the distinctions that humans enjoy over animals. We laugh at things that violate our sense of how things ought to be. The sexual innuendo that provokes howls of laughter among school boys and titters among stockbrokers elicits yawns of indifference from hardened prison inmates. The joke assaults notions of human refinement. To the depraved, it is not a joke, it is reality.

The only reason that we laugh at cartoons of talking animals is because of our underlying conviction that only humans were given the gift of speech. A joke can only be funny in the context of a fixed framework which it contradicts.

One of the hallmarks of secular liberalism is that there is absolutely no fixed framework at all. In the absence of any inviolable absolutes, there are no unthinkable acts to perform; there are few rules to violate. Liberal doctrine banishes humor precisely because it also banishes the underlying standards upon which humor depends. If nothing is absolutely good and nothing is unthinkably bad, nothing can be funny.

This helps explain the laughter and joyfulness that permeate the family life of religious Americans who typically favor discipline and structure. Conversely, it also sheds light on the grim seriousness with which the secular liberal seems to go about the business of life. (One recalls the famous joke that so faithfully reflects the humorlessness of feminism: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: That's not funny).

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, President Toward Tradition

[RonF]

Depends on what or who they're screwing it into.

[RonF]

Actually, the rules of humor are simple.

Comedy is something bad that happens to you.

Tragedy is something bad that happens to me.

[Norman Conquest]

Steve Gerber said: Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and the world laughs at you.

His other greatest line: Life is a Cabaret. Long, dull and full of Nazis.

[ladysusan]

How many recipients of social services does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

None, the social workers will do it for them.

[goodieD]

Actually liberals find many things funny... Anything bad that happens to the Right for instance. If a homosexual dies, it's a national tragedy, if a straight conservative dies, it probably serves him right, in their eyes.

[HEY4QDEMS]

Q: How many Liberals does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: Apparently they haven't figured that out yet as they are still IN THE DARK.

[snopercod]

The title is wrong. Liberals DO have a sense of humor.

They laugh when you lose money in the stock market, lose your job, fail at business, fail at life. It's the only thing that gives them joy - seeing others suffer.

[finnman69]

"I have no sense of humor at all"

[Alex Murphy]

Comedy is something bad that happens to you.
Tragedy is something bad that happens to me.

As Mel Brooks (as the 2,000-year-old-man) once said,
Tragedy is me cutting my little finger.
Comedy is you getting eaten by a lion.

[MacDorcha]

how many licks does it take to get to the center of a liberal? cant be to many, they all seem about as deep as a tea spoon.

[MacDorcha]

in a room full of conservatives, who changes the lightbulb? the first person to find out the lights out.

in a room full of liberals, who changes the lightbulb? no one, they wait until the government does it for them.

[Still Thinking]

Why Liberals Have No Sense of Humor

They'd have to have a brain to have a sense of humor.