Uses and abuses of humor

Can we also agree that free speech is essential to any civilized society — even if, inevitably, much of that speech is offensive, hateful, stupid, or downright wrong? If fools and knaves weren’t free to express themselves, how could we know that they’re fools and knaves? And how would we have the opportunity to set them straight? Right?

Finally, can we agree that one effective response to any attempt to silence free speech — like this month’s massacre of editors and cartoonists at the satirical Paris weekly Charlie Hebdo — is to go right on expressing yourself, and to purchase copies of the offending publication to demonstrate nonviolently that you won’t be intimidated. This is what some three million Europeans did last week for Charlie Hebdo, a paper that normally sells only about 60,000 copies.

All that said, let me ask: What is funny or inspiring about cartoons that mock Islam, or any religion?

Russian soldiers, Swiss watches

This is no mere rhetorical question. There happens to be a good answer, to wit:

Humor works when it's used to comfort the afflicted or to afflict the comfortable. Erasmus in the 16th century and Voltaire in the 18th courageously and brilliantly lampooned the divine right of popes and kings at a time when religion constituted a tyrannical force in Europe. (In Candide, Voltaire pictured rival armies singing Te Deums in their respective camps before a battle.)

Oppressed peoples maintain their spirits by mocking their oppressors. During the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, for example, this joke circulated in Prague:

Czech civilian: “Help! A Swiss soldier just stole my Russian watch!”

Russian soldier: “Don’t you mean a Russian soldier just stole your Swiss watch?”

Czech civilian: “You said it, not I.”

Eventually, of course, Soviet guns and tanks proved no match for the simple truth underlying such quips.

All whites look alike?

Historically, humor has been the weapon of choice for minorities who lack guns or power — blacks, say, or Jews or women or homosexuals. There’s nothing quite as effective as ridicule for puncturing the smugness and pomposity of the ruling classes. But when it’s used by the rich and powerful to ridicule the poor and helpless — say, the “Polack” jokes of a generation ago, or Rush Limbaugh mocking the poor — it comes across as bullying, which is not at all funny.

During a Philadelphia City Council hearing in 1996, then-Council President John Street mistook one high-ranking School District official for another. When the mistake was pointed out to him, he joked into the microphone, “Whatever. He’s a white guy. They all look alike.” Here was a witty retort to the then-popular white quip that all black people look alike, in which case it was very funny. But Street’s jibe could have been perceived as a powerful black official taunting relatively powerless whites, in which case Street’s wisecrack was mean and nasty.

Since everyone in the world — aside from myself and maybe six other people — feels threatened, it’s no easy task to decide whose humor is funny and whose is nasty at any given time. Jokes about popes, priests, nuns, and confessions (e.g., “What’s a priest’s desire? Nun.”) largely subsided once Catholics themselves (and even nuns) started ignoring the Vatican’s dictates and began thinking for themselves. After all, what’s the point of making jokes about an institution that no longer throws its weight around?

Priests and divorcees

Jokes about white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (e.g., “Why did God make WASPs? Answer: Somebody has to pay retail.”) used to bring comfort to Catholics and Jews, but puncturing the smug certainties of WASPs has lost its point now that they’ve surrendered power nearly everywhere you turn — academia, Wall Street, Congress, the Supreme Court, the White House, you name it.

The French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, on the other hand, brings comfort to alienated Arabs with his jibes at Israelis and Jews, and Jon Stewart brings comfort to liberals who feel persecuted by Fox News.

Pornographers in 18th-century France effectively undermined the moral authority of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and their court by portraying them with their pants off. The editors of Charlie Hebdo are trying to play much the same role toward organized religion in 21st-century France.

Among Charlie Hebdo’s dozens of mostly heavy-handed cartoons — the paper is to a large extent a comic book — its current post-massacre edition contains a drawing in which the pope, an imam, and a rabbi huddle over a globe while allocating their respective spheres of influence (“I’ll take the West — you take the East”). In another, a priest dispenses communion wafers to bosomy divorcees whose tongues hang out lasciviously. Had such sophomoric cartoons been published in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia (or even Israel), their brashness might merit cheers or even laughter. But how much wit or courage does it take to mock Muhammad, the pope, or the rabbinate in a land like France, whose greatest cathedrals have lately been converted to tourist attractions and community centers?

Jihadists as security guards

The Kouachi brothers, who murdered 12 editors and cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, paid the paper a tremendous compliment by taking it far more seriously than it deserved. But on second thought, maybe the killers were onto something. The ultimate test of a free society isn’t polished performers like Stephen Colbert or David Letterman who command audiences of millions. It’s the scruffy, ink-stained wretches who persist in asserting their right to express themselves, however inarticulately, no matter who’s trying to silence them. (I did get a kick out of a Charlie Hebdo cartoon imagining gun-toting former jihadists applying for jobs as security guards at a supermarket.)

This month nearly 4 million people — 1.6 million in Paris alone — took to the streets in France to defend Charlie Hebdo’s right to mock Islam, even as many European countries deny free expression to Holocaust deniers, even as France passes a new law providing prison sentences of up to seven years for anyone who speaks sympathetically about terrorists. Among those rounded up this month was a drunk driver who hit another car and, when detained by police, praised the Charlie Hebdo killers; for those inebriated comments, he was sentenced to four years in prison. Now, there’s a situation worth lampooning. By Charlie Hebdo, maybe?