Humor and Politics
Man is a "political animal" Aristotle tells us, (and woman as well, we
should add, though Aristotle doesn't seem to have thought so). Politics is
generally held to involve the exercise of power, the operations of government
and the state, though, of course, elites outside of the government often have a
great deal of influence, if they don't actually hold political power. And
politics (along with sex, and often together with sex) is one of the subjects
most often joked about, most often made the subject of humor. We find
political humor in all media and genres: cartoons, comic strips, jokes, graffiti,
plays, stories, novels, and films.
Why Political Humor is Popular
Alan Dundes has suggested that in America, where there is political
freedom, you find a tendency to joke about sex (in America we do this for a
variety of reasons, such as the influence of the Puritans on our culture and the
sense of guilt they generated about sex) but where you have authoritarian
political regimes, such as the ones that used to exist in Eastern Europe, it is
politics that becomes the dominant subject for humor. The theory is, you
create humor to deal with matters that are troubling you; we in the United
States are troubled by sex, while the people in Eastern Europe (until the fall
of Communism, that is) were troubled by harsh and oppressive political
regimes. People fight repression--sexual and political--with humor, though
humor can also be used to control people, I should add.
M.M. Bakhtin has argued, in The Dialogic Imagination (University
of Texas Press, 1981) that humor is a counterforce to power. He writes:
(1981, 23)
It is precisely laughter that destroys the epic, and in general destroys any
hierarchical (distancing and valorized) distance. As a distanced image a
subject cannot be comical; to be made comical, it must be brought close.
Everything that makes us laugh is close at hand, all comical creativity works
in a zone of maximal proximity.
It is humor that enables us to see politicians for what they are--human beings,
with the same problems we all face, the same strange fixations, the same
desires. Humor strips away illusion and awe, brings politicians close and
prevents magnification by spectacle. It familiarizes political figures and, in
doing so, enables people to judge them more realistically. That is why
dictators, when they take power, kill the comedians.
In the United States, our egalitarian value system probably is at the
heart of our political comedy; we dislike and generally do not accept
authority as valid. But our humorists have been helped a great deal by some
of the people who occupy or have occupied positions of political prominence.
Consider former president Gerald Ford, who always seemed to be bumping
his head on airplanes and about whom it was said, "he can't chew gum and
walk at the same time." Ford is famous for saying "If Lincoln were alive
today, he'd be turning over in his grave."
His place, as a fool or klutz figure, has been taken by Vice-President
Dan Quayle, who has a genius for making errors (as in his famous fiasco at a
spelling bee, where he spelled potato incorrectly) and stupid statements and
has been turned by our comedians into a kind of national object of ridicule.
There is, in fact, a book of Quayle jokes and even a journal devoted to his
exploits (and to ridiculing him) the Quayle Quarterly.
Some typical Quayle jokes are:
Quayle thinks Roe versus Wade are two ways of crossing the Potomac
River in Washington.
Question: What were the two worst years Dan Quayle had?
Answer: The two years he spent in the fourth grade.
There are also a lot of generic insult jokes about his alleged stupidity:
Quayle doesn't have enough buckwheat in his pancakes.
Quayle's elevator doesn't go to the top floor.
Quayle's a few logs shy of a cord.
Quayle doesn't have enough mercury in his thermometer.
All of these jokes deal with deficiencies and allude to Quayle's supposed lack
of intelligence. Most of these are not technically jokes--that is stories with
punch lines--but they are considered humorous remarks, funny insults and
classified as "non-serious" and thus, in the popular mind, at least, as jokes. I
will be using the term "joke" in the broadest sense of the term here--as
something humorous.
Jokes About Eastern European and Russian Governments
In Cracking Jokes, Alan Dundes points out that folklore is a very
useful means of getting at what people really believe about a political regime.
He writes:
There is one source of information about popular attitudes toward politics in
Iron Curtain countries, which may be considered more or less
unimpeachable: folklore. Folklore, which is passed on primarily by word of
mouth, from person to person offers little opportunity for official censorship
to be exercised. (1987, 159-160)
He then lists and explains a number of jokes he collected in Rumania in 1969.
One important theme in these jokes is you should know who you're speaking
to before you say anything that could get you in trouble. Many of the
Rumanian jokes poke fun at the slow pace of life and work ("Our country
pretends to pay us and we pretend to work"), at the inefficiencies of
socialism, and at the Russians.
One of the classic joke cycles in Eastern Europe is about Radio
Erevan, a station in Soviet Armenia. People ask questions of Radio Erevan
and it offers answers. Here are some classic Erevan jokes.
Question to Radio Erevan: Can socialism be established in the Sahara?
Answer from Radio Erevan: Yes, socialism can be introduced into the
Sahara.
But after the first five-year plan, the Sahara will have to
import sand.
Question to Radio Erevan: Does the Mafia exist only in Italy?
Answer from Radio Erevan: No, we have the Mafia in Russia, except
here
it is called the government.
The Sahara joke pokes fun at the way Socialist five year plans always turn
out to be disasters and the Mafia joke is a revealing glimpse of what the
people really think of the Communist governments.
One of the classic Eastern European jokes involves a riddle.
Question: What is the difference between Capitalism and
Communism?
Answer: In capitalism man exploits man, but in Communism it is just
the
reverse.
In this joke, the humor of reversal is at work: both Capitalism and
Communism are, it turns out, the same--based on exploitation and
Communism's claim of being superior, from a moral point of view, is
ridiculed. After the demise of the various governments in Eastern Europe, it
was revealed that these governments were corrupt and were run by cynical
opportunists and paranoids who exploited the general public cruelly.
Let me conclude this discussion of Eastern-European jokes with one
that reflects the ironic situation in which these countries found themselves.
At a Communist Party Congress it is announced that Communism has
triumphed all over the world.
Even the United States has elected a
Communist as President. The delegates dance in the aisles, cheering like
mad, except for an old man, who sits in the corner with a glum expression on
his face. “Comrade,” asks a delegate. “Why are you not happy?”
“Because,” " says the old man, “I wonder where we are going to buy our
wheat next year.”
This joke deals with the reality behind the five-year plans and glorious
statistics always announced by the East European governments. Without
America, and other Capitalist nations, the joke tells us, Eastern European
Communists countries would starve.
Earl Butz's Ethnic Joke
In 1974, Earl Butz, who was the Secretary of Agriculture, told a joke
that almost led to him being removed from office. When politicians tell
ethnic jokes, they court disaster and often end up being destroyed, politically.
Butz told a joke "off the record" to a number of reporters at a private
breakfast in New York. The joke involves a response to a statement by the
Pope Paul VI about world hunger. After the Pope's statement, the joke, which
is not very funny at all, goes as follows:
After the Pope's remarks, an Italian woman is overheard saying "He no playa the game, he no make-a the rules."
This "joke" caused a furor. Catholics and Italian-Americans were outraged.
Butz was called to the White House where he got a severe reprimand and was
forced to issue an apology. Ethnic humor is no longer considered acceptable
in America, especially when it is told by public officials. We can see that
even twenty years ago it was considered distasteful. It is still found in
folklore, but it has been pretty well banished from the airwaves and media.
Ronald Reagan's Bombing Russia Joke
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan was preparing for his weekly radio
broadcast and, according to CBS, said the following, presumably while he
was testing his microphone:
My fellow Americans, I am pleased to announce I just signed legislation that
will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.
He was just joking and probably never thought his words would be recorded,
but discovered that the rest of the world didn't consider this "joke" humorous
at all. The Polish News Agency PAP commented that Reagan had called the
Polish leadership "a bunch of no good lousy bums" a couple of years earlier,
while testing his microphone. The agency said that while Reagan didn't say
these words formally, he knew they would be spread by news agencies.
The Standard, a London paper called the joke "a serious
embarrassment and Le Monde suggested psychologists would have to decide
whether the statement was "an expression of a repressed desire or the
exorcism of a dreaded phantom."
Members of the British Labor Party
described Reagan's remarks as "sick humor." The point, then, is that it is
dangerous for politicians to joke around and very dangerous when that
politician is president of the United States.
George Bush Makes a Joke that Causes Trouble
Politicians face danger when they try to be funny.
Consider a
problem that George Bush had when he was campaigning for the 1988
Presidential nomination.
After a meeting with NATO diplomats, Bush
learned that a recent Soviet military exercise had been carried out without any
mechanical breakdowns. He then said, thinking he was being amusing:
"Hey, when those mechanics who keep those tanks running run out of work
in the Soviet Union, send them to Detroit, because we could use that kind of
ability."
This occasioned a huge uproar in Michigan and officials of the United
Autoworkers Union said they were outraged and demanded that Bush
apologize. Bush apologized saying "Hey, give me a break. I didn't mean
anything by it." He later admitted he wished he had never said it. "I thought
I was trying to be funny," he said, "and obviously it didn't work very well."
Sometimes, of course, politicians are funny and make very witty
comments, as when Adlai Stevenson campaigned in St. Paul, Minnesota.
"I find St. Paul appealing, he said, "But I find Peale (Norman Vincent Peale,
a religious leader) appalling."
One of the classic witty comments made by a politician was made by
Churchill. A woman sitting next to him was exasperated by his chatter and
didn't like his politics. "If you were my husband," she said, "I'd put poison in
your coffee." "Madame," Churchill replied. "If I were your husband, I'd
drink it."
Humor and Political Cultures: Four Ways of Laughing
Aaron Wildavsky has suggested that in democratic societies you find
four political cultures. He explains how these cultures arise in an essay
"Conditions for Pluralist Democracy Or: Cultural Pluralism Means More than
One Political Culture in a Country." (Mimeographed, May 1982) He writes:
What matters to people is how they should live with other people. The great
questions of social life are "Who am I?" (to what group do I belong) and
"What should I do?" (Are there many or few prescriptions I am expected to
obey?)
Groups are strong or weak according to whether they have
boundaries separating them from others. Decisions are taken either for the
group as a whole (strong boundaries) or for individuals or families (weak
boundaries). Prescriptions are few or many indicating that the individual
internalizes a large or a small number of behavioral norms to which he or she
is bound. (1982, 7)
Drawing upon the work of Mary Douglas, with whom Wildavsky has
collaborated, he combines boundaries and prescriptions and comes us with
four political cultures:
1.
Fatalists:
Weak Boundaries,
Many Prescriptions
2.
Competitive Individualists:
Weak Boundaries,
Few Prescriptions
3.
Hierarchical Elitists:
Strong Boundaries,
Many Prescriptions
4.
Egalitarians:
Strong Boundaries,
Few Prescriptions
Each of these political cultures has certain attributes that Wildavsky
spells out in this paper and in a number of his other works. For example,
Elitists believe in stratification, but have a sense of noblesse oblige for those
below them. Competitive individualists believe in the market and take risks,
stressing the importance of personal initiative for personal gain.
The
Egalitarians stress that people are equal in terms of their needs and
continually criticize both the elitists and the individualists for not doing
enough for the fatalists, who have more or less opted out of the economic
system and believe that luck is the determining factor in life.
(This
description is highly reductionistic, I might point out. For a fuller elaboration
of Wildavsky's views, see his essay "Choosing Preferences by Constructing
Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation," reprinted in A.
Berger, ed., Political Culture and Public Opinion, Transaction Publishers,
1989.)
Communication theory tells us that groups tend to seek out material
(television shows, plays, films, and we can add humorous material) that
reinforces their view of things and supports and validates their belief system.
And they tend to avoid material that would cause dissonance and attack or
cause them to question their beliefs.
The situation is complicated, because people in a given political
culture sometimes change, for a variety of reasons, so there is movement and
in these cases, people in one political culture might seek out (not necessarily
consciously) material that would justify their moving to a different political
culture.
Sometimes, of course, they find themselves being moved, for
example, by economic forces that might push a competitive individualist, for
example, into a fatalist political culture.
Let us assume, for simplicity's sake, that we have our four political
cultures and that everyone (in America or wherever) belongs to one of them.
Individualists, Elitists, Egalitarians and Fatalists, according to communication
theory, would be seeking out or responding most favorably to jokes and other
humor that justify their position and avoiding humor that attacks or questions
it.
Thus jokes, it could be argued, always have a political dimension to
them even though they may not deal with politics, per se. That is, the subject
may not be political but the value system or attitudes expressed in the joke
would, in principle, connect with or reinforce the beliefs of one of our four
political cultures and not do so for the other three political cultures. If a joke
deflates authority, it would be egalitarian; if it pokes fun at "lower elements"
it would be elitist; if it ridicules egalitarians (Marxists, socialists, social
workers, Communists, do-gooders, etc.), it would be elitist; and if it shows
that society is irrational and based on chance and luck, it would be fatalist.
People of all political persuasions might laugh at a joke because they
get (at the unconscious level, so the Freudians argue) a guilt-free expression
of aggression. Or they find an incongruity, as the incongruity theorists ague.
But the joke would most fully resonate, so the theory described goes, with
only one group of people--those whose political culture it supports or is
congruous with. And it would disturb another group of people, those who are
members of a political culture that is opposed to the political culture
supported by the joke.
All of this, of course, occurs at the unconscious level, for the most
part. People, as a rule, do not consciously put up filters through which they
"strain" jokes and humor--though in some cases, as in the case cultures that
honor and revere mothers-in-law, people do not find mother-in-law jokes
funny. That, at least was my experience a number of years ago when I
participated in a course on humor that had students from many countries. A
Japanese student told me "we don't find mother-in-law jokes funny." He also
didn't find any of the cartoons in an issue of The New Yorker I showed him
funny, which shows the degree to which culture and allusions shape our sense
of humor.
It doesn't always work that way, however.
Some Catholic
comedians make a career of poking fun of the Catholic Church, but it is
generally deemed acceptable for members of some group to ridicule members
of their own group.
It is also possible, I might add, that since jokes are often rather
complex, with a number of different humorous techniques going on, people
from different political cultures might find different parts of a given joke
humorous. And what applies to jokes also applies, of course, to all forms of
humor.
What follows are four examples of humor, each of which would
appeal primarily, I would suggest, to one of the four political cultures. These
jokes, remember, need not be about politics and politicians, though jokes
about them would have a more direct and obvious relation to one of the four
political cultures. A joke that appeals to a member of one political culture
could make fun of any of the other three political cultures.
Elitist Humor
In Russia, they tell ethnic jokes about a minority people in the far
north, the Chukchi people who are similar to Eskimos, that are analogous to
the Polish jokes told in America.
A Chukchi goes to a store to buy a television set. The clerk tells him that
color sets are available. "Fine," says the Chukchi, "I'll have a yellow one."
This joke ridicules the intelligence of the Chukchi man, who mistakes what
the clerk says and thinks "color" television applies to the color of the sets.
This joke and Polish jokes like it, which ridicule a group for being stupid, has
an elitist cast to it. The Chukchi are supposedly dumb and when we laugh at
them for being so, it is from a position "above" them, so to speak.
I might add the some theorists argue that all humor is based on
feelings of superiority, and Hobbes, one of the greatest political theorists,
argued in The Leviathan:
The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a
sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the
infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.
According to Hobbes' theory, all humor is based on superiority and the
feeling of "sudden glory" we get when something happens that enables us to
elevate ourselves above others, or the way we once were.
Egalitarian Humor
Jokes told by egalitarians would poke fun at elites or competitive
individualists, both of whom are criticized by egalitarians. Thus, jokes about
powerful business or political figures, jokes about aristocrats, jokes about
movie stars and celebrities, and jokes about entrepreneurial types would all
be examples of egalitarian humor. This joke has been told about Reagan and
also about Justice O'Connor and the members of the Supreme Court.
President Reagan and Nancy go to a restaurant for lunch. The waiter asks
Nancy Reagan for her order first. "I'll have grilled salmon and a cup of
coffee," she says. "What about the vegetable?" asks the waiter. "He'll have
the same thing."
This joke alludes to Reagan's age and supposed lack of vitality--he used to
fall asleep at Cabinet meetings and was famous for taking naps and not
putting in much of a day at the White House.
Individualist Humor
Jokes appealing to competitive individualists would poke fun at
elitists, egalitarians or fatalists or would support the values of the
individualists at the expense of others.
Two businessmen were attending a meeting at a mountain resort and were
roommates in the same cabin. One evening they heard some scratching
outside the door. One went over to look, came back, and started putting on
his running shoes. "What's going on?" asks his roommate. "There's a giant
bear outside, who looks so hungry that he's going to smash his way into this
cabin." "Well," says the other man, "why put on sneakers? You can't outrun
a bear." "That's true," says the man, "but all I need to do is outrun you."
Here we see the values of competitive individualism highlighted and
reinforced; the first man can run faster than his roommate and so, logic tells
us, will escape the bear. You don't have to be able to outrun a bear as long as
you have someone else that you can outrun when being chased by a bear.
The following joke pokes fun at elites (military, in this case) and is
based on the technique of allusion:
A Washington hot dog vendor comes home one evening with more than a
thousand dollars. "How did you earn that much money?" asks his wife.
"Selling hot dogs for a hundred times their regular price," says the vendor.
"Who'd be crazy enough to pay that much money?" responds his wife. "Lots
of people," says the vendor. They all work at the Pentagon."
This joke alludes to the infamous procurement practices of the Pentagon,
which involved paying thousands of dollars for certain tools that were
obtainable for just a few dollars at hardware stores. The hero is a small time
entrepreneur who takes advantage of elites at the Pentagon, who are, so the
joke suggests, used to paying fifty or a hundred times what anything is worth.
Fatalist Humor
Fatalist humor would involve jokes that show how important luck or
chance is in the scheme of things, or which ridicule elites, individualists and
egalitarians by showing that they are foolish or have their status due to
connections, accidents of birth and things like that.
A social worker sees a bum and tries to convince him to go to work. "Why
should I work?" asks the bum. "To make some money," replies the social
worker. "What will I do with the money?" asks the bum. "You will become
independent and when you make enough money, you won't have to work any
more." "But I don't work now," said the bum.
Here the person at the bottom of the ladder triumphs. What sense does it
make going to work so you can have leisure time when you already have
leisure time, as a bum? Of course you don't have money and can't buy things
and have a luxurious leisure time, but the joke avoids these matters by
focusing strictly on the matter of free time.
A Radical Hypothesis about the Origin of the Political Joke
Gregor Benton, an anthropologist, has written an essay, "The Origins
of the Political Joke" that appears in Humour and Society: Resistance and
Control, edited by Chris Powell and George Paton.
Benton argues that
political jokes "are a powerful transmitter of the popular mood in societies
where this mood can find no officially sanctioned outlet." (Powell, 1988, 33)
In bourgeois democracies these jokes tend to be bloodless, he suggests, since
people have the vote and don't need political humor to ease tensions.
But these jokes, which are "the chief form of orally-transmitted folk
wisdom today" (1988, 35) flourish in dictatorships. The jokes are a response
to the tensions of living in total societies, since dictators seek to control every
aspect of life in the societies where they are in power. Benton quotes George
Orwell who wrote that "every joke is a tiny revolution" and that "you cannot
be memorably funny without at some point raising topics which the rich, the
powerful and the complacent would prefer to see left alone." (1988, 40)
He then discusses Jewish jokes and suggests that "discrimination and
persecution, and how to cope with them, are the subject of innumerable
traditional Jewish jokes," which, he adds, take on a number of different
forms. What is important is that these forms are also found in the typical
political joke so the Jewish joke stands as a kind of prototype of the political
joke. Benton writes:
Three main sorts of discrimination feature in the political joke:
discrimination by a minority, the Party, against the non-Party majority;
discrimination by majorities against minorities (e.g. Russians against Uzbeks
or Czechs against Slovaks); and discrimination by a strong nation (the Soviet
Union) against weaker ones (Eastern Europe and China). In the last two
categories, both victims and victimizers put their feelings into joke form.
This results in two different sorts of joke corresponding to judische Witze
(jokes told by Jews) and Judenwitze (jokes told about Jews). (1988, 44.)
This suggests that there is a connection between the Jewish joke and political
jokes and Benton offers a number of Jewish jokes and political jokes that
show how strong the relationship is.
He offers one political joke that is a modification of one from the
ghettos.
An advert in a Bucharest newspaper: "Swap high level of ideological training
for geographically favourable location." (The original Jewish joke was:
"Swap several centuries of history for a little geography." More recently the
East Germans have taken it over. "Swap comfortable four-room flat for
small hole in the wall.")
He also points out that in Radio Erevan jokes, the questions are traditionally
asked with a Jewish accent and answered with an Armenian one.
His conclusion is that the political joke has the same function that the
Jewish joke had--it helps relieve people of tension and helps keep them
stable. It cushions the blows and creates "sweet illusions of revenge," but its
impact is only as long as the laugh it produces. More than jokes--namely
organized opposition--are needed to deal with political problems and
dictatorial states.
I would agree, but I think political humor (especially jokes, which
spread like wildfire) does play a role in mobilizing public sentiment and, by
diminishing those in power and making them subject of laughter, facilitates
resistance and even political revolution.
The regimes in Eastern Europe, which seemed so strong, turned out
to be hollow vessels that were knocked over with incredible ease. I would
argue that the humor in Eastern Europe helped set the stage for the
revolutions that followed, once it was clear that Russia had changed and that
the regimes in Eastern Europe would not be kept in place by Russian tanks
and soldiers.
Humor may not seem to have much political impact, but I would
argue that it is often a subversive force of considerable significance. It is
used as a means of resistance by those living under authoritarian regimes and,
at the same time, unites people against the governing power structure and
gives them a common sense of identity. It also destroys their sense of
obligation to the regime that is controlling them, so that when an opportunity
comes to overthrow the regime, there will be a common desire to do so.
Politicians in democratic societies sometimes tell jokes that cause
them great problems; they cannot seem to resist the temptation to become
standup comedians, for some reason. Or politicians become (as in the case
of Quayle) the subject of comedians jokes in the talk shows, which is
generally an indicator that they are at or near the end of their careers. Finally,
let me make a distinction between political humor, which is humor that deals
with politicians and parties and ideological matters and humor that appeals
most directly to one of the four dominant political cultures in America. In
certain respects, then, we can argue that all humor has a political dimension
to it.
References:
Bakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination. Michael Holquist, ed.
Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. 1981.
Dundes, Alan.
Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles and
Stereotypes. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. 1987.
Powell, Chris and George E.C. Paton, eds., Humour in Society: Resistance
and Control. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.
Wildavsky, Aaron.
Conditions for Pluralist Democracy or Cultural
Pluralism Means More Than One Political Culture in a Country.
Mimeographed Monograph. Political Science Department and Survey
Research Center, University of California, Berkeley. May, 1982.