Thursday, October 18, 2001

Laughter acceptable and needed now
Commentary by Alex Wong

Sitting at my desk last week, waiting for the professor to arrive, I hadn’t fully woken up yet. So when the guy next to me nudged my shoulder, I was slow to realize that I was hearing my first Osama bin Laden joke.

“Seeing that killing Osama may turn him into a martyr, what’s the best way to punish him if we catch him?”

I shrugged to cue the punchline.

“Our doctors should give him a sex change, ship him back to Afghanistan and let him deal with the Taliban.”

Surely, this wasn’t Sunset Strip material, but clever enough to raise a head-shaking chuckle from me.

As I left class, this headline caught my eye: “Batboy Joins Up!” According to the tabloid Weekly World News, America’s favorite half-man, half-winged-rodent strolled onto an Army base, donned a star-spangled bandanna and was looking to kick some Taliban tushy. Cute.

Watching David Letterman’s monologue that night, he was talking about how one month after Sept. 11, life in New York was finally reaching a sense of normalcy. Heck, he said, the mayor announced that it was all right for New York drivers to resume giving each other the bird.

But an even more telling sign that life is returning to normal is that Letterman — as well as students and supermarket tabloids — can make jokes like these. It seems that after an initial period of grief, we’re beginning to laugh again.

Perhaps, though, we’re not all that comfortable with it yet. The laughs my classmate’s joke elicited were sparse and muffled. Even the response to Letterman’s quip was unusually subdued.

One can’t help but wonder if there is a tinge of sacrilege embedded in the humor found in such a dark tragedy. One can’t help but think that our jokes may cover up the reality and the gravity of what happened.

It is not easy to live normal lives, let alone laugh, when over 5,000 lives have been lost. It is tough to force a smile when you fear anthrax may be at your doorstep.

But in times like these, a little comic relief may just be what we need to fully process what has befallen us. The subtle beauty of humor is that it speaks truth, but does so in a way that we can handle. And that makes comedy invaluable as a method of coping with tragedy.

Humor as a way of coping has been seen for decades in the stand-up acts of African-American comedians. From Richard Pryor to Eddie Murphy to Chris Rock, these comics find the bulk of their material in the ugly legacy of black discrimination. Bill Cosby said that with these comedians, “the line between comedy and tragedy is as fine as you can paint it.”

The greatest quality of black comedy is that not only does it keep you from escaping the reality of discrimination, but it provides you with a way in which to deal with it.

Amidst the dark tension of these present times, America has a new reality to deal with. Luckily, there’s a supply of wise-cracking fodder.

In all seriousness, how can you not laugh when bin Laden comes on television and you see that the command center for the terrorist network of our greatest enemy is a pile of rocks and a fuschia blanket?

How can one not crack a smile when President Bush incessantly refers to bin Laden as “The Evil One?” Does he really think bin Laden is the Antichrist, or is it that under the pressure of rapid-fire questioning, he simply can’t remember his name?

Another humorous incongruity is found in those myriad news clips of soon-to-be-launched missiles. On one of these instruments of war there is a tiny message scrawled in magic marker by a wide-eyed twenty-something, probably still itchy in his new Navy fatigues: “Eat this Osama!”

A crude battle cry. A crystallizing reminder. Poignant — and invaluable — levity.

Alex Wong is a columnist for the Daily Pennsylvanian at the University of Pennsylvania. This column was distributed by U-Wire.