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 play-a 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.