The recently late Art Buchwald said something to the effect of that writing political humor meant he never ran out of ideas, he had five or six every morning (when I find that quote I’ll revise this).
The even-more recently late Molly Ivins said something like she thanked the good Lord for giving her infinite material to use in writing political humor (when I find that quote again it’ll go here).
I’ve already written about the passing of each, here and here. This morning I have three ideas beside this one. It gets picked because it won’t let loose. In articles about Molly this week she was quoted a few times as saying:
There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity – like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule – that’s what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel – it’s vulgar.” — published in People, Dec. 9, 1991, as reported in The Dallas Morning News
Art performed the latter humor too. How did they get by with it? Art somehow gets called “gentle,” and Molly is praised by the politicians whom she mocked. (On your favorite search engine, type in “Ivins quotes.”) Mocking someone for sport — and Art’s and Molly’s glee is self-evident — back when you were in school would get you jumped behind the gym, and adults handle it more efficiently if often without leaving obvious bruises. In fact, pundits on the right generally bring hostility back on themselves when they attack with what they call wit, with the sole exceptions being P.J. O’Rourke and James Lileks.
This has had me stumped. It made me recall all of the careful revisions I’ve done over the years to avoid making direct attacks, fearing not reprisal but offending readers. U.S. history shows incredible bombast aimed at presidents for the first 120 years or so of the Republic that no one could get by with after the World War II. None of the recent flourish of gasbags on cable TV have an eighth of the imagination to come up with what was said about Jefferson or Lincoln.
Now I may have it: Art and Molly were not aiming to cut their targets down, but they wanted the world to be better. When that inevitably meant specific leaders had to shape up or get out of the way, Art and Molly took personal aim with sketch-comedy satire and colorful insult, respectively. These two journalists were optimists. They staked their lives on the possibility for improvement. As a result no one cracked bottles on their heads, and they died natural deaths, though too early. -30-
