Point of View: Make ’Em Laugh

   Whatever happened to the laughter boat? Which was to visit countries around the world and laugh, the idea being presumably that laughter would be catching.

    Sometimes I think our only hope lies, rather than in buggering priests or in cardinals with shadowy pasts, with the world’s comedians, those who have keen intellects and can hold a mirror up to the horrors and hatreds that individuals and groups somehow rationalize.

    We are supposed to be an open-minded country, with more comedians per capita than any other, and yet when sensible gun control measures are proposed, we rush to buy more; the applications — and the potential for more and more violence — mount and mount even as we propose that there be a respite from it. Long live death! And our precious freedom to deal it out.

    But when the highest clerical authority in the Western world is said to have collaborated with a death-dealing junta, it’s little wonder that the times seem out of joint.

    Comedians go right to the quick, to the heart of the matter, at least the good ones do. No b-s. We need more and more of them, satirists who can shame as well as needle and poke fun. Include everyone, for everyone is benighted at times; individually, collectively.

    Otherwise, sneakiness, in high, middling, and low places, which already has gone far, will utterly take over, and drones manipulated by faceless authority will roam the skies at will. Damn! I’m going out and get a gun so I can shoot them down. No, no, just kidding.

    Social media may at times be a pain; it is cacophonous and shoots from the hip, but it and the comedians could save us — from ceding power to the wrong people, from blithe unconcern, from cant, from secretiveness and self-deception.

    When people and governments can laugh at themselves, we will be on our way. It will mean then that we’ve begun to get serious.