April 30, 2019--Trump Roast

Trump again Wednesday night absented himself from the White House Correspondents' dinner. The one where presidents traditionally are roasted but then have the last word. The chance to get even with the press and other attendees.

Most of the reporters claim that Trump avoids these affairs because he is still smarting from what Barack Obama said about him in his remarks at the 2011 dinner.

Recall that at the time Trump was still hustling his birther claims. That Obama was not born in the United States, rather in Kenya, and therefore should not have been allowed to run for the presidency. In other words, he was an illegitimate president.

Obama retaliated by mercilessly ripping Trump to pieces in front of the Washington establishment.

Here's a sample--

“I know that Trump’s taken some flack lately, but no one is prouder to put this birth-certificate matter to rest than the Donald. That’s because he can finally get back to the issues that matter, like did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"

It could well be that Trump doesn't want to open himself to more mockery. But it also could be--and this is my view--that Trump totally lacks a sense of humor. Not just humor at his expense (though with his ego that can't be much fun) but any humor whatsoever.

Can you recall one instance, just one, where he said something funny or laughed heartily at someone else's amusing remark? At most with Trump we see an occasional frozen smile that is more grimace than chuckle.

In contrast, recall how much FDR, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama enjoyed a laugh or two. Even those at their own expense.

Also recall that all of these presidents had dogs. Even humorless Nixon had one. Checkers. 

So Trump has no dog and no sense of humor.

It also may be that Trump's total lack of humor suggests he has Asperger's Syndrome (AS), a developmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.

Humor, specifically jokes, involve cognitive capacities that are often challenging for individuals with Asperger's.  According to researchers who have studied the nature of humor, flexible thinking is important to understanding jokes. Punchlines in jokes are funny partly because they are unexpected. Additionally, according to these researchers, big picture thinking is essential in understanding jokes, as it allows the listener to understand how the surprising punchline coheres with the joke's set up. 

As individuals with AS often demonstrate rigid thinking, a desire for sameness, and difficulty with sustained thought, it seems that individuals with Asperger's would have difficulty reacting to and employing even simple forms of humor.

About humor, at the end of Annie Hall, Woody Allen looks directly into the camera and says--

"It reminds me of that old joke--you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist's office and says, 'Hey doc, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken.' Then the doc says, 'Why don't you turn him in?' Then the guy says, 'I would, but we need the eggs.'"

Allen was talking about how no matter how crazy they can be we need relationships.

We also need humor. But when it comes to Trump, I wouldn't expect any eggs.

February 10, 2017--Ridicule

Thursday morning we finally made it down for breakfast at 10:00. At least an hour later than usual. We lingered in bed as the snowstorm intensified. It was magical to watch our terrace turn into a giant snow globe. And we also lingered, in truth, because so much was going on. With and among Donald Trump and his band of co-conspirators.

By 10:00 AM the following had already happened--

In a series of three tweets he savaged John McCain for criticizing the ill-fated Navy SEAL operation in Yemen. McCain, he raged has been "losing so long that he doesn't know how to win."

Senators from both parties who had informal one-on-one meetings the day before with Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, were quoting him as saying that he was "demoralized" and "disheartened" by Trump's overnight tweets and comments that disparaged the federal courts. He made it known to the senators that he was comfortable with their quoting him directly.

I have been following these matters for decades and cannot recall anything even vaguely comparable.

Rona said, "That's because there has never previously been anyone like Trump in the White House. Even Nixon was more restrained in his assaults on the courts and never has a Supreme Court nominee allowed his words to be quoted publicly."

Trump took to mocking one of the senators who shared Garland's lament--Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal. In yet another tweet Trump blasted him for inflating his resumé in regard to his service in Vietnam, something Trump himself did when, after receiving four or five deferments, claimed he did his service in high school when he attended the New York Military Academy.

Then there was the Ivanka Trump flap. Trump began it himself when he called Nordstrom out for cancelling Ivanka's line of clothes. Trump said it was for political reasons, the store said it was because they weren't selling.

Brother Don, Jr., chimed in suggesting in a tweet of his own that shippers should boycott Nordstrom and signal they are doing so by cutting up and returning their credit cards.

Not to be outdone, favorite flunky Kellyanne Conway, while being interviewed on the inane "Fox and Friends" called for Trump supporters to "go buy Ivanka's stuff.  Doing so, as a government official, may be against the law. She was reportedly "counseled" for this infraction later in the day.

Finally, over coffee, wondering what this all means, Rona said, "I know how we can get rid of Trump."

"Impeachment?"

"No, resignation."

"No way but I'm interested in what you're thinking."

"Through ridicule."

"Say more."

"What's the one thing he craves the most?" She answered her own question, "To be in the center of things, in the spotlight, with all eyes on him while being adulated. That's why he's so obsessed with how he's faring in the polls, how large his crowds are at rallies and the Inauguration. That's why his touchstone no matter the purpose of the meeting is 'The Celebrity Apprentice.' He even began his comments at the Annual Prayer Breakfast by mocking the ratings Arnold Schwarzenegger was pulling after taking Trump's place as the host. 'Pray for his ratings,' he incredibly said."

"And so?"

"He thinks of himself as the entertainer or celebrity in chief. That's why he watches TV all the time. To see what people are saying about him. To be famous is his highest aspiration and that's why he's so protective of his image, his brand and can't stand it when late night talkshow hosts make fun of him or, much worse, how a show he used to appear on regularly, 'Saturday Night Live,' ridicules him mercilessly week after week."

"We don't watch it that much," I said, "But did the last few weeks. Via On Demand, and they sliced him up savagely, hilariously. Alec Baldwin has taken on his essence and the skit with Melissa McCarthy mocking his press secretary were works of comic genius. But I'm not entirely getting your point about the political impact of this."

"If all of these folks keep it up, Trump will not be able to appear in public. He certainly will not be viable in Manhattan at his favorite 21 Club or soon in Palm Beach. This would be like cutting off his oxygen supply. And so he'll wind up living alone in the White House. Don't underestimate the power of satire and ridicule. In his case, it could very well do him in."

"He'll resign?"

"That's what I'm thinking. Comedy as another of our checks and balances."

September 9, 2015--Take My Husband, Please

Suddenly everyone is talking about funny.

Last night Stephen Colbert took over the Late Show. People have been anticipating and talking about it for nine long, long months. Would he be as funny being Stephen Colbert as he was inhabiting his crazed right-wing persona? People wondered if what we will get on CBS as opposed to the Comedy Channel will be the "real" Colbert.

Illusion and reality. Remember that from your introductory college lit course?

We managed to stay up late enough to see at least a little of the new show and it only served to remind me how much I miss his old one. Not that he wasn't funny. It's just that he wasn't so trenchantly and deliriously funny. But time will tell.

It will help if he'll soon move on from all the self-referential shtick that made up so much of last night's monologue.

One of his guests was Jeb Bush, about the least funny, low energy politicians in America. OK, you got me, there's George Pataki. And Ben Carson. And, to be fair and balanced, Martin O'Malley.

These days you can't run for the presidency without appearing on the equivalent of Laugh In (Richard Nixon) or Arsinio Hall (Bill Clinton in shades playing the sax) or John McCain on Saturday Night Live (of course Sarah Palin too--both as herself and in Tina Fey's realer-than-life incarnation).

When he was running, Barack Obama showed up everywhere, from Jay Leno to doing skits on SNL to boogying with Ellen to trading quips with Letterman and Kimmel.

Wooden candidates from Michael Dukakis to Al Gore, some say, lost the presidency because they lacked a sense of humor. They were missing the "likability" factor.

Speaking of likability, do you recall back in 2008 how when candidate Hillary Clinton was faulted for not being likable, during one of the debates, Obama was asked what he thought about that?

With impeccable timing he said, "She's likable [one beat, two beats] enough." He was roundly criticized for that.

But you know (one beat, two beats) he was right.

She was, and is, not a natural politician and thus comes across as not that likable. Which these days can be a fatal problem.

But that's about to change.

Her campaign over the weekend announced that they're going back to the drawing board and the new Hillary Clinton they promised will be likable.

The scripted, extra-careful, humorless Hillary is about to be funny.

And, risking a gender-bending reaction, it was announced she will be more spontaneous. In the words of her campaign managers, she will speak "from the heart."

What they failed to note is that claiming they can just turn on the funny switch and thereby humanize Hillary is further confirmation that her campaign, and the candidate herself, is an artificial construct.

One minute she's sober and presidential, the next she's hanging out in the back of the press bus knocking down beers and cracking jokes with reporters and getting booked on Ellen and The Tonight Show.

How phony will her new personality seem? I suspect she will come across as pandering and desperate. And it will ironically underscore what many think about her--that she's inauthentic.

Yes, Hillary makes fun of her 'dos ("The hair is real, the color isn't"), which is sort of funny, at least the first time you hear it. But the fact that it is now part of her anti-TRUMP stump speech--he clearly has hair issues--makes it less funny every time it's repeated.

Pretty pathetic.

But, hey, this is 2015! Get with it. It's all about social media and because of social media it's all about being cool and likable. And being likable means you have to be funny.

Even if you aren't.

March 4, 2015--Ladies of Forest Trace: Laughter

From the publisher I have a copy of what the cover will look like of my soon to be published book, Obama, Oy Vey: The Wit and Wisdom of My 107-Year-Old Mother. I took it to show her, not sure what she would think.

She was sleeping when I arrived, which is not unusual these days as she is losing vitality and visits are measured more in minutes than even half hours.

I sat beside her bed as still I could manage, not wanting to disturb her but simply to be near. Her breathing was shallow and I was concerned. Was the end near? Was this to be the way it would conclude--that she would just slip away. And would that happen as I sat there?

It was not something to grieve about, I again said to myself. She is after all nearly 107 and is not in any pain or even discomfort. But still. I am of advancing age myself and do not take death as casually as I did when I was younger and it felt more theoretical than real. But now each day it feels closer. Not just her passing but the increasing possibility of my own.

Rescuing me from these thoughts, my mother's eyes opened with a start and a smile as she looked up and saw me sitting there, holding her hand.

"I can't hear you," she said before I had spoken a single word.

"Let me help you with these." Her hearing aides were neatly aligned on the table by her bedside, and as gently as I could I twisted them into her ears.

"That's better," she said, still smiling. "You look wonderful."

I'm not at all sure that's true--though I was trying--but I smiled back at her and said, "You too don't look so bad for someone your age."

"My age?" she panted, allowing the oxygen flowing to her from the cylinder to catch up with her breathing. "There's no one my age any more. And that includes me." With that she laughed. It was the first time in more than month that she did so. An incredible sign of the life force that has sustained her for so long.

"I know you can stay for only a few minutes," she said, again beginning to slip back into sleep. She was still able to make the effort to conceal her new reality--the need to rest and sleep--to keep things feeling normal, as if nothing was different. That she was still herself.

And so after a few minutes, to help maintain that illusion, I let her slip back into sleep, kissed her, and left.

Back home, at about eight o'clock, my cell phone rang. The caller ID said Mom. My heart fluttered. It was well past her evening bedtime and I thought it must be her aide and the news could only be bad.

But chipper and optimistic as she always sounds, Dianne relieved my fear and said, "Your mom wants to talk with you."

"With me? She's awake? Are you sure everything's OK?"

"Yes. She wants to talk with you about your book."

"My book?" I was still amazed that she was awake and had placed the call.

"What wit and wisdom?" my mother asked.

I was confused, forgetting for the moment the subtitle of my book.

"Yours," I finally said.

"The cover I can see," an image of it was all I had left with her.

"I know." I said.

Again she asked, "Whose wisdom?"

"Yours," I repeated.

"Then, why are all the pages blank?"

With that she handed the phone back to Dianne

It was my turn to laugh. What a wonder. My ancient mother was still making jokes.

When, later that night I told a friend about this, Reggie said, "There's nothing more important to living than laughter."

November 14, 2014--Best of Behind: Now That's Funny

Here is something from just two years ago--November 29, 2012--about the need for humor when things seem bleakest--

When was the last time Barack Obama said anything really funny? Excluding the jokes scripted for him for White House Correspondents' dinners. Like at the one in 2011 when he made fun of Donald Trump's birth certifcate. Funny stuff, but not really that clever much less spontaneous.

I ask because times like these demand that our leaders display a genuine sense of humor. Not just to help us deal with our fears but also to rally the public and make it possible, when struggling with tough issues, to reach consensus and strike deals. It's easier to come to difficult agreements if things are not always portrayed as portentous and grim. Humor has the ability to cut through the dire.

Case in point, the so-called Fiscal Cliff.

It's scary stuff even if you don't feel that it represents the coming of the apocalypse. On January 1st taxes will go up for all, especially for the hard-pressed middle class and working poor; all sorts of social safety net programs will automatically be cut; we may not be able to pay our sovereign debt; our credit rating which is already down a notch will decline further and this will lead to all sorts of nasty international ramifications; and . . .

I take it back--maybe this is the apocalypse. 

If so, then we desperately need to do a little laughing, and not just at the snarky jokes available every night from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but more the self-deprecating kind that is suffused with hard, often unpleasant truth that can best be raised with humor and, as a result, goes down much easier

There is one helpful example out there--Alan Simpson of the Simpson-Bowles Commission. It was created by Barack Obama in 2010 to identify "policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run."

And, amazingly, even as bipartisan as it was (it included the scold Paul Ryan), the commission did come up with a tough series of recommendations that call for real tax increases and heavy-duty cuts in all federal programs, very much including for the Pentagon and Medicare. Ten members, five Democrats and five Republicans voted for it.

But then nothing happened. Facing a tough reelection campaign, Obama thanked them and promptly ignored the commission’s politically unpopular proposals, and the Republican leadership in Congress blanched at the recommended tax increases. So it went nowhere in a hurry.

But now, like Freddy Kruger, it's back because Obama decisively won a second term (he got 53 percent of the popular vote) and all sorts of tax increases and spending cuts will take place automatically at the start of the new year unless Congress and the president work out a comprehensive deal. So Bowles and Simpson have been resurrected and are making the rounds on Capital Hill and on the cable and Sunday talk shows.

Wyoming rancher that he is, the star of the two-man show is former Republican senator Alan Simpson. In addition to being at least as good as Bill Clinton at explaining things, he is also very funny, and this helps him get his difficult messages across; and, if we are lucky, may help save our economic day. He delivers hard truth in humorous, folksy ways and that makes the truth more palatable.

Here are some examples of Simpson unplugged, about the budget as well about other matters--

"If you want to be a purist, go somewhere on a mountaintop and praise the east or something. But if you want to be in politics, learn to compromise. And you learn to compromise on the issue without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won’t compromise and I’ll show you a guy with rock for brains."

"I watch Republicans. They give each other the saliva test of purity, and then they lose and bitch for four years."

"But the thing that is really impossible to believe is that whatever adjustment we make and whatever has been suggested for the last 10 years in Social Security reform, from top to bottom, none of that affects anybody over 57. Where do I get my mail? From those old cats, 70 and 80 year-olds, who are not affected one whiff. People who live in gated communities and drive their Lexus to Denny's to get the AARP dissent. This is madness."

"Grandchildren now don't write thank you cards for Christmas presents. They are walking on their pants with their caps on backwards, listening to the Enema Man and Snoopy, Snoopy Poop Dog."

Ronald Reagan was funny--just look at videos of him fooling around with his political "enemy," Tip O'Neill as they figured out how to do business together. Then there was patrician Franklin Roosevelt, whose humor helped Americans get through the Depression. And, in spite of how he is portrayed in the current Steven Spielberg film, Lincoln was a great raconteur, which enabled him to get things done with his frequently contentious team of rivals. 

In fact I try not to miss Stephen Colbert; but maybe if our leaders would sit down over a Scotch and while negotiating make each other laugh while poking fun at each other and, more important, themselves, we'd get somewhere.

June 3, 2014--Take My Wife . . . Please.

I always thought the roots of Jewish humor were those described by Sigmund Freud in his book, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.

He argued that most Jewish jokes indicate Jewish people's ability to (a) engage in a thorough self-criticism of themselves, (b) advocate a democratic way of life, (c) emphasize the moral and social principles of the Jewish religion, (d) criticize the excessive requirement of it, and (e) reflect on the misery of many Jewish communities.

If you think of Woody Allen as the quintessential schlemiel and self-mocking jokester, only (a) and (e) pertain. Jewish humor is all based on self- and communal criticism and the resulting inner turmoil, misery, and self-pity. There's nothing in Woody's humor or any really funny Jewish humor about democracy or the moral principles of the Jewish religion.

It's hard to think of anything funny to say about any of these high-minded concepts. But Freud was a theorist without much of a sense of humor and so . . .

Recently, I have come to a very different conclusion--

Much of Jewish humor is derived from Jewish food.

Not the food itself, which when ingested can cause all sorts of inner misery and gas (both subjects of many jokes), but the names of our favorite traditional foods--from Bagels to Knishes to Tsimmis.

What other food traditions have so many foods with funny names? Veal Parmigianna? Cog au vin? Meatloaf? Corn beef and cabbage? Not even close to being as funny as Flanken, Ruglach, or Gedempte Fleisch.

A crepe is not funny, but a Blintz is. A porterhouse steak may bring you culinary pleasure, but not as many laughs as Brisket. It could be worth lingering over sweet and sour soup but Matzoh Balls, though tasteless, are funnier.

Neil Simon has a theory that words beginning with K's (or hard Cs) are funny. In the Sunshine Boys, one of the Boys, Willie, an old vaudevillian, gives his nephew a lecture about what's funny--

Fifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things. You know words that are funny and which words are not funny. Alka Seltzer is funny. You say "Alka Seltzer" you get a laugh . . . Words with "K" in them are funny. And with Cs. Casey Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny.

People who study what's funny agree. There are some sounds in English that are by their nature funny. Those that begin with P's, B's, T's, D's, hard-C's, and especially K's.

These sounds are called by linguists plosive consonants because they are plosive, they "start suddenly." And thus for some reason make us laugh.

Though not funny, this helps explain why Jewish foods, the plosive names of Jewish foods, are so funny. Also, since Jews spend a lot of time dealing with phlegm, often the result of eating the wrong thing, we thus specialize in sounds and words that make creative use of it. Think, for example, of Felix Unger's honking in Neil Simon's Odd Couple.

P-foods include pickled herring, pirogue (dumplings ), pletzel (flat bread), p'tcha (calves foot jelly) and of course pastrami.

B-foods are among the most familiar to non-Jews (and gentile New Yorkers)--babka (two b's plus one k), bialy, borscht, blintz, brisket, and the universal bagel.

T-foods include teiglach (small sweet pastries) and tzimmes (a stew of carrots, yams, and raisins). Both delicious and funny.

Foods beginning with G's are the well-known goulash and gefilte fish as well as chicken skin cracklings called gribbenes, perhaps my all time favorite Jewish food name.

And finally there are all the funny food names that begin with K's--kasha varnishkas (groats with farfalle pasta), kichel (egg-dough cookies), kneidlach (the Yiddish name for matzoh balls), knishes, kreplach (similar to pierogi), kugel (a sweet and savory casserole with lots of broad noodles), and kishke (beef intestines that also is used in expressions such as the alliterative, "Kick him in the kishkes").

When you grow up eating food with these kinds of names (and don't forget lox), a predisposition to humorous stories and jokes is inevitable. Couple this with self-mockery and gas and, Freud aside, there you have the real roots of Jewish humor.