Frankie Sorrentino sneezed and farted at the same time. It was loud enough to be heard at the back of the church. Oops. Action, reaction. Bad compression perhaps. It was the quiet part of the Mass when the priest was blessing the sacrament. Frankie was kneeling in the pew in front of us. I was in the row directly behind him kneeling with my classmates, we couldn’t stop laughing, the whole line of us grade school boys. Frankie looked over his shoulder and and flashed us a coy smile.
Trying to hold in extemporaneous laughter in church was agony and pure joy at the same time. It's a laugh suppression moment everyone can relate too. We were bursting at the seems. The backdraft was hilarious, but the nuns that taught us at St. Brigid school in Brooklyn had no sense humor. Later, in class, Frankie was reprimanded but we got the ruler across the palms for laughing at him and disrupting Mass.
“Whenever Mrs. Kissel breaks wind we beat the dog.” ...Google it. But I digress.
Backing up slowly, it’s funny the things you remember, the things that stick out more than others. Funny how it’s usually the funny things. But who’s to say what’s funny?
Growing up in Brooklyn in the ’50’s was a continual soiree of tactile sensory perception. It was a lively place and time. We laughed at the Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello. We laughed at each other, made fun of each other. Sometimes it was cruel, racial. Irish, Italian, Asian, German, Black, Hispanic, Polish, Jewish jokes were unchecked. But we all lived together, we knew each other’s parents and siblings and the hardships in their lives, many of which were common to all of us. At the end of the day we were all friends and would give each other the shirt off our back no matter what differences there were among us. A lot of love was left on the table.
Today, “funny” has somehow gotten out of hand. It has moved away from a Vaudeville slapstick man slips on a banana peel humor to a more sophisticated, witful, mostly sarcastic brand, usually punctuated with bad language. And now, positioned against the new political correctness, it has become difficult to just experience good old fashioned “funny” anymore. We don’t laugh. We criticize. We are unsure, we hesitate about what to laugh at pending approval from our peers. Laughter has become political. We suppress our laughter like we kids tried to suppress our laughter in church that day when Frankie Sorrentino ‘shot the fairy’, or maybe as he should have suppressed his sneeze and follow-up. But then, that singular moment of joyous, conspiratorial laughter would never have happened, lost to the ages perhaps to happen in a galaxy far, far away in another time and dimension for someone else to laugh at.
Although I’m not a fan of President Trump, I do agree in concept with many of the things he tries to promote. His recent rules for decorum regarding White House correspondents seems reasonable to me. Jim Acosta was wrong. He has been a rude, in my opinion, overzealous to say the least, reporter and was reprimanded appropriately by Trump. Conversely, Trump could have handled the situation better by not losing his cool.
Last year’s White House Correspondents dinner was headlined by comedian Michelle Wolf who pulled out all the stops on her brand of humor and systematically insulted everyone in the room. It was funny to me, the people she criticized deserved it in my opinion, politicians and media stars alike, but it was “cruel” and as a consequence this year’s WHCA dinner will be headlined by author and historian Ron Chernow.
“Funny” just used to be funny. If it makes you laugh it’s funny, funny to you, no matter what the other guy thinks. Funny can’t be legislated, it’s a natural law. Free speech can be legislated, however, and protected by law. But that is seemingly what President Trump is trying to do, to control “funny” and subsequently by default, free speech. Trump hasn’t attended a WHCA dinner, which are noted, lauded, for their adult brand of humor and entertainment, since President Obama made fun of him at the 2011 WHCA dinner.
This fact in itself is revealing of our president and what to be aware of coming down the road. Most dictatorial leaders and presidents are thin-skinned narcissists who quickly move from oppression to censorship to state rule to fascism. This is something that we Americans should be acutely aware of and fear.
Back it up slowly, take another look, move forward with vigilance, or some day we may not be able to back it up at all.
We don’t want to live in a country where Frankie Sorrentino could be shot for accidentally farting in church and making us laugh, or us for laughing, no matter how politically incorrect it is.
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah.
