why comedy really matters

The other day, Jeff Jarvis linked to the laments of a couple of comedians, Nick Tanner and Armando Iannucci, both of whom wanted to know why comedy seems to have supplanted the serious national conversation that’s supposed to be taking place in the media and by politicians in these grave times of war—as if politicians aren’t publicity whores and the media isn’t dying to give each and every one of them a roll in the hay, the consequences be damned! (For the record: There is serious debate (i.e., nutritious food for thought) for people who live in free societies and are seriously interested in informing themselves about it; it’s available from all over the globe, 24/7, at the click of a mouse. They do have to seek it out, however. If they’re expecting the media to spoon-feed it to them, they’re asking for a junk-food diet.)

War doesn’t put an end to politics—it inflames politicians. Who are knaves. Who are professional smooth talkers. Politics is amoral, if not immoral. It’s about power. It’s about those who are attempting to scale the heights or who, having attained them, want to cling to them.

For precisely that reason, comedians have always been there to comment on—and puncture—the knavery of politicians, among other evil-doers. Famously, political satire has been a most effective weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I note this obvious fact for the sake of the naive comedians who lament the fact that it’s left up to them to comment on the absurdities of the politics of the day. Ever heard of Lenny Bruce? Mark Twain? Saturday Night Live? Tom Lehrer, Vaughn Meader, That Was the Week That Was? the Smothers Brothers? Comedians, get thee an education! Your stupendous ignorance—of history and of human nature—is showing.

American power players and politicians are way ahead of you, too, as noted in an interesting piece in today’s New York Times. Ostensibly, it’s about how media moguls hire comedy writers to help them craft their lines for important image-making or image-busting public events (a subject that warrants its own post. Someday). But it speaks just as much to comedy, where the bottom line is to know the limits [emphasis mine]:

[T]here is also a small clutch of writers who specialize in the genre of media-mogul laughs. And the reigning king of such humor is Mark S. Katz, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton who collaborated on Mr. Freston’s remarks.

Friends of Mr. Freston’s said that after his departure from Viacom, he initially did not want to go through with the event [Katz had been hired for]. But once he decided to do it, Mr. Katz, said, “he dove right in,” adding: “I love the guy. I’ve known him for a week, and I love him.”

The funny thing about Mr. Katz — who actually looks like a cross between a comic and a consultant — is that he takes his methods awfully seriously. (He was initially reticent about being interviewed because he does not want to appear to be diminishing the comedic chops of his clients.)

“Humor is an underutilized tool in the arsenal of strategic and crisis communications,” said Mr. Katz, who calls his consulting company the Soundbite Institute. “It’s about solving problems.”

Having written jokes for President Clinton’s shtick at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner during some of the darker moments of his administration, Mr. Katz said there were similarities between presidential humor and media-mogul humor.

“The are things you can say, there are things that go unsaid and things that are unsayable,” he explained. “What humor does is move the unsaid into the said. But you can’t go near the unsayable — that is true of a president or a C.E.O.”

In Mr. Freston’s case, the unsayable would have been anything directly attacking Sumner M. Redstone, the Viacom chairman who removed Mr. Freston from the job after more than 20 years of building the company and its famous asset, MTV.

Ouch. You can kinda see why the unsayable is unsayable about Mr. Freston.

For the rest of you, here’s the bottom line: if you’re working for the mogul, or you’re working for moguls who are cozy with the first mogul, you can’t say the unsayable.

The job of the comedian, however, especially the purveyor of political humor, is to “move the unsaid into the said.”

Sounds easy enough.