Monday, November 27, 2017

On The Moribund SensaYuma


"The first casualty when any war comes  is TRUTH."

Thus spoke US Sen. Hiram Johnson of California in 1917,  his isolationist warning soon after California sent him to Washington.

And just as this wisdom is unchallenged  among reasonable people, there is another warning about public discourse just as infallible  and trustworthy:

In a clash of greedy, lustful, solipsist  and doctrinaire politicians, the first casualty is a sense of humor.  

On the campaign trail all laughter is nasty.

We once wrote speeches for a candidate whose opponent disdainfully commented: "Ole Bud MEANS well !"

Whereupon we had our man retort: "Would my rival have me mean ILL ??"

You can imagine this sophomoric counterpunch  fell as flat as an interstate squirrel.

Which brings me to the way some of our "fine" media writers and editors display such tone deafness as to leave them prey for some of us blessed with logic, which is strangely essential in recognizing silly and funny "reaches" of the press.

It would seem impossible to find three comic,  almost meaningless constructions from the same newspaper on the same day chosen by the same website for recommendation to its loyal clickers. But that happened Monday, November 27.

Here are the headlines for New York Times stories picked by Real Clear editors as "tops":

"The Unexamined  Brutality of the Male Libido !" 

"Beijing Hinders Free Speech in America !"

"Courthouse arrests undermine Democracy !"

Each one is more exhortative ---and seems less believable. Maybe we have been somehow infused with a mental Novocain that comes with a firm realistic grasp of life because we have seen more of it than most.  But in a thoughtful, communicative and less hormonal society, the headlines and their thinly substantiated emoticontent would never make it to the consideration of a nation without any faux gravitas, and blessed with a healthy sense of humor.

Maybe that's what's missing. My favorite senators (both Democrats)  were Scoop Jackson from Washington state and Daniel Patrick Moynihan from New York. They laughed their way through the most dense outrage of their colleagues on both sides, and neither ever really tasted defeat in his own heart because of a perspective for hilarity that nonplussed everyone except a few real news reporters (like, say, David Brinkley)  who "got" the fact that the joke was on everyone else.

We'll make a pledge here.  If it doesn't have a funny-- or even silly-- point, we won't grasp it anymore. Much less treat it  to the belaboring dead horse routine.

Not too late, we find there is almost as much to laugh at as there is to cringe from.....Almost.