Doug Lief dlief@media.ucla.edu
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As my three -and-a-half year tenure at the Daily Bruin draws to
a close, I find myself poring over my archives of reader responses
““ disparate e-mails chronicling a career of buttons pushed. I
thought perhaps one of you could provide me with the impetus for
one last sermon, words of wisdom from parishioners of satire. Even
up to my last column, I have received the same kinds of letters,
and sandwiched between the congratulatory, the adulatory and the
desultory, was the glaring “How dare you?” It is a dare
that neither you nor I can afford to abandon.
Perhaps I am guilty of the ultimate crime in our inoffensive
sanitized society: premeditated bad taste. But I am not here to
plead my own case, nor to ballyhoo the self-evident virtues of the
first amendment. My purpose is, and always has been, not only to
bring laughter to a troubled world, but to extract laughter from
it. Distasteful jokes may be the only way to redeem the
unredeemable, to salvage some goodness from the cancerous and
unholy.
KENNY CHANG/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
I am no Martin Luther, nor Thomas Jefferson, nor even Richard
Pryor, but like all of these men, I believe that unorthodoxy is
merely another guise for adaptation. It is up to you to find your
squiggliness, your psychedelia or your Santeria, whatever lights
that you can shine on the world and alter perception. Imagine what
wonders could be wrought should we decide not to suppress our
silliness and innocence. My world is populated with cyborg-eels,
pretzel task forces, and gnomes who say “spoon” in as
many languages as possible because they love the sound of the word.
But folderol in and of itself is only static sweetness; it requires
direction.
One of the most perennial criticisms of the Viewpoint section is
its unwavering moroseness. Where is it written that we can only
discuss serious issues if we vow to glean no enjoyment from the
discussion itself? I have seen the greatest minds of my generation
destroyed by gravity, pulled into a singularity, choked off by a
necktie and muted in favor of slogans. We have been bound by the
unfounded presumption that a “harrumph” carries more
weight than “ha ha.”
A bullet leaves the barrel of a pistol and the escaping vapor
behind it produces a bang. Laughter works on a similar principle.
It can be a projectile of equal destructive power, but to allow our
fear of bad taste to be a self-justifying deterrent is to endorse
those inhuman elements that enjoy the sterile comedy of Jay Leno.
Should your skin be too thin to survive the occasional off-color
invective, then I offer you two options: evolve or die.
Why shouldn’t we roll along, laughing in the face of
tragedy? I gladly offer jokes about Sept. 11, breast cancer and
even the genocide perpetuated against my own people. Outrage at my
flippancy serves only as a litmus test for hypocrisy. You, who
lambasted me for mocking our deficient president in a time of war,
know in your heart of hearts that when someone told you a joke
about mental illness, you laughed. You, who decried my supposed
blasphemy, have mocked someone else’s faith without mercy.
Let’s laugh together instead.
I challenge you, students, professors and journalists, to
abstain from constant deconstruction, for entropy needs no
assistance to afflict our fragile world. In lieu of cold analysis,
infuse what warmth you can into your voice. Sing in your car with
the windows down. Make every word into an invitation. Tune in, turn
on, freak out.
This is no plea to turn a frown upside-down, nor am I so naive
to think that happiness, unlike any other force, can be created
from naught. What I am asking is that we abandon our preconceived
notions of acceptability in favor of risk, and to understand that
misfortune is merely an obstacle. That is not to say that we should
distance ourselves from pain with callousness and derisive mocking.
But we spend more time and energy toward avoidance than is
warranted, and we defend that investment with a zealousness that
renders us unable to tolerate any perceived threat to it. The
dirtiest word in the English language is “stifle.”
Perhaps it was my liberal Jewish upbringing, or my love of the
’60s, or a childhood warped by Dr. Demento, Gary Larson and
Berke Breathed, but what I came away with was the realization that
comedy is religion, so keep the faith.
What fools we mortals be. As long as that is the case, I want to
laugh, and for those of you who have laughed with me all these
years, thank you from the depths of my amygdala. For those of you
who haven’t, open.
Laugh till it hurts. Laugh because it hurts. Shalom.