Partisan Politics

by Horace J. Digby

Last year I joined a group of humor columnists. We meet somewhere cyber space (no parking meters to feed).

This fellowship, of writers who had abandoned all forms of honest work, promised great benefit to the members friends and families. To the extent they had not already abandoned us, our loved ones would enjoy a respite from our continuing struggle to improve the "knock knock joke," as we Knights of this Algonquin Round Table in cyber-space verbally joust with each other instead of with them.

Recently there has been a change of tempo of this brave little Camelot. Some members are posting aggressively rancorous diatribes in support of various political beliefs.

At first it was amusing that established humor columnists could totally miss the irony of arguing over the insanity of our national political system. Sure, we are on the brink of disaster. Sure we all need to support our president, right or wrong. Sure our president lacks the oratory skills of say, Winston Churchill and the literary skills of Homer (or for that matter Homer Simpson), but these are the facts. It falls on the humorist to make fun of these facts. Let others deny they exist, or try to spin them into fool's gold.

It was bad enough when our Supreme Court became partisan. They preside over our nation's highest court of law. But humor columnists have a higher calling. They preside over our nation's highest court of public opinion.

Art Buchwald, who, according to the flyleaf on one of his books, spent decades chronicling our leaders' foibles, "in the elegant tradition of Oscar Wild and Snoopy," was asked where he got ideas for his columns.

"I steal them from the newspapers," Buchwald admitted, ". . . whatever is on the front pages is far funnier than anything I could possibly make up."

When I worked in communications for a major corporation I was asked to photograph ceremonies surrounding installation of a new American Flag at their corporate headquarters. Cultural conditioning and lack of experience as a photographer nearly caused me to join in the flag salute. Fortunately it occurred to me that if I saluted the flag, there would have been no one to record the image of our corporate president, our chairman of the board and whoever that fellow was in the expensive top coat, with hands over their hearts, observing that solemn but joyous ceremony (and photo op).

Humor columnists, like photographers, must observe and to report what they see. If we join in the ceremony or become part of the photo op, who will record the image?

The United States is a bold experiment in self leadership. Our founding fathers knew this. They also knew it would work best if we all remained mindful of our own shortcomings and those of our chosen leaders. Men like Franklin, Lincoln, Kennedy and Reagan realized that the sharpest arrow in their quiver was often their sense of humor. These men led our nation in war and in peace, with a clear eye, and with the honesty to laugh at life's perplexing ironies, even when those irony pointed at themselves or their most cherished beliefs.

We, as humorists, should do the same. We should learn from this lesson. We, as Americans, can not afford to let Art Buchwald down.

-- Horace J. Digby

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