savethehumans.com
Shock therapy for planet Earth.
Back to: home last page

Life in These Fucked-Up United States
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Idiots

Printable Version

by Jason Roth

For someone who considers himself a humorist, we are not living in an easy time. And no, it's not just because "humorist" makes someone sound like a pompous prick who deserves to be chained to the inside of a septic system rather than be permitted to spout clever allusions to ancient history or painfully charming anecdotes about what some politician was overheard saying at the cocktail party celebrating the opening of the new celebrity drug rehab center, all masquerading as "humor" due to their complete lack of intellectual content. (As if humor were simply anything that's not serious.)

These are difficult times for two reasons. First, on any given day one chooses to make a joke, the thought of two skyscrapers full of people crashing to the ground has already entered one's head at least once. Somehow, the utter vulnerability of one's country and the threat of imminent death by maniacal religious assholes doesn't provide the most preferable fuel for cranking out wisecracks. And the act of silently repeating "or the terrorists will have won" like a mantra or a pep-talk from a bargain-basement motivational speaker just doesn't cut it. The words "we need to move on" or "we can't stop living our lives" doesn't seem to fully succeed in wiping away the permanent redesign of the greatest cityscape in the world. If the world was fucked up before September 11, it sure ain't Atlantis now.

The second reason these times are not conducive to humor, or even to human speech for that matter, is that everything worth saying is completely obvious.

"We need to kill the people who want to kill us."

Isn't that the only thing worth saying? How many times does it have to be said, and how many ways can it be said? If the deaths of 3,000 people doesn't cause some people to reflect on the state of the world and to identify the proper course of action for a free country to take, what words will do so? And what purpose do the words have when they are only comprehended by those who already agree? Of what value is a collective sulk-fest or bitch-and-moan session? We already have enough reminders of our potential demise. Do we need more, even if they're spun with a little wit? There is no place for a court jester in a war.

Or is there?

Somehow, Bob Hope made a career out of it. I guess you can't fight the war all the time. And it just so happens that we're pretty lucky in this respect. Not only are we not fighting all the time, we're barely fighting at all. That leaves plenty of time for the stage shows and wisecracks.

Maybe it's time to go back to this website's mission statement. That is: acknowledge that our ship is sinking, and have one last jam session before the goddamn saltwater short-circuits all the guitar amps. And what the hell, if we spot a rescue ship off in the distance, we can always fire off the flare gun once in a while.

It's not going to be easy at first. This kind of shit takes a serious attitude adjustment. We need to focus on the positives. You know, the ones that haven't been blown up yet. Like Barbara Streisand, for example.

I don't know about you, but I'm sure as hell glad Barbara Streisand wasn't trapped in a World Trade Center bathroom while dousing her nose with a half-kilo of powder. I'm selfish that way. I enjoy people's stupidity. Sure, I'd laugh if Saddam shot a fucking missile directly at her house, and oops, she happened to be in her private recording studio practicing for a Democratic fund raiser. No joke. That would be seriously funny. But would I really want to be deprived of her idiocy from that moment on? Hell, no.

Back in fifth grade, when a kid named Leeland was about to leave the class to move away with his family to some unknown town, I think I was the only person in the class who was actually mildly depressed. Did I like Leeland? (I shit you not, that was his name.) No, I didn't like him, per se. At least, not in the sense of "Hey, look out, Leeland, there's a big truck coming!" But I did like him in another, deeper sense. He amused me. Amusing, as in the Joe Pesci "You think I'm funny? Funny how?" sense of the term. I don't think the rest of my fifth-grade class fully appreciated Leeland's value. (Why do I think that? Maybe it was because the entire class applauded as he left the classroom.) His ridiculousness was about to be gone forever from my life. What a shame.

See, we're taught to stop and smell the roses, but we hardly, if ever, hear anything about stopping and laughing at the idiots. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a world without idiots. What am I going to make fun of? Imagine having to sit around every day, just waiting for some non-idiot to fuck up and do something truly idiotic. I'd pull my fucking hair out.

Thank God, my hair loss can come as a result of purely natural causes. Idiots are in abundance down here.

Hmm... I wonder if that means God was an idiot Himself? He did make us in His image, didn't He? Then again, we're not all idiots. Maybe there are two Gods. Maybe God has a slightly slower younger brother. Maybe God created the smart people, and God's retarded brother created the idiots.

I wonder if the platypus was God's retarded brother's idea.

Back to: home last page