The Laughing God

The Laughing God

Last night Maja and I watched McCain and Obama speak at the Columbia University forum on public service. We responded as predicted, scorning McCain’s platitudes and marveling at Obama’s intelligence. One telling difference between the two (as if any sane person needed any evidence of their differences) was in their responses to questions about American Exceptionalism and community service. McCain said he believed in American Exceptionalism (and seemed to understand the concept), and went on to say that he wanted Americans to go overseas to teach people about freedom and to be an example to the world. This is in keeping with his basic attitude of unconscious superiority. My experience of foreign travel was of how much people in other countries have to teach me, about all kinds of things. Foreign travel should be an opportunity to break out of whatever national bubble one lives in. Particularly for Americans it is important to see how people live, often happily, in circumstances we would consider to be appalling. And other people in the world consider themselves to be free, freer than we are. Obama showed that he had this basic orientation to life when he talked about being a community organizer. He didn’t talk about how much he had to teach the people of the community, but rather all that he had learned from them.

 When the applause was over it was late (for me!) and I turned to go to sleep while Maja (who stays up later), watched excerpts of Sarah Palin’s ABC interview. I had not fallen asleep yet and I heard her answering questions and started to laugh. The more she talked the harder I laughed, until, inexplicably, I was unable to stop. I started to hyperventilate I was laughing so hard. The more she spoke the harder I laughed and I was laughing at the thought that she might actually be America’s president one day. That was the most hilarious thing I had ever thought of. It was so funny it made me want to vote for McCain, in the off-chance that he would become terminally indisposed, thus elevating Governor Palin to the presidency. That would be the kicker. Philip K Dick land!

America, if it elects McCain/Palin, really deserves to have her as president. It would be the final, hilarious implosion of the absurd empire, the true indication that we are hell bent on self-destruction, and that our populace has become so enfeebled that our bang and our whimper are upon us, and that the intelligent, forward thinking, serious citizens of this country can just relax, crack open a beer and watch the show collapse. It is like Claudius in I, Claudius reading the Sibylline Prophecy to mean that he was old King Log, and that he was fated to bring down Rome by putting his sociopathic, moronic child Nero on the throne. The ‘Bring it On’ Marxists are right. We should be fighting for disaster, otherwise the season will never end, it will just go on and on, dribbling away into nothingness.

Maja was angry with me. “You said the same thing about Bush, and are you laughing now?” Well, looking at Bush as he ran for president I laughed quite a bit. I still laugh when I see him at the podium. All seriousness aside, it is reasonable to wonder why this is funny at all, which brings me to my brother-in-law Karl, who some years back had a religious revelation, a revelation of what he calls The Laughing God. The way Karl tells it, he was standing on line at a supermarket and a woman ahead of him was doing something incredibly stupid (I don’t remember what). Karl is short tempered. His father, grandfather and uncle all had major heart conditions at a young age. When he gets angry, he turns bright red. He is in a constant state of exasperation. On this occasion however he pleaded with god. ‘Why god,’ he asked, ‘did you make people so stupid?’ It was a rhetorical question of course. He never expected an answer. So he was stunned when he heard the voice of god say, ‘Because I think they’re funny.’ Karl immediately thought to himself, So that’s it! God is laughing at us. It was no mistake. God made people this way for his own entertainment. And ever since, when people behave like idiots, instead of getting angry Karl laughs, knowing that human stupidity is intended to be funny. It is a cosmic perspective. Troilus, at the end of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, as he rises through the nine heavens and gazes down on the earth, realizes how absurd it all is. Walter Huston, at the end of The Treasure of Sierra Madre, as the gold blows away mingling with the desert dust, roars with laughter.

This morning on NPR I heard something that didn’t make me laugh at all. They were discussing vice presidential candidates and TV ads directed against them. One of the ads was from 1968. It is pretty famous: on the screen is text saying Spiro T. Agnew for Vice President. And the audio is of people laughing. People laughing their heads off.

I still think it would be divinely funny if Governor Palin became president of these United States. Just look at her.  Imagine that voice delivering the State of the Union Address. Imagine her smile when they pump out the last drop of oil and burn it, as 100 million starving refugees are gunned down on our beaches.