Laughing My Head Off
True, the world’s news always seems grim. Even in the good old days, circa 1983, Canadian songstress Anne Murray recorded the song, “A Little Good News,” a plaintive lament saying, “One more sad story’s more than I can stand,” and wishing for a day when there’s “nothing bad to say.”
That day still has yet to come. Wars, poverty, inflation, crime and Covid politics daily threaten to undermine society and social order. We tend to think that most of us simply want to wake up healthy, go to work, have some love and find a little happiness. But the news is always terrifying, likely raising our blood pressure and heart rate. What to do? Well, if you can’t change the news, then change your response to it. You have to see the humour.
Take for example the university professor who announced to a crowd of students that Hamas’s atrocities, killing 250 children, young adults and families while mutilating forty babies, for being guilty of the sin of being Jewish and in Israel, was “a little good news” for him. “I am exhilarated,” he said into a megaphone to the crowd of listening students. “I feel exhilarated,” he intoned, managing to find joy in a day of infamy. And we could likewise find humour in this: for generations now, we believed that higher education was the remedy for the wages of poverty. President Biden wants to forgive student loans because he values university degrees and turning out even more such degreed elites. But listening to this professor’s inhumanity, we might consider that underwriting trade schools for plumbers instead, might be a better investment. Plumbers, at least, help to get rid of societal excrement instead of creating it.
A few days ago, President Biden visited the Middle East to show American resolve and support for Israel. Also, Hamas had kidnapped some of his citizens and killed others, but nevertheless he wanted to give Gaza humanitarian aid even though he can’t guarantee it won’t find its way into the hands of Hamas, not even using the aid as a bargaining chip for the release of the 250 hostages. One of his staff said that they despite not being able to have oversight, they were confident that Hamas wouldn’t deprive their fellow Palestinians by appropriating the aid. Right!
President Biden then turned his attention to Iran, the country that refers to America as “the great Satan,” threatening to destroy it along with the little Satan, Israel. Those names are kind of creative themselves. They have a nice, light, comedic touch. To accomplish such lofty goals, Iran is racing to build nuclear weapons, yet the Biden administration continues the Obama appeasement policy. It has given Iran billions of dollars which, in part, has been used to enable Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel. This requires, in turn, that America sends aid to help Israel defend itself. Logic says that the U.S. could save itself a great deal of money by cutting aid to Iran in the first place. As a foreign policy, what could be more humorous than funding your enemies, enabling them to kill you?
In that same televised speech, President Biden dramatically warned Iran to stay out of the war, “Don’t … Don’t…Don’t,” he repeated, pausing for emphasis between each “don’t.” Surely that’s enough to scare the bejeezus out of anyone. And surely, listening to that masterful threat, the Ayatollah must have burst out in gales of laughter. “Put away the rockets away men and stand down. President Biden has warned us!”
Back in America, at Harvard University, elite of the elite, local chapters of the SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) cheered on Hamas, calling for a day of resistance and protest. But wasn’t it their brethren who attacked Israelis in the first place? Shouldn’t it be Israelis calling for days of rage and protest? The essence of a punch line is that it is the opposite of what you might expect, making the SJP call for Palestinian rage, comic. Apparently several businessmen were so shocked they announced that they couldn’t imagine hiring SJP graduates, who then played the victim card. The entire incident gives a new meaning to the cachet of being known as a “Harvard Man.” Put that on your curriculum vitae.
The latest insanity occurred several days ago when media announced that Israel had bombed a Gazan hospital and up to five hundred people were killed. TV screens showed the human carnage. Never mind that this was an unconfirmed report by Hamas, which has been notorious over the years for pranking the media, the world and legacy media jumped on it. The esteemed Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said that it was “unacceptable.” Aside from the fact that “unacceptable” is such an overused, unimaginative, weak word carrying no weight of moral authority whatsoever, the PM yet again rushed to judgment, as he is wont to do. It becomes clearly evident each day since that Israel didn’t do it. Apparently it was the hospital parking lot that was hit, not the hospital itself, and it was destroyed by an errant, Islamic Jihad missile launched near the hospital, a favourite Hama strategy, thereby endangering its own people. This is, dare I say it, “unacceptable!” Trudeau is still holding off exonerating Israel because that will only further condemn himself and his so called moral stance of neutrality. And so the west is once again pranked by Hamas. The humour is, can we also say, “exhilarating.”
Of course, there are many more sources of humour, such as this from Toronto, where many projects like the South Riverdale Safe Injection Site for drug addicts have caused a sharp increase in crime, endangering formerly peaceful neighborhoods. Placed one block away from an elementary school, South Riverdale put up a sign encouraging residents to pick up spent, dangerous needles scattered in the area and around the school playground, in return for a chocolate reward. Kids love chocolate. The South Riverdale staff creatively called the needles Sharps, which indeed they are, so safe injection sites are, ironically, not safe. For anyone, including children.
And finally, world leaders constantly jet to conferences in distant locations, burning thousands of gallons of aviation fuel in order to discuss reducing the use of those very same fossil fuels, to fight climate change. They seem oblivious to the irony. No Zooming for these people, they must be present and meet together to get the work done, though Zooming was a fine way of learning for the children in elementary school who could not be present and work together to learn and develop socially during the year and a half of the Covid Pandemic. How do you square that circle? On the other hand, forced to stay home, the children were in no danger from collecting Sharps.
There’s so much more humour in the news, but I must stop; the constant laughing is killing me, and I need to wipe away the tears from my eyes.
That's a bad thing to be today....
Thanks for reading...
Great article but are you not afraid of being apologist for Israel. You make too much sense.