Man’s ability to laugh stamps him as a human being just as surely as his bent toward thinking and creating. He is not only homo sapiens and homo faber; he is (or can be) homo ridens. This raises a question -- what ever became of the men who created laugher? Have they disappeared?

True, the situation “comedies” of TV still come out like XEROX copies of the same old gag: women are sly, men are stupid. True, speakers tell jokes but they read like commercials. True, the renowned comedians of our age are available like tap-water, but always at an unexciting room temperature. The old “sick” jokes died a merciful death; but the malignancy could be localized more in the teller’s mind than in the jokes themselves.

But there is Art Buchwald, whom Georgians can read every day in his column and whose book is entitled “...And Then I Told The President (the Secret Papers of Art Buchwald).”

Buchwald is the solid American tradition of Mr. Dooley, Coolier’s Uncle Henry, Will Rogers, the early Stoopnagle and Bud and a few others. I respectfully submit that most of today’s funny men read and sound like telephone books compared to these. How can they beam in on the chuckle and the belly laugh when one eye is chasing Nielson Ratings?

Humor Has A Pulse

Most anthologies of humor are pretty deadly diets. You need the teller’s gleam or the writer’s intimacy. Mr. Dooley, separated from the mixed emotions of the American scene of 1898, does not strike the spark he did when he said to his foil, “Mr. Hennessy -- ‘Tis not more than two months since ye larned whether the Philippines were islands or canned goods.’” Or, in 1924, when he discussed the “Dimmycrat” platform:

“What will our platform be like? I don’t care. No wan iver reads a platform but th’ boy that wrote it. The Dimmycrat platform this year will be wan instince: ‘We p’nt with pride to th’ rotteness iv th’ Raypublicans!’ We’re goin’ to appeal on their record.”

Dated? Dialect? Sure, but not dull to anyone who loves American politics with all its vices and absurdities. Will Rogers’ columns of the 1920’s would fall flat today, but it’s my guess that Rogers writing for today’s newspapers would be as sharp as Buchwald.

Buchwald has the knack of slyly taking on big themes -- the president, foreign policy, liberals, conservatives, -- and reducing them, right out loud, to their human, often uproarious dimensions. He is as gentle as a steak knife, and about as lethal. He is not afraid of social and moral themes, but no one will ever call him a crusader. His crusades march on neither intellect nor to heart. They concentrate on the funny bone that links the two.

“Is Heaven Segregated?” Upon hearing Governor Wallace state, “God made you and me white, he made others black. He segregated us,” Buchwald left the proposed blasphemy to the theologians and injustice to the courts. Instead he got to thinking, “maybe there are two heavens.” He speculated on the project:

“I’m not sure the white heaven would be such a heaven without Negroes. First, there are an awful lot of white sheets to wash. Secondly, in order to really have a nice heaven, you would have to keep it immaculately clean. This is work the Southerners depend upon the Negro for.”

“Presumably, even in heaven there are crops to be harvested and meals to be cooked... and doors to open and cars to park... and shoes to be shined and garbage to be removed, and without Negroes the Segregationists would have to do it themselves...you wouldn’t call it very much of a heaven.” Buchwald, obviously sensitive to Wallace’s dilemma, comes up with this consoling answer: “If there are two heavens in the hereafter, one for whites and one for blacks, I believe, if I was a segregationist, I’d rather go to hell.”

Who’s On First?

The rash of Pope John jokes (most of them probably invented) was a tribute to the dearly human traits of a man who could say of the Papacy -- “Here I am at the top of the heap, and the end of the rope.” It reminds us of Pope Pius IX as he presided at the opening of the First Vatican Council in 1869: “When the Council ends, I do not know whether the pope will be infallible, but I do know he will be broke.”

Christianity does not teach humor; it presupposes it. Any religion that can propose to frail man that he will be lifted out of this grim routine to the glory of the children of God needs a philosophy of homo ridens as well as homo sapiens. A good sense of humor is but the expression of a good sense of balance. Man is saved in spite of himself!

The Christian joke is on us!

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta