April 02, 2010
April Fools
April 1st gives our newspaper an opportunity to issue a special edition and provide commentary, all in the name of humor. Barbs are thrown, leaders are roasted and biases overexposed. While some items really are funny and good natured, others are mean-spirited, politically motivated and even offensive. No doubt any protest against some of the articles would be met with, “Oh, it was meant as a joke, it was all in good fun.” Solomon has something to say on the subject, “Like a madman shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives his neighbor and says, ‘I was only joking!’”(Proverbs 26:18-19 NIV)
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Gail;
-----I have lived long enough to see laughter destroy a culture that only needed improvement. We began by laughing at the Little Rascals, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Mickey Mouse, I Love Lucy, the Beaver, and, oh yes, Ozzie and Harriet. (Isn’t this where we are all supposed to go, “Yuck.”) Kind of like the micro-dust particles in the air onto which moisture condenses and becomes rain, there is something about laughter that can generate attachment. I don’t understand it fully, but when the key of humor can open the door of the heart, the mind seems to open with it. Andy Griffith and Howdy Doody had us laughing at the travesties of breaking principles, values, and tradition. Our laughter at their humor opened our minds to moral rectitude. But then came the televised horrors of Viet Nam, a generation of youth smoking dope and misbehaving in the parks, and rioting in the streets. In the wake of our shock, laughter was turned against our own principles and values. Tradition became the butt of the joke as The Brady Bunch taught us there is life after fracturing families, so go ahead, make your day. Three’s Company taught us to fret neither the co-ed house nor the gay stigma. Seinfeld sprinkled in a smattering of all things profane. We no longer laugh at the ridiculousness of broken tradition, but now we laugh at the ridiculousness of keeping it. It is no accident the very phrase “Ozzie and Harriet” has become a joke in itself to carry the scorn of the traditional American family and all its old values.
-----I will never forget the evening we were watching TV as a movie was just beginning. My daughter, Erin, who was five at the time, looked up and asked me if Hollywood made this movie. I told her yes. As she turned back to the TV she exclaimed, “Well then, it’s a lie!”
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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