Hunger For Laughter

In the early days of live television audiences, often on the street in the Times Square area, I was approached by someone offering me a ticket to a live television show. This was at the time of such television greats as Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle, Carl Reiner. Back then, several lifetimes ago, I had a small amount of vision in one eye, enough to get around.

At these shows, someone to the side would hold up a sign which said, “Applause”. To make the program, show, host seem entertaining, the audience was supposed to laugh and applaud at any little thing. At the warmup session, before the show came on the air, we were told that the world hungers for entertainment, laughter, applause. We, as the audience, were supposed to help with the entertainment, whether the subject matter was entertaining or not.

If you have one braincell still functional, you must have wondered at times, how could this audience find this so entertaining...people laughing and applauding at the simplest things, are we really so desperate for laughter? Fact is much stranger than fiction, just the absurdities of everyday life which we observe, which we hear about are much more entertaining than anything anyone could write or imagine.

The home of Juliette Gordon Low, Savannah GA, is a national memorial, open to the public. Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts of the USA in 1912, there are approximately 2.4 million Girl Scout youth, 900,000 adults. As is the case with the Boy Scout movement, no one knows of the good that scouting has done. As with most organizations not dependent on government largess, Girls Scouts raise their own money, in their case, by selling cookies. Savannah, like most cities, has some regulations which are so stupid, for instance, Girl Scouts cannot sell cookies anywhere around the Juliette Gordon Low house (which is considered “peddling on the street”).

There are two quotes from Henry Ward Beecher which I will never forget. One, “put a handle of truth on any lie and anyone will believe it”, the other, “laughter is God's medicine, everyone ought to bathe in it.” There is nothing more refreshing to anyone, at any age, than the laughter of a child. In South Africa, I talked at length with the ambassador from Angola. This Portuguese colony had just undergone a 27-year civil war. The ambassador said there was not one building left standing, and he never saw a smile on children's faces.

I was in India after a horrendous flood, the faces of the children there were so sad, one had to look away. I think about this after an earthquake/tsunami like the one that just hit Japan. With so many deaths, so much damage, you wonder if people can ever laugh again. It is so necessary to prepare for these unexpecteds, tragedies, disasters, diseases of living. Death is a part of life. One of the most remarkable things about the human eye, the chemical composition of the tears of sadness are different from the tears of gladness; God knew there would be much of both. If, as expected, the next earthquake (and they are coming so fast and furious) will be in the northeast of the pacific fringe. There has already been earthquakes in the southeast (Chile), southwest (New Zealand) and the northwest (Japan). Life's breath consists of happiness and sadness.

There are about 100 billion pieces of junk mail delivered every year. The face of Colonel Sanders (who died in 1980) is better known, worldwide, than that of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, or even Obama. Business enterprise did not start with business schools at the university, history did not start with history classes in colleges. We, as a civilization, as people of religion and faith were handling psychological problems before the time of the psychologist and even the psychiatrist. Entire civilizations became educated before there were schools of education, the more we learn, the more things stay the same, I feel sure that Jesus Christ and his disciples were home-schooled. We have no record of Jesus laughing, but the shortest verse in scripture tells us that He wept. (John 11:35)

In our dumbed-down, politically correct, systems of news, entertainment, and even sermons, we feel no one is successful, whether pastor, professor or politician, unless they can perform as a stand-up comedian. I had one bacteriology professor who felt he was more accepted and entertaining if he gave some strange, remote epithet for every microbe. A President of the United States, number 43, felt he was more successful if he gave a stupid classless nickname to every friend, such as is common with those in the “fraternity boy “set. Such is the narcissism which runs amok in the minds of those not disabled and disenfranchised.

I found in my world travels that the happiest people were often the poorest people. I truly believe it was because they did not know any better, that there was no better for them, in their mind, physically or spiritually, ignorance is bliss. Life on planet Earth is so short, full of troubles, trials, tribulations, dirt, disease and death. We are told that God laughs (Psalm 2:4), to think that those who have so much to gain, are so intent on losing.