Washblog

A lot of you didn't grow up in Don Imus's radio market. Back in the 70's, when he was in New York, Don Imus was funny. His sense of humor was and is appalling, but with racial tension so high, there was something cathartic about Don Imus.

He was that kind of hideous, Neanderthal uncle we all knew would show up at the picnic - the one you'd watch start to drink beer with a knot in your stomach, wondering what kind of awfulness was coming when the alcohol started to loosen him up.

But Don Imus was funny. He was funny kind of in the way that Gilbert Gottfried was funny in a post-9/11 appearance when one of his bits hit a raw nerve and he "saved" himself by launching into maybe the absolute dirtiest joke ever. He deflated the anxiety by being so bad, you couldn't help but laugh.

I add this YouTube link advisedly to Gottfried's routine advisedly. Lietta Ruger, this is NOT for you. No. Seriously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGVL_reIuJM

And then comes the time when you no longer need the catharsis. Although 9/11 is not the tense subject it was, fans of Gilbert Gottfried may always like this appearance. But there Gottfried was dealing with universals - like sex and,...well...poop. Whereas Imus can't seem to stop dealing with race, which is not a Universal but an illusion

I never liked Don Imus, but I'll admit in between cringes he made me laugh a number of times. Imus was cathartic at a point when pretenses had to be dropped because divisions were unsustainable. A lot of emotion came out that was not pretty and it seemed more was always coming. Back then, we in the New York area needed to learn not to freak out every time it did.

Recently, I was surprised at the freaking out over Reverend Wright and appalled by the double standard. I still am, but this new thing with Imus has given me a new insight: maybe people just need to shut the hell up with this stuff. These "hotbutton" debates are no longer threatening - they're not even interesting.  We no longer need somebody to be cathartic. Race is not a contest. Racism has become just another banal, irritating ignorance that makes us all suffer.

It's not "daring" in any fashion to tell racist jokes or even funny. It's just annoying stupidity.

Which leads me to my race joke. I adopted my first and last race joke in 1997. It involves a true story about my hometown of Montclair, New Jersey. In 1997, Interrace Magazine - a now-defunct periodical for interracial couples - ranked Montclair the best city in America for interracial couples to live in. I remember last telling the joke as a blessed relief. It was one of those social situations that, for nobody's fault in particular, headed towards becoming very tense:

A perfectly nice group of people get acquainted with a young, white woman. There's a moment when she casually corrects an impression that she's married to a white man. Nothing offensive has been said, just an accident of language, but suddenly the silence is way too long and everything is awkward. People try to fix it, but it doesn't go well. It occurs to me there may be a way out. I ask:

"Where did you and your husband move from?"

"Alabama"

I silently thank Providence for that.

"So you came to Seattle for the weather?"

Lame, yes, but people laugh.

A few lines later, I go into the the joke.

I borrowed the joke, of course. It came from comedian Chris Rock's commentary on the magazine's announcement and I always credit him first, although I modify it slightly.  

Thus:

"You know a magazine called "Interrace" actually ranked my hometown - Montclair, New Jersey - as the number one city in America for interracial couples.

Ranked number two was 'Everywhere Else'"

The young woman let out a big laugh ("Ya'll don't know how true that is!") and things got back to normal. Soon she was showing, to a cooing crowd, pictures from her purse of a small, brown person who ranked easily in the 97th percentile of cuteness. A joke may help, but there's not a social situation in the world that can't be saved by a cute baby.

I've told the joke to interracial couples a few times and they've always laughed. Of course I always tell it in the context of total acceptance. It's just a way I've occasionally used to communicate solidarity about a pain I can't understand - either what it feels like or why it has to be felt in the first place. It's awkward to express that solidarity and jokes can be good for awkward situations. To be honest, it's not really a race joke. But for the facts of the particular story, one could substitute "gay couple" or "lesbian couple" or whatever. Ultimately, it's a hopeful sort of joke.

The hopefulness comes because the "everywhere else" keeps getting smaller. Finally, the exception and the rule won't be different enough for the joke to make any sense. Ultimately there will not be enough emotional "potential" between the two states of being to provide energy for humor. Maybe we're nearly there.

I'm really looking forward to NOT getting a laugh with that joke - or maybe not even using it again. I will be very happy to retire the joke - as happy as Don Imus should be to finally retire.

He did a good job at what he did. Fortunately, his services are no longer needed. I hope he sees it that way.