Timing is the Key to Comity: No Joke!
This commentary appeared yesterday on the OnWord.net blog. In the spirit of entertainment, note that several of the links below will take you to video performances.
Comedians have a key area of expertise: timing. We enjoy entertainers’ mastery of this crucial aptitude, so worthy of preservation, for a couple of reasons.
First, comics get us to laugh by surprising us with an insight that illuminates something in the here and now. They hop aboard the train of thought we’re currently riding, and then they derail it.
Second, today’s jesters are avid students of the present itself. They draw their material, and construct their relationship with an audience, from what’s happening now in our heads, perhaps details in the news. They make good use of the past and the future insofar as those time frames inform our understanding of this moment.
Top comedians through the decades have bonded with us by elevating our spirits while pointing out our screwball nature and peculiarities in the truth around us. It’s no wonder that humorists keep popping up on current media panels of wisdom and punditry.
Back in the day, Don Rickles insulted his audiences outright, but he was good-natured, and most of his targets felt invited into the game, not victimized. He may not be our favorite in 2024. Nevertheless, we laughed at his jokes, and everyone rose together above the absurdity of division.
Gadflies remind us that our times are not exclusively in our hands, as Psalm 31:15 affirms. We ride our trains of thought with a mix of spontaneity, humility, and readiness for anything, having learned our earthly timelines are replete with uncertain possibilities. Somehow, we’ll get to our destination. Life is like Amtrak.
To the degree that well-intentioned comics pelt and puncture reality but still embrace and preserve it, one might say their art is conservative. If they lean toward progressivism, the art may be more difficult.
Consider late-night host Steven Colbert. Wherever the line between his real self and his TV persona has drifted during his career, he and other celebrities now use wit as a tool, and it seems more forced. Jokes “pile on” to make a point, adding more wordplay to an already established narrative. The reality they portray holds less surprise.
Partly because humor now is less free-wheeling and fun, it’s possible that America, or at least our popular culture, is losing its sense of timing. We bring our tool belts to the party instead of checking them at the door.
Progressive politics seem particularly disdainful of the present and the past, concentrating on the “cutting edge” of our timelines. There is hope in the future, our opinion-leaders say, but only if we follow certain kinds of scripts.
The future doesn’t exist yet, so our approach to it is filled with abstractions. Our discussions about it must be accompanied by an externally imposed glossary. Comics, commentators, and audiences who lean far left (or toward either endpoint of our political spectrum) prefer terms and motifs they have pre-digested, not the basic facts which flow in on internet tides.
They deem alternative scripts mistaken, requiring revision, even though these stories may contain pungent insights, fuller celebrations of reality, and plain enjoyment. Reducing the number of ideas we can safely react to risks closing not only comedy clubs, but our minds. We find we’re not “in the moment.”
These trends are not new. Back in 2015, Jerry Seinfeld said he had stopped performing on college campuses because political correctness was quashing laughter.
Students “just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” the comic told Entertainment Weekly. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
Senses of humor which have morphed from self-effacing to self-identifying can stifle the imaginations of audiences and presenters alike. Tom Lehrer, a mid-20th-century favorite of college students who has been called “the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,” told The Los Angeles Times in 2000 why he retreated from the spotlight after the 1960s.
“I stopped having funny ideas, that’s all,” said the composer of “The Vatican Rag,” “National Brotherhood Week,” and “We Will All Go Together When We Go.” He mused, “What caused that, I have no idea. Times have changed? Senility replaced adolescence? I don’t know.”
Modern (and post-modern) audiences want to be on the “right side of history.” But history does not write the stories of our lives, our families, or our sit-coms. Human beings construct them in a cosmic collaboration, from moment to moment, with help from our Editor-in-Chief.
It takes time, under conditions of creative freedom, to interpret our rapidly changing world. Without patience, grace-filled fact patterns are reduced to pre-programmed narratives.
By contrast, in a comedy club setting, observers have said the key to good timing rests in the performer’s continuous management of, and responsiveness to, the fans in attendance on any given evening.
Greg Dean, who taught stand-up for four decades, talked about this in a 2017 New York magazine article. “A successful comedian reads what each audience needs and delivers at the right time for that night’s crowd,” the author explained. As Dean put it, “The timing is in the relationship. It’s in the feedback loop.”
Aspiring truth-tellers behind the microphone—comics, expert speakers, advocates, etc.—may be canaries in the coal mine who can spot when Americans’ timing goes awry. They see up-close when audience members try to reschedule (or cancel!) our train trips. Attendees may lack interest and attentiveness, familiar encounters with diverse people and situations, or a comfort level with comments which violate their abstractions.
At worst, audience members will try to fit every “slice of life” tale from our shared stories into an oppressed-vs.-oppressor matrix or a pocket guide to some ideological future. This sort of augmented reality is valuable sometimes, but artificial intelligence cannot “read the room.”
All event participants owe it to themselves and to the presenter to make a special effort for the sharing of experiences. This is not difficult. They merely need to mix three modes: relaxing, receiving, and remembering.
This is true of conservatives and progressives alike. The feedback loop is everyone’s responsibility. Of course, the management of the story-telling process must be handled well by audience-conscious presenters, whether they’re telling jokes, giving a lecture, making a political speech, or offering their opinions in the local or global public square.
Time and timing go together. Perhaps the major revelation from the canaries is that our “common ground” is shrinking. Participants simply may not be bringing the memories and learning, the values and virtues, which can place a whole group into a zone of dialogue and discovery.
Nowadays, given America’s deficits in history and civics education, as well as changed sensibilities and the involvement of at least six age-cohorts, or “generations,” in our population, we can grasp why citizens (and non-citizens) might see each other as strangers in a strange land.
Recall the controversy that erupted last month when Politico journalist Heidi Pryzybyla cautioned on MSNBC that the idea of our rights coming from God, rather than human institutions, signals danger from a growing force she identified as “Christian nationalism.”
She surely knew unalienable rights from our Creator were a central theme in the country’s founding, but she may have downplayed the idea as an abstraction being manipulated, not a transcendent principle with personal significance held dear by numerous audience members.
We need to spend more time being “real” with each other. If we don’t, our respective bubbles of nostalgia or utopianism, floating in asynchronous orbits, will never allow for the in-sync timing—the respectful responsiveness—Americans have shown in the past.
Think of the unity we developed during World War II and the 9-11 terror aftermath. Or the spontaneous passionate outpourings—of pride after the first moon landing, of grief after school-shooting horrors. Or the whopping TV viewership of MASH and Friends finales, not to mention this year’s Super Bowl.
Nowadays, many apolitical situations look like cultural time-warps where different dimensions clash. But instead, they could become teachable moments of comity if better understood with help from historians, theologians, philosophers, other scholars, and, yes, good listeners.
For example, emotions now play an outsized role in public affairs and popular culture. This is bad timing.
We need more people behind microphones reminding us that the complex, urgent nature of today’s most crucial issues requires disciplined cooperation exercising knowledge and wisdom—rather than unrestrained emotions.
Brave presenters should also “get real” about the mental health and social-media crises which have planted atomization, narcissism, and malevolent overreaction, making our reactions needlessly volatile.
Despite government announcements of big spending and futuristic visions, we lack coordinated, coherent responses to our growing reliance upon the power grid, varied energy resources, cybersecurity and AI, uninterrupted shipments of necessities from overseas, and a sustainable, balanced economy. This is bad timing.
We need to educate and motivate more people to take responsible roles in a wide range of purposeful vocations that answer these challenges. Leaders in our families, communities, houses of worship, and media should call out “quiet quitting” and our dismissal of duties to each other and the common good. We’re hungry for guidance, but not all guidance is wise.
The know-it-all tendency which Dietrich von Hildebrand called the “cult of cognition” profusely and egotistically generates abstract ideas as solutions to concrete problems. But what we really need is a proactive simplicity—the drive to prioritize the dictates of natural law, human dignity, societal stability, and charity. In Transformation in Christ, he cites a metaphysical truism: “Simplicity is the seal of verity.” Yea, verily, common sense would set our timing aright.
Why are we injecting politics into all aspects of our lives at a time when our politicians amply demonstrate that games of power and persuasion create alternative, post-truth realities, not prudent solutions?
Why are we cultivating additional reliance on government spending at a time when the financial, functional, and moral pillars supporting our profligate version of governance have fallen into disrepute?
Why do we esteem science over religion when the Covid pandemic and technological advances show us that positivism can be misused or misinterpreted just as easily? Science, writ large, is a process for generating ever-better questions, but it would flop on any game show which asks, “Is that your final answer?”
We can imagine overly philosophical comics raising common-sense points like these at the local comedy café. They might not be funny, but they could help us make peace with the frustrations which arise on our Amtrak excursions.
Ultimately, as comic-coach Greg Dean suggests, these matters of timing must be addressed by free-thinking, free-wheeling audiences who ease on down the road, enjoying the feedback loops and course corrections.
Progressive or conservative, we all should take the opportunity for such travels, packing lots of interpersonal experience and handy humility.
Our sense of destination will be crucial to the renewal and rebound which takes place when we laugh at our incoherence. Sound beliefs will not demand that we steer toward a perfect future. Rather, a vision of success through solidarity will reward our patient pilgrimage, trusting in a Creator who inspires our steps—and permits missteps.
Popular evangelical pastor T.D. Jakes has urged us to preserve the give-and-take aptitude our best messengers model for us. “Timing is so important!” he says.
“If you are going to be successful in dance, you must be able to respond to rhythm and timing,” according to Jakes. “It's the same in the Spirit. People who don't understand God's timing can become spiritually spastic, trying to make the right things happen at the wrong time. They don't get His rhythm, and everyone can tell they are out of step. They birth things prematurely, threatening the very lives of their God-given dreams.”
Comedy club scene generated from Bing AI, using “Designer” image creator.
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