Tax Information And Guide

The Political Humor Primer

Date 10/19/2001 12:00 AM | Topic: Opinion

Have you always heard political humor and wished you could participate? Watched sex scandal after sex scandal pass you by without making a single dress stain joke? Wanted to rattle off topical bon mots with Craig Kilborne-like fluency? Want to pepper your conversations with political quips, but don't want to actually learn anything about politics? Well, want no more, citizen! Political humor is not only side-achingly hilarious but also accessible to even the most uninformed. Just peruse this handy-dandy guidebook, just like those used by such hip, cutting-edge comics as Jay Leno and Rosie O'Donell, and begin your journey down the "campaign trail" of humor.

LESSON 1: GEORGE W. BUSH

"Bush is dumb." Were there ever three words that did more to uplift the human spirit? "Christ is Risen?" Nope. "Free at Last?" Uh-uh. "Paper or Plastic?" Hardly. Remember those three words and you'll be able to toss off brilliantly subversive zingers like so many brightly-colored superballs. Combine this with spelling and pronouncing his name "Dubya," an incisive and incredibly original moniker, and you'll be a walking, talking, ill-conceived Saturday Night Live skit. And if your audience for some reason doesn't find you funny, they're probably evil and Republican, so it doesn't matter. And I can't stress this enough: you don't need to know about his position on the issues to make these jokes. Why should you? Bush (or, still better, Dubya) is dumb!

LESSON 2: BILL CLINTON

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton was President a long time ago. But don't worry, Clinton jokes are still as fresh as next week's Crispitos. Clinton jokes are somewhat more advanced than Bush jokes, so be sure you've already mastered Lesson 1. Clinton jokes require a basic knowledge of sexual vocabulary, so I'd suggest you consult either "The Dictionary of American Slang" or "The Complete Works of Sir Mix-A-Lot" to brush up. The mantra you must memorize if you're to properly roast Bill is "Clinton can't keep his fly zipped." This is a reference to a little known scandal from the late 1990s. Other possible topics, only for use by advanced students, include pot-smoking, draft-dodging and Big Mac consumption.

LESSON 3: CONGRESS

A tough nut to crack. On the surface, it would appear that you'd actually have to know something about Congress to make a joke about it. I mean, Congress is an institution rather than a easily pigeon-holed caricature. I can't offer much help here, except to say you might want to come up with something about that one guy with the intern with the weird name who, like, died or something.

LESSON 4: FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Are you kidding? Who wants to hear about that? Only the seriously wrong and demented in our society. Unless you can come up with an insulting misspelling of the name of whichever country America's currently bombing or said country has a particularly stupid-looking national costume, don't even think about messing up your repertoire with foreign political humor.

See how easy that was? Now you're prepared. Go forth, my child, and use your new-found skills to brighten call-in radio shows, dinnertime conversations and even back pages of college newspapers.

--

Sam Meyer
Chips Oracle

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