[guest commentary]
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Guest post by my friend Penelope Squashbuckles. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of this website. But it does make me, Melanie, laugh! 🙂
Last spring, in the midst of my anguish over the direction my country has taken following the re-election of President Trump, I found myself returning to a favorite childhood pastime: rhymes.
After reading the news each day, I’d reflect for a moment and write a silly, satirical poem, often a limerick like the one above, mocking the absurdity of the situation. There was something about the playfulness of the rhymes, the steadiness of the rhythms, and the mischief of finding just the right angle of inanity that soothed my soul. It was satisfying, and became a daily ritual.
Satire has long been a potent tool for battling tyranny and bringing down oppressive regimes around the world. From 18th century cartoons that mocked King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, to 20th century jokes deriding Soviet leaders, to caricatures of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak in the Arab Spring of 2010-2011, satire helped to expose hypocrisy and corruption that was as lavish as Brezhnev’s eyebrows.
Here’s a great example:
On his deathbed, Mubarak cries, “What will the Egyptian people do without me?” His adviser tries to comfort him: “Mr. President, don’t worry about the Egyptians. They are a resilient people who could survive by eating stones!” Mubarak replies, “Quick. Grant my son Alaa a monopoly on the trade in stones.”1
Satire serves two main purposes: to pierce the veil of invincibility that tyrants try so hard to portray, and to make us feel less afraid of speaking out. It reminds us that behind all the pomp and performance, our leaders are mere mortals, riddled with weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and shortcomings, just like us. No matter his position, his wealth, or the might of his army, each morning President Trump puts his pants on one swollen cankle at a time.
That’s a central tenet to the Christian faith: all of us are sinners in a fallen world, and only God alone deserves our worship, our adoration, our unwavering loyalty. When we see anyone else demanding or receiving that type of praise, we have a duty to call it out for what it is: idolatry. Likewise, when we encounter ridiculousness, the origins of the word itself demand that we ridicule it, beckoning satire to sashay in on a disorderly donkey and announce that not only does the emperor have no clothes, but also that his sagging, sallow flesh is covered in mysterious purple blotches as though he were pummeled by ICE agents while peacefully protesting.
The prophet Isaiah understood this contrast of human mortality and eternal divinity, and much of Isaiah 14 is an invitation to the nation of Israel to taunt their fallen tyrant whose power is dwarfed by God’s. In this sarcasm-laden passage, the people gaze upon the dead king’s worm and maggot-ridden body and ask:
In other words, “why were you afraid of this lunatic whose power could not even begin to compare with our God’s?”2
I know that for many people God has a reputation as stern, somber, and unfunny. A real party-pooper. This is a shame, because I think it’s a terrible mischaracterization (perhaps cultivated by men in power as another method to retain control over people’s behavior . . . but that’s another post).
There is a tradition in many churches to mark the Sunday after Easter as ‘Holy Humor Sunday’, or ‘Bright Sunday’ – a day of joy and laughter where practical jokes are played on one another in recognition of the ultimate practical joke that Christ played on Satan when he rose from the dead. The origins of this tradition are obscure: some say it began with the Greeks in the early centuries of Christianity, while others attribute it to 15th century Bavaria.3 No matter who started it, the idea of the ‘Easter Laugh’ (Risus Paschalis in Latin ) took hold among Christians who found humor in God’s great plan for humanity’s redemption.
I wholeheartedly agree. After all, Jesus made Satan wait three whole days before demonstrating his divine sovereignty over death – which he possessed the entire time! He waited until those who ordered his death were certain of his defeat, for their fear to dissipate, for daily life and routines and hierarchies to begin to return to normal, and then . . . KABAM! He makes a mockery of death itself, our final oppressor! I’d bet that for many of his followers, the initial shock gave way to joyous laughter as they recounted the events to one another.
Humor is a gift from God, and a wonderful weapon to disarm those who want us to believe they are faultless and all-powerful. There is a reason that President Trump is anxious to pull satirists like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel off the airwaves. But there is a secret power that comedy holds over tyranny – attempting to ban a joke makes a tyrant look petty and weak, and only amplifies the public’s desire to hear it, causing it to spread like wildfire. Sort of like . . .I don’t know . . . the Epstein files.
I have found a similar power with poetry – one tends to look rather foolish getting too worked up over a poem. Rhymes, in particular, invoke a playful creativity that, when challenged with reason and logic, only serve to make the challenger sound like a grouchy old man deflating balloons at a children’s party.
We also know that Jesus liked to play with power imbalances. We see this throughout the Gospels when he intentionally overlooks the high-ranking religious leaders of the day to fraternize with fishermen, lepers, invalids, and prostitutes (all without any allegations of sex crimes!) His harshest words were reserved for those who misused their positions of power: those at the top, not at the bottom. “Brood of vipers” is arguably Jesus’ best burn.4
For Christians there is a balance to strike between mockery for the sake of self-promotion and mockery for the purpose of calling out abuses of power. I may not always get it right, but when my time comes to meet Jesus I’d rather he say to me,
“You were a little too harsh on that man who worshipped idols, spread deceit as if it were a plague, abused women and children, shackled and detained the stranger, despised the widow and the orphan, exploited my name to manipulate millions of people, and never once expressed repentance.”
than
“Where was your voice in that dark season when the poor and the powerless were being oppressed on your doorstep? I gave you your voice to jeer at injustice and mock the merciless. Why didn’t you use it?“
So keep writing jokes, poems, parodies, and stories. Keep mocking the abuses of power. Keep laughing. There is ample material for us all.5 It’s our best weapon, and perhaps the only one that will not compromise our humanity along the way, but will actually enhance it.
Penelope Squashbuckles writes ridiculous rhymes for ridiculous times on Substack.
- https://connectedincairo.com/2012/04/07/telling-mubarak-jokes/ ↩︎
- For more on this passage, see The Art of Biblical Poetry by Robert Alter. ↩︎
- For more info on Holy Humor Sunday, see: https://www.hbgdiocese.org/easter-laughing/, and https://www.joyfulnoiseletter.com/hhsunday.asp . If you find an authoritative source on where it began, let me know!
↩︎ - Matthew 12:34 and 23:33, aimed at the scribes and Pharisees ↩︎
- Some of my favorites include Alexandra Petri’s column in The Atlantic, The Borowitz Report with Andy Borowitz, and The Onion. ↩︎
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