Episode 1

The Sanity of Satire

Featuring	Al Gini, Professor Emeritus; Abe Singer, Assistant Professor
Description	Assistant Professor Abe Singer and Professor Emeritus Al Gini discuss their latest book “The Sanity of Satire.” From Mel Brooks to John Oliver, we explore the roles of satire and satirists in our society.
Listen	Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Season	Bonus

Transcript

Speaker1: From the Loyola University Quinlan School of Business. This is the Q Talks podcast. 

Rick Sindt: Welcome to Q talks. I'm Rick Sint and today we are joined by Assistant Professor of Business Ethics Abe Singer and Professor Emeritus Al Gini to discuss their recent book, The Sanity of Satire Surviving Politics One Joke at a Time. Alan. Abe, thank you for joining us today. 

Al Gini: Pleasure to be here. 

Rick Sindt: So it isn't often that a book, this colloquial, let's say, has two authors. I used to seeing multiple authors on more academic works, very heady and wordy things. So how did this collaboration come about between the two of you? 

Abe Singer: Honestly, it came about mainly because I'd say so when we started out I was still a full time professor at the university, and though our conversations probably should have focused on professional academic things, on business ethics, on teaching, on publication or whatever, it would almost always inevitably just turn to like us telling jokes and doing shtick and talking about stand up comedy. It's a common, common love of ours. And Al, of course, has written other books, sort of more popular books, one of which--the last one he wrote--was on humor. But he didn't write anything really about satire, about political comedy, per se. And we figured that, well, you know, if we're going to talk about comedy, we might as well write about it. And so that's sort of the genesis of the book. Al did I miss anything? 

Al Gini: You got it right. In fact, I actually know the moment of its birth. I was still chairman at the time. No. Yeah, no. I was still chairman of the Division of Ethics. I was no longer chair of the department, but I would always bring wine. That was the only way I got people to show up in a room. Right? And we're sitting around after the meeting, talking and pouring wine. And I had this contract on my desk and I was running out of gas. And I just, you know, so I looked across at Abe and I said, hey, you were talking to someone else and you wanted to write a book on political satire. I've got to sign this contract. Tell you what. Yeah, sure. And then I signed the contract and I sent it in, and then we met the next day and literally in 4 hours kind of mapped out what we were going to do, segregated a couple of things. And then Abe tasked me to write what became the intro chapter after we agreed on the thesis, and it was a collaboration of humor and genuine bonhomie. We were having fun and so it became a fun project. 

Rick Sindt: I'm also very interested in the process. So with the exception of Chapter six, it's quite difficult to tell your voices apart. So what was the writing process like as you were making this book? 

Abe Singer: So we designated certain chapters that would each be ours, and some of those ended up getting blended. So there were, I think at first four or more chapters and they all got sort of folded in together at some point. But then after we would write whichever chapters we were going to write, then the other would look over and rewrite and so I'd look at Al's things and I changed some wordings around and add some stuff and all of that. So I think that's why it ends up being and I think we were both surprised at how fluid and sort of coherent it comes out in terms of voice, in terms of having one voice. 

Al Gini: Yeah. And I think part of it was we never disagreed on a thesis or topic. We never said, Oh, no. Well, in one place we did. But we turned that into a real part of the chapter. You take one side and I'll take the other side, but we always agree on the topic. And then, surprisingly, not only do we have the same sense of humor, we have the same sensibility about writing. And so it was easy to edit each other. And in the edits you couldn't tell where one began, one left off. No matter if I was editing Abe or Abe, it was editinging me. So it became a mutual admiration society again. To think about the title of my other book, the "Why We Need More Jokes in Our Lives", because we had these jokes in our lives because we were concerned about jokes and humor. It became really an avocation or more than a avocation, an experience of joy. 

Rick Sindt: So I do want to get to the chapter that you guys took different stances soon, but I think perhaps first we should probably like lay a little bit of groundwork. So can you talk to us about how for this book, what was your thesis? How do you define satire in this book and how it functions in society? 

Al Gini: If you don't mind? Abe, I just like to start by saying we wanted to make a distinction between satire and simply joke-telling or entertainment. And I think an easy metaphor for the jokesters of my age group, the Jack Benny's of the World, the Bob Hope's of the World, the Carl Reiner's of the world, the Mel Brooks of the world, except Mel Brooks is in both camps were entertainers. They showed up on stage with a tuxedo, they told a joke. There was set up a delivery punchline, and that was about and in that entertainment there was diversion, there was pleasure, there was escapism. There were lots of things that could happen just to get away from life. But satire is another animal. Satire is about people telling a joke to make a larger point. And our model here is Lenny Bruce, who is not only part of this, he came up as a comic but became a satirist. And there's even a play about him right now says I am not a comic, that Lenny Bruce told stories that were not always funny. But when he told a funny story, it wasn't just for the laugh. It was to say something social-political that he thought should be changed. 

Abe Singer: Yeah. And so so we have this insofar as there's like a strong thesis to the book, right? So one is that satire is the special form of comedy that has certain, certain characteristics. And then the other aspect which is covered in the chapter, Satirical Animals, is the idea that satire is inevitable in a political society. That is, if we're going to live in society with one another, we are inevitably going to be engaging in satirical digs and barbs of the political society we live in, and of the people who have power and that society. And we sort of argue that that's sort of just a natural consequence. And if you look at it that way, then satire becomes a core feature of human sociality, right? We are we sort of naturally strive to live in community with one another. But then because that community is always going to be imperfect and full of absurdities, we're also naturally always going to be inclined to make fun of it, right? So we are, to play on Aristotle's famous idea that we are political animals, we argue that because of that we're satirical animals. 

Al Gini: Yeah, yeah. And we could see that in lots of ways. And I already mentioned Mel Brooks. I think he's a wonderful example. Mel Brooks said in an interview when he was 93, which he was performing on stage, and we couldn't drag him off because he was enjoying it so much, that Blazing Saddles was to be funny. You know, the farting shot where everyone ate the baked beans was to be funny. It was after humor. But the producer's was his dig against Hitler. The producers was, I'm alive, you're dead. The Hell With You. Was a satirical comment about, you know, about that time and that period and what happened to his own people. And so I think that's the real difference. I think now we see comics that are either-or, but there are also people that are both. 

Abe Singer: Though what's interesting about Blazing Saddles is I think Mel Brooks might have seen it that way. But of course, one of the writers on Blazing Saddles was Richard Pryor. And Richard Pryor was being satirical. Yeah, right. And if you think about the sheriff character and you think about the way race gets played out, there is there's real satire of American race relations and the way it gets discussed or doesn't get discussed in cinema and popular culture embedded in Blazing Saddles. You know, it's still funny. It's still mostly just funny. But even in that, I mean, even, you know, I'm not going to say like sitting around a campfire, eating baked beans and farting is like the height of satirical comedy or something like that. But that movie is still full of, I think, satirical wit. 

Al Gini: And he also suggested that humor and satire come in and out. And Lenny Bruce was not fun anymore to watch. Lenny Bruce became over the top. It became a cause of himself and lost an audience that he once had in his hands because he was too strident about it. But I think Brooks understood that humor is healing. Humor is fun. Humor is entertainment. Humor is telling a story, making a dig, so on and so forth. In fact, he was talking about seeing the first production of The Producers. It's a very serious film, you know, and but the play and the second film are really so over the top and made to be satirical. Springtime for Hitler and Germany will well, to the day I die, be my understanding of the greatest putdown ever of the Nazi Party. 

Rick Sindt: Yeah. In your book, you start quite rapidly talking about an age that we are on our way out of, which is the Trump presidency and the way that impacted comics. So I'd like to talk about that a little bit. Specifically, you guys focus on people who have like chaired The Daily Show, like Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert and the role that their satire has had in informing public opinion in a way. You even say that after the United States found itself embroiled in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Stewart became one of the best known and most listened to voices of dissent against the administration and the media apparatus that refused to hold it accountable. So I'd like to talk about those people for a little bit. How they held folks in power accountable. Why do you think they gained such popularity? 

Abe Singer: You know, so somewhere in the book, we say that Jon Stewart, along with Dave Chappelle, are two most important comedians of the 21st century, the young 21st century. And with Jon Stewart, I mean, it's a while now since, you know, it's been a long time since then. But, you know, following 911 and during the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, you had a lot of mainstream journalists who sort of fell in line with the sort of political causes of the day. Right? So it became, you know, we need to go to Afghanistan. We need to know the video of the towers collapsing was being played over and over again. And it sort of created this lack of inquisitiveness, this lack of investigatory insight or instinct maybe. And Jon Stewart, who before then there was like a political quality to The Daily Show, but it was more silly. Still insanely funny, but there was slightly less of an edge to it. And after that, it took on this edge, I think, precisely because, Rick, as you were suggesting, the major news outlets weren't doing their job to some extent or they weren't pressing the president, they weren't pressing the administration on the way in which we were responding to terrorism or the specter of terrorism in various ways. So I think that was that that is a crucial part of the story. What's interesting is with the Trump presidency, it was almost the exact opposite that sort of spurred on the importance of late-night shows. That is, it wasn't. Oh, we need to fight against the news outlets falling in line with the president. It became more of, "Well, the president is going to do something ridiculous and we are going to jump on it", right? That's going to be the news. That's going to be the trip. And basically, all comedy became for four years a response to the absurdity of the week. 

Al Gini: Right. Lewis Black said, 'I'm going to stop being a comic. I'm stop being a writer because it's not fun anymore. And besides, how can you beat the front page of the paper? And all you have to do is read that opening line or read the tweet of the day. And you've got to show' and I think even Jon Stewart was a comic, a real comic. And he said long before the show became totally satirical, that comedy is really the narratives we create to better understand reality. And then he put that to put the politics. I think Abe will agree with me on this and that he realized it wasn't fake news. He was making fun of real news and looking for the absurdities of real news. And I think that that that becomes the real purpose of satire all the way back to the Greeks when people were making fun of Socrates, you know, and Athens, to making fun of life, to a better understand life. And one of the definitions we have is satire. Satirists are militant contrarians, and certainly Jon Stewart is a militant contrarian and his successor now almost doesn't try to be funny it listening to listening to the show now with help me again Abe what's the pardon? 

Abe Singer: Trevor Noah. 

Al Gini: Trevor Noah. I'm so sorry. I've seen Trevor Noah before it became Trevor Noah in South Africa, twice performing at clubs. He was very, very funny. I saw him on the road before he came onto the show and he was just a comic. But this guy has now turned into a little seminar on what's wrong with the news today. But it's a way to talk about reality without just preaching, without just the edge, with enough humor to take a breath, laugh at it, and maybe think about it. 

Abe Singer: Yeah. I mean, I think in some ways the difference is, you know, I still think Trevor Noah is pretty funny and he's incredibly smart. I think just in general, I think there's there's like a certain type of sincerity in the political beliefs or a certain type of self-seriousness that most people have that means that when we're making fun of these things, we can't ever lose the point. And the point is that Trump is dangerous which I'm not arguing with, right? Whether that was good for comedy or not is a different story. I've come to think that it hasn't it wasn't very good for comedy the past four years. It made comedy probably easier for various people. And we saw some great comedy, but I sort of think like Rick, we were talking before we started recording that like the late night shows are less funny since since January. And I sort of feel like it's like one of those teams that has something going and then they get a superstar on the team and they build their offense around it. Right? So Cleveland gets LeBron and then the offense gets built around LeBron and then LeBron leaves and then it's like, Well, we don't know how to play anymore without LeBron James on the team. 

Al Gini: Yeah. 

Abe Singer: And I sort of feel like it's like, well, for four years, this was how we this was the script we made fun of Trump Right? And now he's not there. That what we do right? Like and what I wish would people would do is like what you should do, which is make fun of Biden, you know, make fun and make fun of Kamala Harris, make fun of those people, too, because they, you know, even if not nearly as tragic or dire, they have problems and shortcomings that ought to be satirized and held. 

Al Gini: And an example of that is Saturday Night Live, which from day one or year one of their existence, they had one male character impersonating the president. Now, the whole show wasn't political, as it's turned out to be now, but rather some bit in the show, you know, and Chevy Chase played Jerry Ford and it's gone all the way up. Every president, including now the Emmy Award-winning Baldwin and doing Trump so over the top is incredible. And Jim Carrey even doing Biden already, he says he's not going to do it anymore because it's too easy for him and he doesn't want to get caught in it. But they weren't political shows as such. They were just making fun of this public figure. And if you're a public figure, you're open to that kind of satire. You're open to that kind of mimicry, you're open to that kind of thing. But I think real political satirists are not just trying to find the joke. They're trying to find a joke with a bar. They're trying to say something larger than the joke that maybe you'll remember because of the joke. 

Rick Sindt: This is going back in the conversation a little bit, but I think you guys can help me out. Something I've had trouble squaring with is thinking about folks like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, John Oliver. There was a moment in time where I thought that they were perhaps rising to the occasion, stepping in where journalism, the fourth estate was failing us, being more inquisitive, like you mentioned, Abe. But then I always think back to when and you mentioned this in the book, when Jon Stewart went on CROSSFIRE and basically was like, 'This isn't my job. This is your job, why aren't you doing your job?'. So I'm wondering if you guys have any thoughts on that. Like, it seems like a satirist is a part of it but also can keep a remove. 

Abe Singer: I mean, so this is that's a that's actually a really good question and gets at a real tension here that I think is important which is. So somebody like Jon Stewart stepped in and did, you know, Murrow Esque type opinion journalism from time to time in a way that that warrants that title. But I think what Stewart is getting at, and this ties to other themes that we talk about in the book, is if we think of the comedian as a certain type of role or a certain type of--this makes it sound way more official or something--but like as an office of sorts, right? Where you step in when you're a comedian, you're on stage, you're acting in a certain way for specific purposes, for specific reasons. And if you're occupying that role, your commitment to the joke, right? Your commitment is to the laugh. Now, you might think you want to do it in certain ways. You might want to attach it to other things. But ultimately, if you're a comedian, you're not making people laugh, you're not doing a good job at comedy. And the way I would maybe make sense of Stuart going on CROSSFIRE and I hadn't realized it till you put the question like that, Rick, is he's saying, like, look, I'm taking on this job because I don't think you guys are doing it, but I'm also fundamentally, dispositionally, not appropriate for this task. Right? Like, I can't actually do this job the way it needs to be done. A) Because I don't have the I'm not trained as a journalist. I'm not I don't know how to do it. And B) I have this whole other thing that I'm doing right? It's like asking a coach of a football team to be the mayor to run the city because the mayor isn't doing their job. Now, the coach can do it, step in and do it. But ultimately the coach is the coach and the coach is thinking like a coach, not like a fucking mayor, excuse me. And in some way, you get something similar here where Stewart is saying like, yeah, like, sure I can, I'm doing some of this stuff, but that's I'm not the right person for this job. 

Al Gini: Right? I'm only seeing the funny part. I'm seeing the funny part. You guys got to talk about the political part and the guy who's right in the middle right now. I don't know. I just think about to say I think I think Oliver treads both ways. Oliver, some of his shows are so didactic, so exact on a criticism of a real cause, a real issue that he almost has to insert a joke at the end of the long syllogism or that he's making on another issue to make it seem palatable to keep going on. And that becomes hard to take that's what happens. Lenny Bruce, at the end, he was too hard to take and it wasn't as funny. I'm not equating I'm not equalizing them in any way except that Oliver sometimes is moving towards that. But he has a real he says, I only talk about real things and I try to make fun of real things. And so he's still safe. But there are levels and there are levels. And I think that what Abe was talking about is he came on the show and said, I see what's funny in this and I see what's absurd in this, and that's what I talk about. But you're supposed to be able to delineate all the other factors. I'm not supposed to do that. I'm the comic. I'm the clown. You're the reporter, right? 

Abe Singer: Exactly. Yeah. I think John Oliver, I think he does a really good job. And if you're politically not in favor of Oliver, then you're not to be impressed by him. Right? But I think I'm genuinely generally impressed by his commitment to and ability to straddle the line and do both things. So the process he's talked about this in some interviews is they do they research the story and they do that and then they add the jokes, then they find the humor. So it really is like, well, we're going to take a journalistic angle and then flip it to be comic. A lot of times the comedy comes in is just sort of absurd aside. So one of my favorite from this past season was he had this ongoing joke about Adam Driver and how and how he had a crush on him or something like that. It was like it was the way he did it it was really, really funny, but like, there he's doing both and he's not losing track of either the significance of what the point they're trying to make or the fact that ultimately it's a comedy show. And that's like what he's good at is the comedy. But I think you're right that it's a difficult line to walk. 

Rick Sindt: I'm going to switch gears real hard here because I want to get to the point in the book where you guys take different stances. And that is chapter six, which you guys have titled 'A Debate on the Ethics of Offensive Comedy'. And basically, you both take a stance on whether or not it's possible to write a joke that's too offensive or to tell a joke that's too offensive and inappropriate. Yeah, I admit reading it, I was a bit torn. I saw merits in both. And so I would sort of love to re-enact that argument a little bit on this episode and hear where you both stand and how you guys counter each other. 

Al Gini: Since that was the first part of the article, let me start off by saying Abe is wrong. Okay. Next question. No, the reality is, we both know that as a performer, the three critical rules of comedy, like the critical roles of real estate being location, location, location, its audience, audience, audience. And so to be funny, as Abe says, you've got to write words, do shtick, do pratfalls, whatever form of comedy have that speaks to an audience. That's why The Three Stooges are lost to me. Slapstick is lost on me. Even as a child, I found it offensive that people were getting hurt. I didn't like it. But I thought I was the liberal here until Abe comes along and shoots me down. I think that you could almost tell anything. And as has been argued by Professor Cohen at North Chicago, we have to remember that a great joke that's based on Nazi ideology, it still can be funny, but you shouldn't tell it because it's based on Nazi ideology. And so I took that to be the jokes that cross the line and become hate jokes, jokes that wind up defrocking human experience, diminishing human dignity, not absurdist jokes. Absurdist jokes are absurd, and you can deal with that one way or another. Not jokes that make fun of, you know, men or women because they're men or women, depending on how you do it. But jokes that really vilify the character or the persona of that individual or that group shouldn't be told. That doesn't mean that there are not jokes that are difficult to tell and have real truths in them and all that kind of stuff. They shouldn't be told. I wouldn't tell an oral sex joke to my mother or to my nine year old daughter, because the joke may be funny, but it's inappropriate for that audience and could be perceived as hateful. But Abe has got a much broader and I must admit, I've been persuaded to expand my understanding of it as well. 

Abe Singer: Yeah. I mean, so my view is so it's not that like comedians can't ever cross a line, right? That's not what I'm saying. So obviously they can, it's more just like, what are we trying to do with that fact? And right now, I feel like a very popular opinion is this idea of comedians do wrong if they tell certain kinds of jokes, because by virtue of doing that, they are, quote, 'punching down', that if they're making they're making fun of groups that are marginalized, that are disempowered and comedy ought to punch up at the powerful. And there's a lot to that. But I sort of reject the idea that this sort of thing can be delineated beforehand. The most simple way to put it is in principle I think there's anything can be the subject of a joke for a good comedian. In principle, a comedian can make a joke about anything. The trick is doing it well and it being funny, right? And like often times when people say, like, oh, that was inappropriate that was an unjust joke. That joke punched that joke punch down, right? It's often also just accompanied with like, 'I didn't find it funny'. I've never heard somebody laughing at a joke and then being upset at the joke teller, right? So it's never that like somebody finds something funny, but also thinks that it was, like, offensively, unjustly wrong or it's rarely that usually it's 'I found this unjustly wrong. I happened to also not find it funny'. And I think that it's actually the not finding it funny that's doing a lot of the work there. And if you look at offensive or jokes that have gotten people in trouble, often it's not delivered well often the premise isn't made clear. Often, you know, there's a way in which it becomes didactic, it becomes too angry, and it just robs the funny from the joke. And so I think that's actually the way I look at it is comedians ethical obligation isn't to punch up or punch down or something like that, it's to land your punches. That your first allegiance is to the craft. And the reason why it goes back to something we were saying earlier about satire being inevitable in political society, which is to say what makes satire so important is that in the course of going up on our day-to-day lives, in the course of living with one another, we accept certain things as kind of true that aren't necessarily fully true, or we come to just be satisfied with certain beliefs that we have. And the crucial role that satire plays, that satire maybe alone can play and comedians alone can play, is puncturing that, right? Showing that like these beliefs that you hold, there's something kind of pretentious about it. There's something you're holding yourself up to be pretty high and pretty high and mighty. And I'm going to take you down a peg, not necessarily because your aspirations towards justice are wrong, but because all human endeavor is fallible, and if you forget that, then you deserve to be made fun of. And I think that like when we start trying to say, 'Oh, you can't make this joke'. That's just an invitation for comedians to be like, okay, well, I'm going to make fun of you for thinking that you have the moral high ground to tell me what I can or cannot joke about. Like you're trying to exert power over me, and what I do to that is make fun of it. So it's sort of the trying to draw lines around what comedians can or can't make jokes about is, I think, not advisable. I think it's bad for comedy. I think it's bad for the political consequences of what comedy can do, which is bring us down a peg. And then I also think it's self-defeating. 

Al Gini: Now, here's how I've been moved by Rick. He's a great dancer. That's how I've been moved by him. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I'm working the room all night, but I think he has reinforced that all jokes are conditional. And so maybe the joke teller shouldn't tell the joke. Not because it's punching down. It's the wrong time to tell it. It's, you know, don't tell your mother an oral sex joke or because he doesn't feel like it or because this person is, it's not worth going through. But. But Abe and I both had the experience of seeing Louis C.K. come to Chicago after he had been put away because he told a joke that was supposedly unacceptable and just had to walk off the stage he was gone for eight or nine months. And he opened up with, So what are you guys been doing for the last year? 

Abe Singer: Let's be clear. He didn't become persona non grata because of a joke he told he became persona non grata because of. 

Al Gini: Yeah right, sorry about that. But the whole thing was, heres my point, I lost my point. He came back and a club in New Jersey and tells this joke about, oh, the Columbine kids or the shooting in Florida, you know, why should they get all this attention just because they didn't get shot, just because, you know, they get to go to Congress because they didn't die? People were horrified. NPR was horrified by this. And initially, I must say, I was horrified. But then I realized what he was saying is he was belittling that whole thing and saying, 'my God, this is a tragedy. And think about this' and so on and so forth. And he was using that as an example. And that's what good satirists do. And so sometimes they offend us. And that's what I mean. To me, satire is--because I've been reading the Stoics and the Greeks lately--it's like being a cynic. Diogenes, you know, never wore any clothes, urinated in the street, ate bad food because he wanted to make a statement about life, and he wanted that to be clear to others. So when Alexander the Great came to see him, he turned around and urinated. Nice to see you and walked away, you know, kind of thing. That he lived a life. And I think good satirists are more than just the Henny Youngman of the world who simply told jokes, walked off stage, and had another life. I think the good satirists are living a life. John Oliver is not the same. You can't put him in the same category as Milton Berle, although they both have been terribly famous individuals. They look at humor in a different way and use it as not just a way to achieve humor, but as a tool to help change society. 

Rick Sindt: I'm glad you guys brought up Louis C.K., because I thought that was a very interesting example that you guys examine in your book, because, Abe, you talk about him in your argument, if I remember right. And in some ways, you took Al's notion of audience, audience, audience, and flipped it on its head and talked about how what happened with Louis C.K. is that before, the audience assumed certain things about him, assumed that he held similar beliefs to them or believed certain things. And then this event happened. These accusations came forth, and our assumptions about him were shattered. And so now when he came back, the audience. Perhaps his jokes didn't land because the audience couldn't fall back on the comfort of knowing that he's like one of them too, and like, is just as liberal and just as upstanding as they are. 

Abe Singer: Yeah. You know, it's been really interesting, not just his return to comedy, but then the commentary surrounding it, I think has been incredibly telling. So like, let's be clear about Louis C.K.. Like, and they're not just accusations. He's admitted they're true. So there's nobody disagrees that he did these things. Right. Before that happened, Louis C.K. was the darling of like--people were labeling him the most important comedy. You know? I think rightfully so. Like he was doing a special year and they were all top shelf and very clever and smart and good. And his show, Louie, is one of the more important shows of the past 15 years launched a whole lot of other shows similar to it, both in style, but also in production. But let's be clear that when that was going on, we are talking about a guy who would say outlandish, outlandish stuff. Right? We're talking about, you know, that monologue he gave on Saturday Night Live where he said over and over, 'pedophilia must be great because they keep doing it'. And he got away with it. I mean, you know, he had all of these jokes about rape and about stuff like that. And he would get away with it, not just get away with it, but people, progressives, liked him because they understood that beneath it, he's making fun of the problem. So then this happens. He falls out of favor and then he goes back to doing smaller clubs. He's touring and he's telling, I think, very similar types of jokes. And what's interesting, so with the Parkland joke, he told that in a club warming, building up a set and somebody recorded it and released it. So if you listen, like I actually think the crowd in the audience was enjoying it to some extent, but once it slips outside, then it doesn't have its context and people hear it and it becomes a very big problem. But what's really interesting is--so first of all, both Al and I did see him when he came to Chicago largely because of the book. And we thought that it would it was an important thing to go and see. And what's interesting, so first of all, the Parkland joke didn't make it into that, into the more polished set, if I recall correctly. No. 

Al Gini: No, it did not. 

Abe Singer: And so so that that is telling. But what's interesting is if you read the commentary on those sets or on the special that's now been made from that tour is people sort of are going well now he's pandering to a right-wing audience telling these, you know, hateful, outlandish jokes, making fun of the mentally handicapped or whatever. And what's interesting is the jokes are, you know, they're not the same joke, but they're very similar in style and tone and and content to what he was doing before. The difference is people see him differently. And so now those jokes are assumed, are taken differently because they're assumed they're coming from a different standpoint. Now, maybe the commenters are right. Maybe he has changed. But it's also just as possible that the audience and by audience I mean in the broad sense, the broad public audience, the broad consumer, consumer of comedy has changed. And therefore the joke, not because of the teller, but because of the hearer, the joke has changed. 

Al Gini: Yeah. And I think Abe and I now agree, but in different ways that audience, audience, audience is an important thing to consider. You just can't be mindless about it and say anything you want. But I think we could expand this more because if we come back to understanding comedy, when we're talking about comedy as entertainment, comedy still brings things to our attention. Comedy is also soothing. Laughter is important for us as human beings. The need to to mock a life is is a desperate need in human beings, you know, and I've told Abe, off camera, off mic. And I'm saying the Stoics aren't saying the Stoics because the Stoics are saying, well, what do you do with this huge problem? You cope with it or deal with it the best you can, try to laugh at it if possible. So there's a theme. And in fact, Empedocles says at the end, maybe the only thing we could do is laugh at it as the only response we have left. At least we have dignity in the laughter. Now, I always have said the cruelest thing to ever do is to make fun of a child or laugh at a child. But laughter does have this human quality that brings us together. You know, the excuse me, what's the correct political term, Abe for Alaskan Inuit. Thank you. The term for lovemaking is to laugh together. Which I think is a lovely, lovely concept. If that's not true, it should be true. Change the dictionaries. If I'm wrong here. That's a joke. Let's see that. That was it. That was satire. But anyway. 

Abe Singer: I have to say, if making fun of your making fun of children is bad, I feel incredibly guilty as the father of a 13 year old. 

Al Gini: Absolutely. And I make my I make fun of my son. My son called me up two months ago and said, Dad, could you believe it? I have a 16-year-old son. Pause, pause, pause. And my response was, Jason, can you believe it? I have a 48-year-old son. Boom. And he got the message right? That's what humor can do for us at the lowest level when you run out of the playground and tell somebody a silly joke. At complicated levels, and the other book and even in this book a bit, we talk about, even jokes in the Jewish tradition and I am now thinking Abe that most of Jewish humor is satirical because it's making fun of the situation they find themselves in. Jews have always been in the diaspora. Jews have always been add ons to every nation. So almost every joke is a social political joke in some sense. But the jokes that came out of the Jewish tradition during the concentration camps are utterly amazing. They're not just making fun of life and making fun of their faith. They're belittling the society that is doing this to them as a way of 'poof' The last thing I've got to do is spit in your eyes. The one that very quickly that is not as funny as you'd think. But one of the two inmates are told they're going to be shot in the morning or thrown in a cell and about midnight they come in say, 'No Gentlemen, we're going to hang you' The one inmate looks at the other inmates, says, 'oh, we must be winning the war. They're running out of bullets'. I mean, you know, it's neither funny--except it's in the book Abe you should have laughed at it a little bit more--but it's neither funny, but it's an attempt to spit in your face. And I think that's what satire is. It's not always to convert. It's to spit in your face, as the adjectives did, to make you aware. And maybe you'll make a change. 

Rick Sindt: That's a really nice segue into the last thing I wanted to talk to you both about, which is, do we joke too much? We've talked a lot about how the job of a satirist is to point out a problem with society. And help us laugh at it in some ways to cope, in some ways to make us think about it. But sometimes it's a little unsatisfying because there isn't always an answer. There isn't a solution provided to how we solve this terrible thing that's hurting us all. When I was reading your book, I was also reading or watching a satirical sitcom on Amazon Prime. And at first I was like really enjoying it because it was like poking fun at late capitalism and all of the ways that we're always, like, forced to spend money and things that are happening now. But then as I got to the end of your book, which is about do we a joke too much, I also found this TV show unsatisfying because there was never any representation or suggestion of an alternative social arrangement that would make this not go away. So I guess maybe let's just finish with the simple question of do we joke too much? 

Al Gini: Well, if you talk about the volume of jokes on TV, we've gone up from 14 jokes in a 23 minute period to 26 jokes. The real count in sitcoms has gone up. So you could make that argument. We can make the argument that now in the society, almost nothing is sacred. And you can almost joke about anything, especially if you say this is a joke. I think this is a delicate balance. And I think Mark Twain answered it for me. Mark Twain once said, about the balance and then you have to figure this out. 'You should never enter a funeral telling a joke that's disrespectful, which is you never leave a funeral without sharing a joke or something witty and gay and uplifting about that person. Because otherwise, what a tragedy. There was nothing something pleasant to say about them'. So I think if jokes are about audience, audience, audience and timing, timing, timing, and nobody likes the Uncle Tonoose. And I'm probably the uncle to most of my family who walks in the door with six of the jokes that he picked up this week. Anywhere and everywhere. But nobody likes Uncle Bernie, who never tells a joke and never smiles. And when he did try to do it, once the left side of his face cracked, it fell off. So I think there is this delicate balance that is absolutely required. I think as a society, I'm going to stop on this, I think we've become more jejune. And more willing to make fun of, and making fun isn't always funny to deride or belittle something. But I think humor, like love, has to be carefully administered for it to be effective. And that's a great line and I'm going to end on that. 

Abe Singer: That was good. I like that. Rick, I like the way you ask the question. In terms of are we joking at the expense of an actual commitment to political projects or social projects or what we ought to be committed to and was sort of thinking of, we've all had this and maybe been this in different points in our lives, where you're having a conversation with somebody who is clearly not really listening to you they're just waiting to make a joke. They're sort of you could almost look at it in their face. They're not really hearing what you're saying. They're just waiting for a thing that they can riff off. And that can be funny to an extent until it gets unbelievably annoying. And your question is, maybe as a society, are we sort of doing that now where we're just poised to make jokes and not really thinking about what we ought to be doing? And I think it's a really interesting question. I guess in some sense, I have no problem with and actually applaud when comedians and when joke tellers don't try to solve problems. I think that's okay. I think in fact I think that sometimes good often because like if you have an agenda, usually it detracts from the joke a tiny bit. And also like, you know, as smart as comedians are, they're also not necessarily like social theorists or like social scientists and like or policy wonks or something like that. Like, a lot of times when comedians do make a point, I'm always like, 'Well, okay, I don't really agree'. Like, I actually don't think that's actually terribly persuasive. You're very funny, but I don't think that's terribly persuasive. So George Carlin used to have this old joke about post-traumatic stress disorder, and he's sort of saying, you know when it first came back, it was called shell shock. Right? And then it was called this and this. Now it's called post-traumatic stress disorder and now it's called this and it's gotten more medicalized. And it's because of that that we don't we're not taking care of it anymore because now we've medicalized it. We've gotten it so distracted. And it was a very funny joke. But it ends with this kind of point that I actually don't think is true, because I think if you actually look like look at the evidence about how we treat post-traumatic stress disorder, we take it much more seriously now that we've medicalized it and now that we try to find nuances and try and find the ways in which trauma is different because of different causes. But to your point. So that's all to say, I don't necessarily want comics to try and solve the problems that their jokes are illuminating. That being said, I think, Rick, where I agree with you is when the comic. Presents their jokes or presents the material or presents their view of society such that it's nihilistic. Such that it's not just that they're not offering a solution, but they're precluding the possibility of there being a solution because, oh, well, we're just screwed and we're going to hell anyway. So let's just kick back and make with the yucks. Like that that I agree with you. Then we're joking too much in that regard, not because we're telling too many jokes, but because the joke has become the end. The joke is becoming what we're striving for. And I think you can tell jokes in a way that recognizes that you can't solve the problem in your 15 minute set or in your two hour satirical movie or your ten part satirical mini series without sort of subscribing to a kind of fatalism, to a kind of just pessimism that that that nothing can ever be solved. So all we can do is make a joke. I'm not sure if that addresses your concern or your question, Rick, but I think that would be maybe the distinction that I would try to draw between joking too much to the detriment of society and joking just enough to poke us forward and keep us moving. 

Al Gini: And playing on what Abe is saying right now in some sense I think humor, satire, religious, lump them together. And there's an analogy here between alcohol, good bourbon and good joke telling. A little bourbon is a stimulant or it can anesthetize us. And I think some humor is a stimulant or it can anesthetize us to things. And the other analogy I would say, because I've been glued to CNN for the last nine months. Covid alone, just talking about COVID--without talking about, 'you know who'--COVID alone for nine months, then I'm overwhelmed by it. And I've done nothing. But I've got all this information. I'm overwhelmed by it. And I think humor can overwhelm us and anesthetize us. And I think that's what we were suggesting as well. 

Abe Singer: Right. But if it's really good bourbon that maybe you just want to keep. 

Al Gini: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Abe Singer: That's a really good joke to keep this. 

Al Gini: And as soon as COVID is over, we're going to pour a lot. 

Abe Singer: There we go. Notice, Rick, that Al said that was my last word like 10 minutes ago. Okay, then let's do another month. 

Al Gini: Wait a minute. Who's who's who's this? Who's the oldest? Here, wait, wait, wait, wait. I just turned 77. Give me a break. 

Abe Singer: It's true. Age before beauty. 

Al Gini: I'm sorry. You expected. Quiet. 

Rick Sindt: Maybe on that note, Al. Hey, it was really nice to talk to you. 

Al Gini: Look at this. He doesn't laugh at all. When I do these, he's in the room. He's going, Oh, shit, I was talking about this now, and he's just groaning. Look at this grin on his face. We want that on camera. A young man. 

Abe Singer: Rick, Rick, a real pleasure. 

Al Gini: Great. Thank you, Rick. It really was. Thank you. 

Speaker1: This has been an episode of the Q Talks podcast where we seek to marry the wisdom of the Quinlan community with the issues of today. Special thanks to our guests as well as Dean Kevin Stevens for his generous support of this podcast. Matt Shelley, our student producer for editing this episode, as well as Loyola School of Communication and UW for their continued collaboration. Before you leave, take a minute to support us by sharing with friends or rating and reviewing our episodes to help expand our reach. Thanks for listening. I hope you join us next time.