The world needs humor -- but maybe not right now

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By JAN GLIDEWELL

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 23, 2001

There are those of us who make a considerable part of our living being silly, and, I've never felt particularly guilty about being one of them.

Humor and silliness are often the only windows in a solid wall of gloom.

None of us, on Sept. 11, went to bed in the same world we woke up in.

I drove blithely to work that morning trying to decide whether to write about a transsexual who had trouble getting on a United Airlines flight because he didn't look like his passport photo or a new Canadian Web site called Naked News in which the reporters and commentators take off their clothes during the broadcast.

That's how simple the world was. Men in drag who don't look like their passport pictures leading to gags built around the fact that nobody looks like his or her passport picture; and a lot of light speculation about Dan Rather in a Speedo and Kelly Ring in a teddy.

But that all changed in a matter of minutes.

Who airlines let aboard and under what circumstances was suddenly no longer a subject for light repartee. Neither was United Airlines fair game.

And as we watched the news people -- with whom I would have had some innocent fun a day earlier -- do a superb job, sometimes choking back tears, coping with the horror they presented to us, Naked News became an idea for another time.

I needed guidance.

It's not that I don't get good guidance, usually gently applied, from my superiors at the Times, but there aren't many of us here who do what I do. All of my fellow columnists can be hilariously funny at times, just as I can be serious at times, but humor is not their weekly stock in trade, except for Don Addis, who has been doing it better and longer than I.

I did note that Dave Barry, the dean of humor columnists, has said he is getting back to humor because it is more badly needed now than ever.

And I went to the television guys for whom silliness is stock in trade.

They were off the air for a while, then, slowly, they began to come back.

David Letterman was masterfully articulate and uncharacteristically (at least for his on-air persona) warm when Dan Rather broke down in tears describing the scene at ground zero.

Then there was Craig Kilborn, followed by Jay Leno who brought together the unlikely (and slightly uncomfortable) combination of John McCain and Crosby, Stills & Nash, followed by Conan O'Brien who struggled through a monologue about this very issue, and held out hope for a time when laughter will once again be a part of our lives.

And I, like Barry, believe it is needed, probably sooner than later.

For now there is much of the good to talk about.

And there is the bad. There are some television evangelists who given half a chance would outdo the Taliban and give us a society that would make Afghanistan look like the Netherlands. There are the nitwits who, acting on nothing better than a person's appearance or the guidance of a half-witted talk show host, would harm, harass and threaten their neighbors. There are the businesses that took immediate advantage of the tragedy to begin gouging their customers; and there are the ones that opened their doors and their larders to those in need.

You'll probably be finding more of an edge in my voice for the next few months. Too many of us have been too tolerant of the stupid, venal and dangerously ignorant among us, and it is time to start doing what we should have a long time ago -- not letting it pass any more.

At least I'll get more mail that way.

The time for silliness will be back, and sooner than you might think, because we are all going to need laughter in our lives, just not quite yet.

Oh yeah. The Naked News folks? Susan Taylor Martin, who wrote our feature story about them, tells me that a Times editor tuned in to see what they were doing with the catastrophe and their anchor, completely dressed, was advising people to switch to real television news.

You find class in the damndest places.

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