Published on: Thursday, January 19, 2012

By Brian J. Karem

The simple fact is our society is bereft of humor.

We are a brittle, nervous, bitter people incapable of laughing at ourselves.

We bore me.

We can’t even say certain words in polite society unless we refer to them by a letter of the alphabet.

I can’t keep track of all of those words any more. I feel like I need a code breaker.

We can’t make fun of anyone but fat white men, and while I’m certainly in favor of that, I think we can make fun of anyone and everyone.

I miss The Dean Martin roast and my favorite insult comic Don Rickles.

Over at ABC they cancelled a television show called “Working It” because, at least according to one published report, the show was insensitive to the transgender community.

Since when is cross-dressing automatically about “transgender?”

I guess in our collective consciousness we forgot that Tom Hanks got his start on “Bosom Buddies,” a television show about two cross-dressing guys, or that Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe starred in a movie called “Some Like it Hot,” about two cross-dressing musicians on the run from the mob. Oh right. I can’t say “mob.” I mean of course the downtrodden Italian immigrant community doing its best to struggle in this land of opportunity.

Pfft.

Maybe “Working it” didn’t work because it wasn’t funny. That seems more likely because we’ve forgotten how to be funny.

I will now be blunt; I am tolerant of anyone’s life style and living arrangement. My freedom ends where your nose ends, but that doesn’t mean I won’t poke fun at you.

If you find that offensive, then hey, quit making jokes about me and my kind.

I found the character of Archie Bunker to be very offensive, but also funny, and sometimes pathetically so.

If you want to boil it down further, take a look at Doogie Howser, I mean Neil Patrick Harris.

Okay, I could make fun of the name “Doogie” all day long, but it isn’t about that.

Harris said in a national interview I recently read in a doctor’s office while waiting for a humorous evaluation of my son’s humerus, that you should get on board with making fun of yourself before others begin to do so.

He was talking about appearing in the movie “Harold and Kumar” and said, “suddenly people thought I was clever — that I was in on the joke,” Harris said.

The advice is good for not only surviving in Hollywood, but in life.

If you’re not laughing and the rest of the group is, then you may well be the joke.

Might as well laugh.

Life is short.

Meanwhile, we should fund a national movement called the “HAH” movement – or the “Humans Are Hilarious” movement.

Forget the “Occupy” movement as those guys have no sense of humor either. And forget Congress, the Presidential office, most county, state and other elected officials.

These people are far too serious for me.

True, one has to deal with serious issues, but that doesn’t mean we have to take ourselves that seriously.

I believe we should fund the “HAH” movement by getting donations to hire out of work college kids who otherwise might be wasting their time sleeping in tents and not bathing while gathering bed bugs, bed sores and being sprayed mistakenly with pesticides and eating institutional food while attending an “Occupy” protest and hire these college students to walk around and throw pies in the faces of anyone who takes themselves too seriously.

Once a month we can vote over the Internet as to where we should send our nubile young “HAH” players.

We’ll dress them up, not as circus clowns with big feet because frankly clowns scare me, but dress them up in either Lewis Black costumes or as characters from South Park.

When our subjects show up in public we actually don’t hurl the pie because someone will call that assault, but rather we’ll present them with the pie, smile, and hand them a card that says “Smile and Laugh, you’ve been pelted with a pie. HAH!”

But we can’t hire mimes for this either. They scare me too.

In the end, maybe we can teach a thing or two about laughing with and at one another.

Make fun of anyone and everyone.

We all surely deserve it.

I know you do.