These days there are times when I feel like screaming, ‘LIGHTEN UP!!!” Where are the laughs? Where are the funny people? Now you may be saying, “What is wrong with this woman? Was she born yesterday, under a rock? Doesn’t she understand that there is simply nothing to laugh about? Nothing funny?“
Yes, I get it. There is nothing funny. Our southern border is more than a crisis; it is a full blown, tragic disaster! The closed pipeline is an economic disaster. The renewed relationship with Iran is a global disaster. The legislation of immorality is egregious. The murder of unborn children deserves the utter wrath of God.
Today’s gender confusion is so off the wall and over the top, that I now fully understand what is meant in the book of Romans about God giving sinners up to “a reprobate mind”. We have a culture replete with national leadership consisting of reprobate minds. And the rise of anti-Semitism—discrimination against God’s CHOSEN PEOPLE—is the proverbial “last straw”. There is nothing to laugh about. And that, dear reader, is precisely why we have to find some reason to laugh.
No, I was not born yesterday. I was born in the Milwaukee Hospital, not under a rock. I was probably born before most, if not all, of my readers. And like today, there was “nothing to laugh about” during the first 12 years of my life. THE GREAT DEPRESSION was not funny. Nor was WORLD WAR II.
Those are a couple of reasons why then, like today, we had to find something to laugh about. But unlike today, in the 1930s and 40s we had help with our laughing. We had brilliant philanthropists who endowed us with God’s gift of laughter, which can actually be a survival tool—benefactors such as THE MARX BROTHERS, THE THREE STOOGES, LAUREL AND HARDY, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO, BOB HOPE, JACK BENNY, LUCILLE BALL, RED SKELTON. With that cast of characters, we couldn’t NOT LAUGH!
Where have all the comics gone, the true comedians whose wit encompassed an entire nation—not just a biased few? Several decades later, we had one more classic: CAROL BURNETT. And then there were none, at least none compared to “back then”.
In the 1970s, Stephen Sondheim composed a poignantly lovely ballad with an unforgettable title: SEND IN THE CLOWNS. Yes, SEND IN THE CLOWNS. We need them!
Now, here is a confession: I am so starved for laughter, that the report of one of President Biden’s German Shepherds doing a number on the WHITE HOUSE floor sent me into hysterics. Even funnier (to my odd sense of humor) were 2 comments after the report: 1) Whichever dog did it, was just asserting his 1st Amendment Right, and 2) They probably blamed Trump.
Please, will somebody come and laugh with me?
Margaret L. Been — April 1st, 2021, NO FOOLING!
Northern Reflections--glimpses of gold by Margaret L. Been 