I’ve been writing and performing jokes for 34 years. I’ve written thousands of jokes — mostly for my stand-up act, but I’ve also written jokes for other comedians and for TV shows as well. I’ve “punched up” scripts for friends. I know how to “find the funny.”
Like many comedians, I have a “sick” sense of humor. Comedians live, eat, and sleep “funny,” so we become immune to unpleasant reality. We guffaw at things most people don’t find even slightly amusing.
Then there is “gallows” humor, best described as, say, the true story of cops making sick jokes as they unearthed the bodies of teen boys under the home of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Gallows humor makes it easier to deal with the unimaginable.
FACT-O-RAMA! When John Wayne Gacy wasn’t raping, torturing, and killing boys, he was entertaining sick children while dressed as “Pogo” the clown.
But the jokes circulating about the tiny sub that imploded on its sight-seeing voyage to the Titanic are different for several reasons.
For starters, the jokes were being made before we knew the Titan passengers were dead. They were being told as we thought the explorers were still alive but certain to die. We laughed not at their deaths, but at their doom.
When the Challenger space shuttle caught fire and sent its inhabitants hurtling into the ocean at 200 miles per hour, we were inundated with jokes:
“What does NASA stand for? Need Another Seven Astronauts.”
“Why didn’t Christa McAuliffe take a shower the day the shuttle lifted off? She figured she’d just wash up on shore.”
Perhaps we laughed because we, as a nation, were saddened by the loss our country sustained.
As I mentioned, I laugh at sick jokes. I also spend 45 minutes a night on comedy stages, convincing people to laugh at things they never thought — or knew — they could find funny.
But to laugh at people running out of air at a depth of 13,000 feet is a new level of — something. And I’m as guilty as everyone else.
Or is it new? I’ll get back to that.
I’m also shocked at some of the people flinging the ha-has on social media. For starters, the City of Cincinnati:
I saw a notable conservative pundit, who shall remain unnamed, post a meme poking fun at the impending disaster and the five people who were, we believed at the time, waiting in terror to die an ugly death.
The best I can guess is that we laughed because the people on board were rich.
If the occupants had been four black schoolgirls from Detroit on a “Make a Wish” kind of trip to the bottom of the sea, the nation would be grieving now. But the five people had mad stacks to blow — $250,000 each — on an adventure the rest of us can only dream of — a risky adventure most of us wouldn’t agree to even if our ticket was free.
So maybe that’s why we laughed at the five adventurers — they have the money and the courage to do things most of us never will. I believe the appropriate term for some who laughed is envy.
Related: Our Titanic
For others, it was more about the submariners being incredibly naive. These people had a quarter-mil to blow on anything, and they foolishly decided to take a Cap’n Crunch sub 13,000 feet down to Davy Jones’s locker.
NOW YOU TELL US-O-RAMA! There was a traveling Titanic exhibit making the rounds of casinos nationwide. I actually touched a piece of the iconic ship while standing safely on solid ground, sipping a bourbon.
Then there was the rescue effort. Governments and specialists dropped everything to try to save five rich people who, many believe, were idiots for spending so much money to attempt something so insanely, stupidly dangerous in the first place. Would you or I get the same response? I remember having to wait five hours in my car for AAA to pull me out of a snow bank I flew into after nine hours at work — where I made substantially less than $250,000.
I remember the search for JFK Jr.’s plane. The nation held its breath as every available military plane and ship, as well as civilian watercraft, looked for the little boy who bravely saluted his father’s casket decades earlier. I was at a day job and I assured an underling that they would never search for us with such unrepining alacrity. The coworker complained to HR that I suggested she, as a black woman, “wasn’t as important as a Kennedy,” and I was forced to apologize for my “crime” even though I had included myself in the scenario.
REVENGE-O-RAMA! That same employee was laid off less than a year later. She asked me to speak on her behalf to help her become a foster parent. I refused.
I’m not judging those who laughed at the sick memes. I did it myself. But I believe the motivation to chuckle at the impending death of five people says something. It tells me times haven’t changed at all. People have been cheering for the death of people they envy — or fear — for centuries.
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