Buckley’s Mix

American Laughter

Posted March 21, 2009, 17:03 ET Comments Off

Other countries, other laughter. American laughter emphasizes the social bond between joke-teller and listener more than it does the sense of superiority to the butt. Not that I find this in any way attractive, as it expresses an excessive concern about fitting in, about communicating subservience to the joke-teller.

Judges know this. When appointed to the bench they are told that they’ll never again know whether their jokes are funny.

This is also the laughter of the faculty meeting, the good-natured, shared pleasure in expressing amity and support for one’s chairman or dean. What in other countries is called sucking up.

A related kind of laughter is the in-joke told not to express wit but rather to  show one’s membership in a community defined by its higher aesthetics, morality or politics. Bush jokes, for example (unless told by Bush himself, for those jokes were often funny.)

Category: jokes
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