Moore, Remy, & Fortune

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Tom Kruse wrote:
>Humor is central to US political discourse -- right and less right.  Not so
>here, where the last preseident Sanchez de Lozada, caused QUITE a stri by
>being publicly funny and president at the same time.  Notabley, his humor
>was VERY gringo -- he was raised in the US; U Chicago grad.  Makes me
>wonder: was humor always central to political discourse in the US?  Or is
>this a new (say, post WWII) thing?

I don't know about history, but witty put-downs, fast talk, facial cues to
point to what is to be laughed at + dismissed, etc. go very well with the
mass media, especially when programs are compressed and fragmented by
commercials. So I think that though humor may have been always central to
US political discourse, the nature of humor must have changed over time.
You don't have a time to tell tall tales that require repetitions and
narrative momentum any longer.

Yoshie