>Ah, yes humor of self was invented by our society and serves some
>central socio-economic and practical purpose. Hmm.
Laughter wasn't invented by the dominant ideology, but earnest exhortations to cultivate a "sense of humor" must have been. :) If anyone wants to encourage the comic as the rhetorical mode of choice among leftists, it defeats the purpose to say: "I have yelled at ATC about this for years, for all the difference it makes. The problem is that people on the left are earnest, dull, and irony-impaired. --jks." The comic has to be performed, not declaimed.
BTW, many American leftists I know are masters of ironic self-deprecation, as comics from marginalized groups (like women and gay men) often are. It's a tactic of survival popular among us, because we have had to overcome (literally or figuratively) an experience of showing up at a demo of only a handful of individuals, so it's full of pathos. The other tactic also favored by leftists is witty put-downs of fellow leftists, or, more accurately, attempts at such.
Modern comedies are often tragic.
Yoshie