Zen and the art of taking a joke

Michelle Wolf delivered some zingers Saturday night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an event where political staff, past presidents with emotional fortitude and the press gather to be humiliated by the comedian of the day.

It’s all in good fun, and everyone goes back to their usual, adversarial roles come Monday.

At least that was the formula back when we could laugh at ourselves.

Now we’ve added an extra step: We dissect the jokes as political ammunition to fire into the black hole of go-nowhere internet “discussion.”

Predictably, of course, there were already articles out Sunday morning that had Wolf defending her jokes – if you can’t laugh at yourself, join the majority of people living in the year 2018, apparently.

It isn’t surprising that Republicans can’t take a joke and I could write a novel detailing the double standard held by those pretending to be appalled that someone would make fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ eye shadow. (Someone who has been caught lying to the public as much as she has shouldn’t tread the moral high road, nor should her supporters.)

The fervour over the correspondents’ dinner happens every year because politics and comedy intertwine for one glorious evening in the same room where we get to see which political stiffs laugh and which grimace.

I have a problem with the way entertainment coverage and commentary is now framed as the de facto barometer for our culture and politics. It’s a side-effect at best, it’s not policy.

Entertainment can be political and is a good mirror held up to society’s values, but at the end of the day it is just people playing expensive pretend and telling stories from their point of view.

Look how much ado has been made of Apu, “The Simpsons” caricature of an Indian convenience store owner voiced by a white man, Hank Azaria. The documentary, “The Problem with Apu,” created by Hari Kondabolu, explores the racial implications of the now-20-year-old cartoon character.

“The Simpsons,” which should have ended years ago (the first 10 seasons are my Bible, for the record) responded with a resounding “meh,” in a recent episode, and it’s hard to blame them.

Rajiv Satyal, sums up his retort in a recent opinion piece on CBC: “As the documentary itself points out, there’s now an Indian on practically every successful contemporary show. That’s incredible progress – something about which to rejoice. Let’s not play the victim. Let’s celebrate.”

While I agree in principle, I still have a problem with this being characterized as “incredible progress.” The lines apparently blurred between progress on screen and that in real life.

What about all the Americans of Indian descent currently serving in political office? What about Preet Bharara, one of the “nation’s most aggressive and outspoken prosecutors of public corruption and Wall Street crime,” according to the New York Times.

And what about Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google?

These discussions, whether it’s the representation of women, minorities or marginalized people in entertainment media, are a sign of progress, but they are not progress itself.

If as much attention was paid to policy makers as was decades’ old cartoon characters, maybe we would see more progress and less bitterness.

Dale Boyd is a reporter at the Penticton Herald who has no difficulty laughing at himself