Keep Laughing Through Your Tears of Rage

Humans must express grief before they can mask pain with the guise of humor.

Thus it is understandable that late-night comedy took a weeklong hiatus to mourn and ponder how it might return smiles to the faces of millions.

Upon their return, business was anything but usual. Flip on Dave. No monkeys washing kitties. No parrot-like gibberish commentary resonating from the direction of Paul Schaffer.

Instead, Dan Rather fights back tears as overpowering emotions finally breach his journalistic detachment.

Switch over to Leno, and you'll find no witty remarks about the latest Bushism. No cracks on Bill Clinton eyeing some ass. He isn't even on the streets interviewing people with the average intelligence of a lobotomized N.C. State graduate for our nation's entertainment.

And although Gary Condit is reveling in sweet anonymity during these times of crises, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before we all remember that Chandra is still missing. Politicians profiteering from disaster -- now I've heard everything.

But I digress.

Much like his late night contemporaries, Conan explained why "Late Night" will continue production and manage itself with respect and dignity. Well, as much dignity as can be expected from a show featuring the Masturbating Bear.

"I make a living acting like an ass. ... No one is looking to me to gain some perspective," says O'Brien.

Each late-night host defends his return to comedy as defiance of the terrorists' intentions to destroy the pre-existing normalcy in the U.S.

Some might berate their return to work, but as Leno says, "`Nightline' is a very good program too."

So if your tears have yet to be purged, perhaps laughing is not the best medicine.

But it is essential that someone remains capable of laughing. Not in the face of sorrow mind you, but in the face of terror.

The abrupt transformation of humor, however, has left me questioning what is sacred and what is fair game in the tough-skinned world of comedy.

Not that I ever mock firefighters (well maybe once when my ass became numb sitting outside Hinton James during a 2 a.m. winter fire alarm), but do the heroic acts of these wonderful men and women place their profession among the "taboo" subjects of comedy such as religion and race?

Can I still poke fun at the shoddiness of airline cuisine? Should I let the whole police brutality and doughnut-munching thing slide because cops' jobs are a lot tougher than I once imagined? Or must I end all such observations with the disclaimer "God bless their heroism?" Will my only hope at cracking a smile rest in the hands of prop comic geniuses such as Carrot Top?

Listening to the president's speech Thursday night, I felt the cynicism of youth give way to a rush of patriotism. But despite the great national pride I felt during these powerful words, my mind wandered as the sound of clapping filled the chambers.

Those teleprompters from which the president reads; do they highlight his words as he speaks like the screen at the karaoke bar? Is there a bouncing ball pacing his delivery?

Is anyone else laughing at the fact that Sens. Helms and Thurman must stand and sit every thirty seconds?

At the end of the ultimatum to Afghanistan, did anyone else want Bush to ask for ... A SHRUBBERY!?! (To be followed by a high pitch sound echoing off the walls and an extreme close-up of the President.)

So although it seems as though we must tiptoe along without offending anyone, there is always some humor present in dire circumstances.

Comedy will never die, but it is quite possible that it will lay dormant until it receives one hell of a defibrillating shock to the chest.

Michael Carlton would like to quote Friedrich Nietzsche. "Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter." Contact him at

carlton@email.unc.edu.