Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [89]
Yet when the form of life is not shared, the humor attempted to convey is impossible to get. In I Am America (And So Can You!), Stephen Colbert has a whole chapter on religion. At the top, of course, is Roman Catholicism:
Jesus founded only One Church and it wasn’t Unitarian. He took His apostle Simon and made him into a rock and built a church on him. It’s called “the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church,” or “Church” for short. (I Am America, p. 53)
He goes on to lambaste every major organized religion in America: Protestantism, the Episcopal Church, Methodism, Presbyter-ians, Baptists, Quakers, Mormonism, Judaism. Then, listed under “Other Heathens”: Shinto, Hinduism, and Buddhism … (pp. 53-59). But when it comes to Islam, though it is still listed under “Other Heathens” it says:
Islam is a great and true religion revealed in the Holy Koran which was dictated by the angel Gabriel to the final prophet Mohammed, Blessing and Peace Be upon Him.
The entry is followed by footnote 16 which says:
Islam is a great and true religion revealed in the Holy Koran which was dictated by the angel Gabriel to the final prophet Mohammed, Blessing and Peace Be upon Him.
At first glance, it looks as though Colbert is holding back and that there is nothing funny about this entry. But if one has the background knowledge about the uprising of Muslims all over the world regarding the publication of Muslim cartoons in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten in September, 2005, as well as the many death threats against those who speak out against Islam, one gets the joke. The humor in Colbert’s entry on Islam lies in the fact that he is so concerned about Muslim fanatics threatening his life that he doesn’t dare say anything negative about Islam. And the fact that he doesn’t say anything bad or funny about Islam based on his fear, is, in fact, funny.
The the only way to appreciate the humor here is to have a cultural background where one knows about the on-going conflict of free speech and the Muslim Jihadists. One needs to share in the form of life where this conflict is expressed and talked about.
Humorous Altitude, Aptitude, and Attitude
Humor is an aspect-change, and to understand the humor in our shared cultural community, we need a shared form of life. But these, still, are not sufficient for a robust philosophy of humor.
We also need an H.A.—a Humorous Attitude. Humorous Attitude is what I call an individual’s predisposition to find something funny, or the set of things an individual finds funny. An H.A. comes from our lifetime of experience and it shapes the way one thinks. It disposes us towards a certain way of looking at the world. It frames the way we see an aspect-change. It is the “taste” or “palette” of humor. An H.A. explains why some jokes cross cultural and political boundaries and others don’t. An H.A. shows how some jokes are tailored to certain political groups and other jokes are apolitical. For example:
India has one of the most rigid and complex class structures. Based upon their behavior in past lives, all Indians are born into different stratas of society called “castes.” These castes forever determine what level of tech support questions they are allowed to answer. (I Am America, p. 162)
The people who are most likely to think this is funny are those Americans who have been helped by tech support personnel based in foreign countries