Members of our Community Editorial Board, a group of community residents who are engaged with and passionate about local issues, respond to the following question: In a moment that feels inundated with historic events and seismic changes, it can be hard to keep up. What has captured your attention lately?
Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, Rush Limbaugh, in 1993, referred to 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton as the White House dog. In November 2015, presidential candidate Donald Trump mocked on camera Serge Kovalaleski, a reporter with arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that affects joint movement. Not funny.
Conan O’Brien, in his acceptance remarks after receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, correctly noted that Twain “always punched up, not down.” Satire directed at the vulnerable is simply cruel, but when used to expose the vice and folly of the self-righteous and privileged hypocrites, it becomes a scapel that can cut away infections within a democracy before they metastasize. Teddy Roosevelt, who knew something about vice, once remarked, “When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators don’t know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘not guilty.’” Comedy creates a new perspective, and new perspectives in a pluralistic society are pistons of democracy. Humor dismantles the scaffolding of fear that authoritarians construct to hold the public in check. If you can laugh at what threatens you, that threat is diminished, and in a free society that cherishes free speech as a right, laughter is not only the best medicine, it just might be the cure.
Fascist societies mute their critics, from Imperial Rome to Nazi Germany, those who employed satire to expose vice and folly were dealt with harshly. To the extent that any administration displays its hypocritical underbelly, it should expect the satirists to speak up.
A sense of humor can be healing; it does not always divide but has the transformative power to reconcile. Ronald Reagan, after an assassination attempt in 1981, quipped to the doctors as he was being rolled into the operating room, “I hope you’re all Republicans.” Dr. Joseph Giordano, a surgeon at George Washington University Hospital, responded, “Today, we are all Republicans.” Do you remember that America, when we knew the difference between a quick wit and a dim wit? The First Amendment makes no distinction between a quick wit and a dim wit, but we should.
When Trump survived an assassination attempt in July 2024, he gave no words of reassurance or calm but stoked partisan divide with a combative call to arms, “Fight, fight, fight,” and later claimed that he was saved by God to Make America Great Again. The bombast of a bully underscores his hubris and lack of insight.
Humor is all about insight, seeing the world with a sense of irony. For a brief period of time in September 2025, a 12-foot gold statue of Donald Trump holding a Bitcoin appeared on the National Mall. It paid tribute to Trump’s support for cryptocurrency. I wonder if any of his evangelical supporters were reminded of the golden statue erected by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in the Book of Daniel, Chapter Two, and momentarily winced. How many facial muscles are needed to repress the smirk when Trump remarks, “Nobody has more respect for women than I do”? Such observations need no mediation by a comedian. Irony, though not recognized by all, is self-evident. Our great American satirist, Mark Twain, knew this as he advised politicians, “Get your facts straight first, then you can distort them as you please.”
Comedians bring us back to a world of reality and make us smile at the same time. John Oliver, whose biting monologues are drenched in research, delivers both humor and news. Many Americans get their news from these non-traditional sources. We must learn how to discern trusted sources. We trust that the comedian is not lying to us but telling us a truth, and as Emily Dickinson would say, “Tell it Slant.” The sardonic fool in King Lear is a truth-teller. He articulates for the King the difference between possessing authority and wielding it wisely. In his wisdom, he critiques the folly of authority. “I am a fool, but you are nothing.”
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a traditional venue for political humor. It showcases to the world that Americans can laugh at themselves and their leaders. It is free speech, the First Amendment on display, the beating heart of democracy for all to see. It’s also an opportunity for past presidents to be a bit self-effacing. Biden drew laughter when he said, “I’m campaigning all over the country, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, I’ve always done well in the original thirteen colonies.”
Trump, throughout his presidency, has refused to attend the event.
Steve Allen, in a 1957 interview for Cosmopolitan Magazine, remarked that “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” We’re in a tragedy, and we’re running out of time. We need the comedy now.
Jim Vacca, jamespvacca1@gmail.com
Recent attacks on programs and values that support “diversity, equity and inclusion” rest on several fatally flawed assumptions that treat statistical “normality” as a reflection of what is moral and, in some cases, with what is “natural.” Here are a few: 1. It’s “normal” to adopt a particular, circumscribed set of behaviors and attitudes depending on the configuration of one’s genitalia. 2. It’s “normal” to be white and speak English. 3. It’s “normal” to experience relationships and the world in ways considered “neurotypical.” 4. The U.S. is a Christian country.
These assumptions sneak value judgments into ostensibly neutral statements by surreptitiously replacing observations of numerical dominance with judgments of moral superiority. The first assumption implicitly confuses the apparent numerical preponderance of cisgender individuals with what is “right” and/or “natural.” Likewise, the second assumption treats the minority status of U.S. residents with a skin color other than white as well as the use of a language other than “official” English as if deviation from statistical normality were linked to degree of interpersonal and national threat. The third assumption, that certain ways of relating to others and the world — behaviors often grouped under the “autism spectrum” — conflates having a less common neural network with posing some sort of public health threat. That the fourth assumption retains credibility despite explicit statements to the contrary in the Constitution is a testament to the human tendency to imbue numbers with moral significance to justify excluding certain classes of people.
Science can tell us about statistical normality and about the kinds of personal characteristics that are generally more or less suited to functioning in specified environments. But neither being in the majority nor being well-equipped to function in a particular (human-made) environment has anything to do with normality in a moral, biological or evolutionary sense. Instead, these factors are used to present certain features of the status quo as appropriate and natural. For example, it’s been predicted that the U.S. will become a “majority-minority” country (i.e., one in which no single ethnic or religious group will account for at least 50% of the population) in 2045. Will we embrace diversity as the norm when that happens? I think not. And that’s because the statistical argument is bogus.
Appeals to science and empiricism to justify moral hierarchies and rationalize the designation of one particular variation as “human nature” obscure the subjective basis for current attacks on differences. Scientific data can address practical questions about what humans are capable of. It cannot determine how such capabilities should be actualized or which are more “natural” for our species. The complexity of our DNA enables our genetic endowment to be manifested in many ways, depending on the environment in which we were raised and live. In fact, if science tells us anything about what is moral and natural, it is that within-species diversity is inevitable due to the multitude of variables involved in human development.
Being a statistical outlier is not a sin. In fact, it can be a gift to both individuals and the species as a whole. In terms of moral value, statistical outliers enrich both our community and our gene pool. In terms of adherence to human nature, statistical outliers remind us of what may be the most essential human characteristic of all: the ability to transform a finite number of variables into a nearly infinite variety of traits and behaviors.
Elyse Morgan, emorgan2975@gmail.com