CHAUTAUQUA–With Donald Trump having been almost assassinated and Joe Biden having stood down, we interrupt this unexpectedly serious fortnight in American history for a word about comedy.

Yes, comedy.

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Actress Sally Struthers played Archie and Edith’s daughter, Gloria, on the CBS hit television show All in the Family.

Struthers has said she thought she knew what would happen after the All in the Family pilot ran: The CBS switchboards would light up with complaining callers.

She was half right: The CBS switchboards lit up. Oh, did they ever light up. Not with complaining callers but with happy ones wanting the show to continue.

If your memory needs refreshing on what All in the Family entailed, have a look at producer Norman Lear’s compilation of what he calls the 10 best moments on the show. You’ll find them at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCINzhzAWAo.

Those knowing the show may recall additional moments, yet here’s the point: All in the Family ran during a decade when one could put it on American television.

Do you think such a show would have run, much less run successfully, in the 1950s? Probably not.

Would it run, much less successfully run, now? Same answer. Now ask yourself this: Is that progress?

Humanity must not be so serious that it’s rarely able to laugh at itself.

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“They’re just jokes,” might be the response of the July 21 guest of Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, who used that line several times.

Anyone who thinks ABC programs are always like seminars or lectures at the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, or the Cato Institute was proven wrong on July 21.

Meet Jimmy Failla, a comedian and a relative newcomer to Fox News who this season began hosting his own show. It runs at 10 p.m. ET on Saturdays, a good slot for this one-time New York City cab driver.

Failla didn’t hold back. Well, maybe he did, yet not by most Chautauqua standards.

Describing himself as half Sicilian and half Polish, he didn’t tell a joke about how dumb or how tight Sven and Olle are. Instead, he said, “I put out a hit on myself.”

He described one political candidate as “so dumb that she studies for a CoViD test.”

He said one former presidential candidate “really is like a political stray cat that you fed once, and it never goes away.”

Of one political party’s convention, he said, “I was going to cover it for Fox, but I decided to go someplace like Baghdad.”

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Speaking of jokes, did you hear during the past fortnight all of the calls for a particular appointed Biden administration official’s resignation?

Let’s assume those calls were justified.

Yet why is it that whenever things go seriously awry in the federal government’s executive branch or in the public, the clamor of many in Congress and the press for executive-branch resignations is immediate, frequent, and loud?

Members of Congress preen for television cameras, often with obvious partisanship, and members of the press, often with obvious bias, self righteously hold forth.

But when things go seriously awry in Congress or in the press, is the resignation clamor as immediate, loud, or frequent? You, gentle reader, know the answer, don’t you?

Consider this example: In 1981, the federal debt crossed the $1 trillion threshold. Do you even know how many trillions it is now?

Hint: It’s way more than $1 trillion, even in 1981 dollars. Way, way more. This is a serious problem. For the answer, please keep reading.

Now consider any series of fake stories that has run in the press. Or think about any series of fake stories that you just know will run in the press between now and Election Day. This is also a serious problem.

Where is the clamor for resignations from Congress or from the press?

What a joke. Sometimes you just have to laugh.

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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of most of its speakers.

ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

And here’s the answer to the question: The current federal debt is $35 trillion.

Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” is at https://works.bepress.com/elf/21.

(c) 2024 BY RANDY ELF