If A Monkey Sat at a Typewriter...

Well, here it is. The Sean Delonas cartoon which was published in the New York Post this week and which has caused a firestorm of controversy. Many are claiming that the cartoon was referring to Pres. Obama and thus racist, referring to a time in our country when African Americans were ridiculed as "monkeys". Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but when we first saw the cartoon, we thought it was referring more to Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congressmen who wrote the stimulus bill. Pres. Obama didn't even write the bill. But we realize that we're in the minority on this issue, most people we've talked to believe that the cartoon is racist. Actually, we thought the cartoon referred to the old joke about if a monkey sat at a typewriter, sooner or later, he'd write something intelligent, which was an old way to make a swipe at someone's writing which was deemed as un-intelligent. But if one is not familiar with that old joke, one would miss the point of Delonas's cartoon, which takes us to the larger issue.

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What we really think is that this controversy is a reflection of the "dumbing down" of our country's sense of humor. There is also something to be said about the encroachment of political correctness here, but more importantly, as our country has become less well-educated and more "dumbed down", people don't understand subtle forms of humor anymore. Political cartoons have been an important part of our society for over 200 years, but political cartoons require an understanding of subtle and sophisiticated humor, an understanding of satire. If one doesn't have those skills, one misses the real message of the cartoon and easily misinterprets, fusing the message of the cartoon with one's own ignorance.

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And if you think we're not on to something here with our theory of the slipping down of our national sense of humor, take the NBC television program, "Saturday Night Live", as a perfect example. When SNL started in the 1970's, the writing was dominated by satire, and smart, witty innuendo that employed allusion and double entendre. The writing was sharp, sly and devastating in its power. Now SNL is a sad, pathetic program that employs juvenilistic parroting as its main source of humor. There really is no writing anymore on the show. But yet, many think SNL in its current form is hi-larious. And the same people who think SNL is funny are probably the same people who don't have the ability to understand political cartoonery, thus the uproar over the current Sean Delonas cartoon.

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We were at the Metropolitian Musuem of Art in New York City this week with a young (25 year-old) friend. Our friend works in the medical field, making over $125,000 per year. But for some reason, our friend had never taken a basic art course in college, thus as we strolled through the Musuem, she had no idea who Picasso, Van Gogh or John Singer Sargant was. We love our friend, but we think she's indicative of the fact that Americans are becoming less sophisticated in their thought. And until that changes, we'll have more and more misinterpretations of political humor and maybe, very soon, SNL will just devolve into an hour long showcase for fart jokes and guys who make noises with a hand in their armpits.