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About Jokes

A Frustrated World is Looking Back for Jokes

Iwan Darmansjah, MD

Jokes have always been an elixir for an healthy mind, it is like what Coca Cola has in its mission, it kicks you up. Jokes kick you for a laugh, mostly with humoristic, ridiculous, or sarcastic, but also didactic outcome, and may even change the political world. Much of political jokes are initiated and uttered by despair of a situational condition like corruption. Most jokes are reflecting the truth and may even tell the story of a man’s life. Remember the book of jokes of a certain past president.

In a time of economic crunch of today, the journalistic world participate in a collective kick up. Once, officially a serious magazine like TIME, devotes a large portion of its contents on jokes of international genre. Its inspiring to read about jokes of political turmoil, such as that a communist who was president for 40 years who is suffering from cancer is portrayed by a defecting cartoonist that showed the hardliner on a hospital bed with a line of infusion and a child kneeling in front of his sickbed offering a Coca Cola as medicine. And if you follow world politics then the time is indeed apt for the two separated countries on one island to tear down the Berlin Wall. It is obvious that many segregated countries which exist for some 40 years (or more) only because of one stubborn, power-hungry statesman are clinging to despotic, narcissistic behavior, violating basic human rights of their people.

Jokes are an expression of human souls, often of high character and judgment of what he/she observes and digest in his/her environment. Sometimes, instead of wanting being humorous, one may reveal a story of the inner soul. Some 20 years ago, when it was taboo to fight corruption I caught a high ranking official whom I know well. The story went when I attended a meeting at a mountain resort which will be opened by him. Being early, I chose a seat in the farthest left of the small room in a middle row besides the wall; deliberately to hide, not to be suspicious of my presence. When, at last, the high official arrived – he was usually late – and opened the meeting, he was again beginning with jokes. That was the trend, otherwise you can’t become a government official. After beginning his speech it went quite formal, with some dry jokes that were not laughable at. Then, after some 5 minutes, he suddenly detected me in hiding and stopped his oration, while commenting sheepishly: “ Ahh, ...... there is Prof Iwan, now I cannot lie to you”. Since he caught me by surprise, his utterance was from the heart and thus reflected the truth. He knew that I knew about him. But sometimes a joking cartoon may be regarded as blasphemy.

The joker’s club of TIME has a new column for some time and one professional joker stated that it was easy to find jokes around people like President George Walker Bush or even Senator Ted Kennedy, but found it difficult to do the same around Barack Obama, because if the joke has a sexual content, ‘Michelle herself would impeach him’. But the greatest political joke for us is “how can our country be governed by dishonest jokers?”

Jakarta, 2 Sept 2009.

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