Case study and reflections on subversive humor

I’ve written before about “subversive humor.” Here is another example of the positive power of subversive humor. It is a mild example, but because millions can hear it used every week, I thought I’d point it out.

I like to listen to conservative talk radio and so in the past few years I’ve listened to Rush Limbaugh. By the way, this is back to my “roots,” since I listened in the 1970’s to Paul Harvey. People need to “monitor” my “behavior” and “tastes” by the decades to actually understand me, if you know what I mean.

On Fridays Rush has “Open Line Friday.” This is where he takes more phone calls from listeners than he does on other days. Actually, the point is that he takes calls from people who wish to discuss topics that are not necessarily what Rush is focusing on that day. For those of you who don’t listen to talk radio, the radio hosts tend to put forth a number of topics in each show, and invite callers about those topics, in order to maintain the discussion. People will hold on the phone for hours, and only a few actually get through on the air, because of the number of calls. So on Friday Rush has his “Open Line Friday” where he expresses willingness to take more calls plus they can be on topics that are not those that Rush is featuring.

This is where Rush is both droll and subversive in his humor. The tag line for Rush’s Open Line Friday is something like, “Friday is when we take your calls, even if we don’t care about the topic, but I will fake it.” It is funny and droll (I’ve discussed the merits of droll humor before on this blog) because he says it in a very expansive and over the top way, as if bestowing his graciousness, which is part of his shtick. (Shtick is a Yiddish word that describes a person’s entertainment routine, either deliberate or inadvertent, but usually deliberate; it is a nuanced form of the expression “do your thing,” where your thing is how you present yourself in an entertaining way). So it is always funny to listen to him when he introduces Open Line Friday, unless you suffer from excessive earnestness and do not understand subversive humor.

Rush is being subversively humorous for a few reasons. One is that there is a form of irony (I’ve discussed irony before) because in truth, obviously still few people get through and on air, and he still, obviously, has topics that motivate the callers. So by necessity of structure and through the use of subversive humor, Open Line Friday hardly results in hundreds of callers waxing eloquent on the merits of collecting postage stamps with butterflies upon them, or the best way to cook lima beans. Rush doesn’t have to “fake it” much because obviously listeners phone in with the topics they are listening to from Rush and that they, in return, want to contribute to. So there is both ironic humor (defined as “sounds good, but doesn’t quite turn out as advertised”) and subversive humor, which is to say something that sounds wrong and unsympathetic to the shallow listener, but is actually in a contrarian way, supportive of even the “aggrieved” person who misunderstands.

So someone who is biased not to like conservative radio and who listens to the Open Line Friday shtick is likely to quiver with outrage, thinking “What a blowhard faker! Rush is saying that he will ‘graciously’ fake listening to every caller’s topic, but he ends up taking calls on the same subjects he is speaking of, and not so many calls anyway!” But that is an example of someone not understanding either ironic humor or the underlying subversive humor.

The subversive humor “joke” is that the entire show, through its gravity, attracts a population that IS calling to discuss the topics that they wish to, all the time, every day, all week. So the “wink” of the subversive humor is that while Rush’s shtick is to “deign” to accept what he describes as calls he may have to fake to listen to, the entire show and success of his enterprise would not exist if he was not already doing that, and doing that without faking. Subversive humor sounds politically incorrect to those who don’t “get it,” and they miss that the very thing that the speaker is kind of mocking is what they are doing all along. Every successful talk radio show, yes, especially the conservative ones, open the trail for all others, because they demonstrate through their success the market share of people who want to listen to those types of topics and participate (even if not all listeners agree with every single thing). So when Rush says he is deigning to grant one show as being “for the callers to talk about whatever they want,” even if he has to “fake it,” he is also being subversively funny, in its positive form, since in the free market, his entire show would not exist unless people were listening to what they want to hear, and calling in to say what they want to say, every day, every show.

So detractors of Rush, let’s say a humorous liberal, would listen to his Open Line Friday shtick and possibly quiver with their self perceived “righteous anger” at his “elitist.” LOL! But look at the success, or rather “not success” of liberal talk show radio shows. The market shows that, in general, no one wants to listen. It’s not like the conservative talk show hosts are kidnapping listeners, or blocking access to liberals’ own shows. In fact, the conservative shows demonstrate a model of how it would work, if anyone actually wanted to listen to it.

Further and more essential to understanding subversive humor, one must understand that the humorist seems to mock the very persons they most value. Rush would not have a talk show if he did not value his listeners. Having a talk show is much more work and preparation than people think, and much energy and sweat goes into it. Rush could not fake it, even for that money, year after year, if he did not genuinely enjoy the audience. I speak from experience because preaching is something that is also based on a foundation of genuine liking, if not effusive love, for one’s entire audience. It really is impossible to generate the energy and sincerity if one does not like one’s audience. It is different from manufacturing, for example, where one can manufacture goods for faceless consumers that one may or may not like… but if you think about it, even that tends to fail if one does not at least understand and respect one’s customer base. So subversive humor often takes the form of sounding like one is being politically incorrect, or even insulting, to one’s own base, and it is only understood as a kind of “inside the family lingo.” Let me give you a variety of examples, some firmly subversive humor and some marginally subversive humor.

I had an older cousin, who was an adult when I was a baby. I hated to be grabbed and kissed by him when I was a toddler, even though I loved him, since I was a very shy and self contained child, so I would hide under the kitchen table when he first arrived to visit, so he could not reach me. He therefore got the nickname of “Kissing Cousin.” LOL. Now, someone all earnest and anal would think that by calling him “Kissing Cousin” we were “glorifying” “child abuse.” But that is classic subversive humor, where you call someone a nickname that seems to glorify something that is wrong, but is actually a family lingo type of thing that expresses not only affection but acknowledgement of an “awkward reality.”

That is why subversive humor is such a powerful political force. Subversive humor is not “taking the wrong side” but bringing into the air, in a shorthand and sound byte form, an awkward reality that is not endorsed by the speaker. Here is an example that blew up in people’s faces. Some Afro-Americans sought to destroy the sting of the “N-word” by using it among themselves as that kind of family lingo. But that never really worked because it was not directed into the general sphere of discourse. In situations like the N-word, one must both stop using it and denounce it completely (what I would recommend) or one must be subversive and use it loud and proud in private or public discourse, in order to rehabilitate it and remove the sting. The singer Patti Smith actually tried to do that with a song that linked the N-word to everyone she considered revolutionary, including Jesus and her grandma. It’s an interesting song from an album of hers that I like, and once in a while the tune runs through my mind. If everyone sought to use that model, then everyone should have been calling everyone else “N-word” in everyday conversation in every topic, until those who did use it for the shaming reason (the genuine bigots) would have been flooded with hearing “N-word” in everything from fashion shows to auto sales rooms, LOL. Then it would have died away as an incredibly overused word of slang. THAT is how subversive humor is defined, and its proper use.

I was married to a secular Jewish man, who belonged to a secular Jewish family, one extremely liberal in their politics. But despite being very liberal, they used two certain Yiddish terms to describe Afro-Americans that were not complimentary. So what did my ex-husband and I do? We used those two terms with glee, among each other and in conversation with his family. It works, let me tell you. It is very enlightening and shaming when one floods the airwaves with a term that is like those I am describing, reflecting it right back to those who use those terms. They stopped using those terms (at least in our presence) much faster than earnest politically correct lecturing would ever have accomplished. We continued to use those terms among ourselves because when one is a culture warrior, one continues to self reference where one comes from and what one has achieved. Those terms, like “Kissing Cousin,” remained affectionate and past success laden family lingo, not denigrating. We used the terms with glee when a wonderful Afro-American family moved across the street from us and our elderly neighbor worried if they would be “clean enough.” Yep, it’s rare that subversive terms ever get a rest and a chance to be shelved, in even these times.

Now, imagine my surprise, hurt and dismay when I found that my private conversations with my ex- were wiretapped and monitored, and the use of subversive humor as a positive for change was willfully misinterpreted and shared with others as “evidence” of our supposed “prejudice” and “past life karma.” When I discovered that this had happened, I left the Civil Rights active roster, because I became pulverized and humiliated, for reasons never given to my face, by the very people I have stood beside throughout it all. What they did to me is just as bad as if they took sound clips of “Kissing Cousin,” and used it to promote infant sex.

So even though it is too late, still I try to educate and correct people in their misperceptions. While the affection is gone, I do not give up in my efforts to get people to see the truth, and abolish the lies of genuine hate and prejudice. That’s why I have had this blogging on my mind for a while, and why I even bother. I hope that you have found this helpful, especially those of you, young people, who are not to blame for this situation.