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Humor: The Secret Weapon
| Article
# : |
10744 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1986 |
1,620 Words |
| Author
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Barry Farber
Barry Farber is the host of a radio talk show for WMCA in New
York and has done extensive writing for national magazines and
newspapers. |
You don't need a training course for dictators any more than you need seeds for weeds.
If, however, there ever were something like an Attila-the-Hun Military Academy to make sure young generalissimos, caudillos, party secretaries, and leaders-maximo mastered all the finer points of subjugating others, it's easy to predict what they'd teach before lunch on the very first day.
They'd teach whom to knock off first when they take over. Who'd like to guess?
"Opposition leaders?"
Any dictator who gives that answer deserves to be demoted back down to young, ambitious colonel. Opposition leaders come fourth!
How about all those loud-mouth artists, authors, poets, and intellectuals? Now you're talking. They come third!
Second in line for obliteration are all your pure-hearted idealistic allies who will turn against you as soon as they realize you didn't really mean all those rosy proclamations about justice and freedom that inspired them to risk their lives to help you defeat the previous dictator.
First and foremost on every wise dictator's hit list comes the comedian, the funnyman who with one little jab can expose your evil, your lies, your cruelty, and your ego and have everybody laughing at you behind your back.
A dictator can own every weapon in the land, from the ballistic missiles to the hatpins, and still be helpless before the comedian courageous enough to stand up and hurl a barb that hits an obvious bullseye and makes the people laugh.
During Adolf Hitler's early days of rule in Nazi Germany, a cabaret comic was playing to laughing-room-only crowds of Germans whose only means of protest was to sit with others in that darkened room and laugh at clever jokes about Hitler's walk, his uniform, his racial theories, even his moustache. They threw him in jail for 30 days as an example to comedians all over Germany.
All Berlin awaited the comic's first performance after his release. Had they broken him? Would he flatter the Fuehrer this time? Or at least lay
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