Coping vs. hating
Using cartoons, humor and jokes -- laughter -- to help us defuse prickly issues and bring the needed context of irony to life's dilemmas and debates has long been a global and universal coping mechanism.
We use it not just in political and social situations, but in our personal lives, too. We laugh and recall a loved one's foibles both on their deathbed and at their funerals. We smilingly tell stories of our children's mispronounced words on their proud wedding days to both level them back down to earth and to incorporate their new life companioin into our inner circle. And we smile with rueful understanding when we see a penned image of any world authority -- one liked or disliked -- hoisted by his own petard.
Terrorists haven't gotten that message. They don't know how to chill. They are fundamentalists, and apparently, by definition, fundamentalists are extremists who are extremely humorless.
On the other hand, one man's humor can be another's embarrassment -- especially if the punch is taken personally by less-than-well-rounded individuals. Again, by definition an extremist is, well, extreme.
Now, as the aftermath plays out on Wednesday's brutal terrorist attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, we have to rally around the freedom of expression and freedom of speech that give us the wonderful opportunity to take varied views of world.
Jason Stanley, a Yale University professor of philosophy and the author of a forthcoming book titled "How Propaganda Works," put it well Thursday in an opinion piece for The New York Times: "Satire is the ultimate method by which reason can address power."
What the violent acts in France point up is that these horrific slaughters should not be thought of as political or religious activities, but rather as the acts of people demented by extremism or radicalism.
It is certainly fair to say that in satire as in life, labels are easy. Often too easy.
What is not so easy is recognizing broken people -- especially young people -- and broadening their understanding and opportunities to find and act out tolerance in our increasingly diverse and complicated world.
Nonetheless, we must try, and one of the ways society can help is with humor and satire, essay and cartoon -- freedom of expression.
Making college easier
In Knoxville on Friday, President Obama announced a plan to make college affordable for all Americans by investing $60 billion in the next decade to provide free community college tuition to some nine million students a year across the country.
Tennessee already has a similar program, and Obama told an audience at Pellissippi State Community College that Congress should work with him to carry out the idea in all 50 states.
Here in Republican-heavy Tennessee, we already thought that a great idea, one that would prepare young adults for economic success and one that would bolster an accelerating economic recovery. Gov. Bill Haslam dubbed it Tennessee Promise when he made it a reality last year.
Or at least we all thought it good until President Obama liked it too, and wanted to carbon it for the nation.
Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who traveled with the president to Knoxville, praised Haslam for helping to pay for community college tuition, but then said he did not think a new federal program is the way to go.
"You're always better off letting states mimic each other," Corker told reporters before the president's remarks.
Tennessee Rep. Diane Black, another Republican, said in a statement that she would not support a federal program that tries to impose a successful Tennessee program on other states.
"Any efforts to reboot Tennessee Promise as a one-size-fits-all nationwide approach will be met with heavy skepticism from Congress," she said.
Huh? Who said anything about one-size-fits all? Whatever happened to gracefully saying thank you for recognizing and expanding a good idea? So much for collegial goodbyes to congressional pettiness.
Does this mean we face a future of repealing Obamapromise?