I love Jon Stewart. He makes me laugh. After a long day of reading and thinking and writing about the ethics of public discourse, and considering the various issues that are the subjects of our national and international conversation, I need a laugh. “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” on Comedy Central allows me to have a good laugh before I turn out my light and go to sleep. The segment “I Give Up” on the August 4, 2010 program at once makes me laugh and shows the absurdity of what Stewart called “craven political expedience.”

Stewart stands in the great tradition of the fool, the comic who had license to laugh in the face of the most powerful people in the land. History shows us the office of the fool in ancient Egypt and in Aztec Mexico. The fool was an important religious figure in rituals in India and in pre-Christian Europe. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica on line, in 7^th century Ireland, the fool was thought to be inspired with poetic and prophetic power. The fool was sometimes a member of households in Imperial Rome. Thanks to modern communications technology, the fool can come into our homes and make us laugh at the powerful and at ourselves.

However, it is laughter with a purpose. The comedy that the fool offers is a mirror that shows us our own grotesqueries, the ugliness that results from human contradictions combined to create a deformed humanity. The fool shows us our own absurdity and the elements of our society that are ripe for ridicule. The function of the fool is to show us our ugliness so that we may make a correction. And these days, there are some issues that only our comedians, our professional fools, speak about with any honesty. I think that the best of today’s comedians are inspired poets and prophets.

On the August 4, 2010 program, Stewart calls Congress “ineffectual, shortsighted, ignorant, (a) fetid pool of corruption and stupidity located at the intersection of Entitlement Avenue and Abject Dereliction of Duty Lane.” I laugh because, sadly, I think it is true. He goes on to describe the debate in the House of Representatives over a bill that would provide health care for 9/11 responders, people who worked for days in the toxic aftermath of ground zero in rescue and recovery efforts. The bill would also provide health care for people who live near ground zero. Many of these people now suffer health problems as a result of this service.

I first learned of this problem from watching Michael Moore’s movie Sicko. In one segment of the movie, he takes 9/11 responders to Cuba to get care. They receive good care for very little money. It shows the shameful contradiction between the care these heroes and sheroes did not receive from their own country, one of the richest in the world, and the care they did receive from an enemy country that is also one of the smallest in the world. It is a grotesquery.

Similarly, in this episode, Stewart shows excerpts from the debate In the House of Representatives where Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) speaks in favor of the bill and excerpts from speeches by Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL); Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI); and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) in opposition to the bill. The Republican opposition comes because the bill would pay for itself by closing a loophole in the tax code that allows “foreign multinational corporations incorporated in tax haven countries from avoiding tax on income earned in the U.S. ” The comedy comes with Stewart’s everyman reactions. In a variety of iterations of “What?,” he makes me laugh out loud.

The comedy brings together contradictory performances of our law makers when we see Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) exploding screaming rage next to torpid insensate dronings of his Republican opponents. Again, Stewart’s everyman reactions make me howl. In the end, the bill received a majority of votes, but the Democratic leadership brought it forward under a procedure that did not allow amendment and also required a two-thirds majority. The bill failed to receive a two-thirds majority. Analysts think the reasoning for using this procedure was so that Democratic House members would not have to defend votes for or against amendments that may be used against them in November. Thus, we witness through the mirror of comedy the result of “craven political expedience”.

Words have multiple meanings. The word “craven” means cowardly, a contemptible lack of courage. However, this faintheartedness on the part of the Democrats is also hard-heartedness on the part of the Republicans. They fear any tax increase to the extent that they would fail to provide for the health care of people who volunteered their time, at the expense of their health, to work on a toxic pile of horror that was the remains of the World Trade Center. The courage of the first responders who ran into burning crumbling buildings to save lives, and the courage of those who worked on the pile after is juxtaposed to the shameful cowardice of politicians afraid of the next political advertisement. It is grotesque. It is a mirror into the reality of American political life. It is ridiculous and according to Plato, the ridiculous is a failure of self knowledge. (<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/127459/comedy>.)

We say that we are the land of the free and the home of the brave, but our leaders are not brave. They work from a logic of “craven political expedience,” while the truly brave suffer. This is not comedy, but a tragedy that ought to be corrected.