The real divide between the right and the left in America might make you laugh | Opinion

By Jennifer Moses

Yes, I know, Republicans and Democrats differ on a few issues, including taxes, health care, immigration, environmental regulation, civil rights, voting laws, gay marriage, women's rights, birth control, international relations, firearms, crime, energy, and education.

But what seems to be missing from the endless discourse is this: Those on the right, and even the center-right, appear to lack the humor gene.

Funny they aren't.

Whip-smart, crackling with wit, quick with the one-liners and closely observed absurdities, not so much.  Earnest, maybe.  Smart -- sure, why not?  They're even, on occasion, educated enough to know the difference between a Kurd and an Arab.

But when was the last time you heard a true conservative get out a good one?  When was the last time a Republican pol made you laugh?

I'll tell you: never.

And the best our homegrown right-leaning pols have ever come up with is, from Chris Christie, an endless stream of vindictive bullying.  ("You have numbnuts like Reed Gusciora who put out a statement comparing me to George Wallace and Lester Maddox. Now come on guys, at some point you've got to be able to call BS"-- this in reference to a state assemblyman who supports marriage equality.  Or this beauty to a heckler: "Sit down and shut up.")

Some say Assembly Republican leader Jon Bramnick is funny. Meh.

Then of course there's the famously non-funny Jared Kushner, who is, perhaps, New Jersey's most famous current power-wielder, who has never, to anyone's knowledge, said anything memorable at all that didn't involve either outright lies or deep prevarication.

On the national level, so humor-free are our conservatives that they can't get to the punch line even when it's on the teleprompter.  Stumping for Trump, word-smith Sarah Palin read the following funny joke out loud:  "Well, and then, funny, ha ha, not funny, but now, what they're doing is wailing, well, Trump and his, uh, uh, uh, Trumpeters, they're not conservative enough. Oh my goodness gracious."

Pretty dang hilarious, or it could be, if it were an impersonation on "Saturday Night Live."

Remember that deliciously awful moment in the Republican debates when Jeb Bush declared he'd give Democrats "a warm kiss" if they cut taxes?  Or when Lindsey Graham joked: "I will save Social Security because I know why it exists. Now, if you're looking for good beer policy, I'm your best bet. My dad owned a bar. I know beer."

Get it?  How about old laugh-a-minute Ted Cruz, when on national TV he quipped: "I'll buy you a tequila, or even some famous Colorado brownies."

Are you peeing yourselves yet? Me neither.

I went on a google-search, trying different key words ("funny Republicans," "humorous conservatives," "Republican comedians" and so forth) and here is the sum total list of funny Republicans I found: Drew Carey; Adam Sandler; Doug Stanhope; Vince Vaughn; and that's all, and if you haven't heard of some of these people (I had to google Doug Stanhope) maybe it's because they're either not all that funny or not all that famous. On the other hand, they are all white men.

I'm not saying that everyone who votes right of center lacks humor -- I lived in the red part of Louisiana (in other words, the white part) for a long time and had many non-liberal friends who, unlike their representatives in the halls of power, hadn't killed off their own souls and funny bones with an endless list of resentments combined with an unquenchable thirst for winning at any cost.  Because really, people, there is just nothing funny about, for example, depriving poor women of birth control.

Nor is there anything even a little bit humorous when it comes to keeping people of dusky hues off the voting rolls, depriving the poor of health insurance, cutting taxes for the extremely rich at the expense of everyone else, refusing to send adequate aid in the form of food and water to storm-ruined and starving Puerto Rico, and cynically calling such efforts at punitive deprivation "America First."

You know who is funny, though -- and trust me, I'm fully aware that he isn't anyone's idea of a mensch?  Kim Jong-un, that's who.  I'm still laughing my butt off over his "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" remark.

Deranged dictators and would-be dictators aside, in lieu of humor the entire Republican party seems to have embraced the same tactics that all three of my grown children used during their toddling years.  Such as the seven-year-hissy the GOP threw over Obamacare.  Or when, not once but seven times, members of GOP shut down the government because they didn't get their way.  Or the temper tantrums thrown almost daily, via Twitter, by the current occupant of the White House.

On the other hand, it's never been a better time for comedy.  Just ask New Jersey native Jon Stewart.

Jennifer Anne Moses is a Montclair-based painter, author and mother of three.

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