Eamonn Clark

If you didn’t know, there is an ongoing breakdown in American comedy. It is increasingly censorious, politically biased, and generally unfunny. The most recent high profile example is the as-yet-unresolved Oscars hosting debacle… A very long list could be made of such things in the past few years, but the current content of late-night shows speaks for itself. Here’s a great interview on the subject (mild language warning):

Also, if you didn’t know, the papal court used to have a full-time comedian, or jester (a bit more than just a joke-teller), just like many other royal courts. Shortly after his election, Pope St. Pius V, of happy memory, suppressed the office of the papal court jester. Note that he did not just go find a less outlandish, less challenging, and less funny jester, but he removed the office. He had his reasons, and knowing Pius V, they were good reasons… The court has serious business to attend to, and also, having a jester makes the court look very much like a secular king’s court, which could be scandalous.

As everyone knows, jesters are to make people laugh (among other things). In doing so, they provide a little levity amidst the tension – no doubt needed these days in the Roman curia. But humor-based laughter is an overflow of the rational faculties into the senses based on some kind of dissonance being pointed to… In other words, the most important function of the jester (or comedian) is to say what everyone is thinking but nobody else will say because they are afraid to – or are perhaps unaware of the absurdity of some set of contradictory realities. He is supposed to cut right to the heart of the issue, albeit in a roundabout way that shows the ridiculousness of it all. How useful would this be today…

The jester is fundamentally a truth-teller. And to fire a jester for a biting joke would only make the joke all the more powerful… After the pope himself, nobody’s speech is more protected than the jester’s. He can say what needs to be said, and nobody can punish him without making himself look like the real fool.

453 years is enough seriousness. Ease the tension. Tell the truth. Get a jester.