Poverty Is No Laughing Matter – Blog Action Day

I am probably not the first to use the title of this post. And considering 9,772 sites will be participating… I am probably not the only one to use this title today.

I am just a humorist and have no real qualifications to discuss poverty. I am fortunate to have come from a middle class background, and although we may have not had all the things I wanted, I never wanted for food, shelter or clothing.

Poor Folk have been made fun of for generations. The country bumpkin, the bum, the derelict. Even Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, when told the people were starving – that they had no bread, famously replied, “Let them eat cake.” There appeared to have been a disconnect between the Royal Family and the People. This was subsequently remedied by the French Revolution.

It is hard for people who have never been in dire straits to understand poverty. “Why don’t they work harder?” or “Why don’t they just move?” These are the questions of people who have options, but it is often the case that poverty removes those options. Barbara Echenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America shows just how hard it is to get by on minimum wage today. John Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath shows us what an entire country in poverty was like. In both of these examples working harder would be almost impossible, and moving didn’t change anything.

As bad as being destitute is, there is another type of poverty that could do us even more harm. There is a poverty of the spirit running amok in the world today. Intolerance, indifference, insensitivity, and the inability to see these issues in ourselves, create a toxic society. Management asks for concessions from workers and then grants bonuses to senior executives for cutting costs. Entire financial institutions are destroyed by greed, but those in charge not only keep their fat salaries and options, but expect and receive government help, while workers farther down the ladder are let go.

We can feel helpless, powerless, that what we say or do doesn’t matter… what can we do?

Maybe humor should be our weapon of choice in this cultural wasteland. It may be the only real weapon we have. The last thing an overstuffed windbag executive or politician wants, is to be punctured by the terrible swift sword of a joke.

And all of us fortunate enough not to have to wonder where we will sleep or what we will eat?

Well if we hear a joke that cuts a little too close, makes us squirm just a little bit, or deflates our sense of self importance… maybe then it’s time to consider the poverty of our own attitudes, and tolerate a little more, care a little more and extend a hand to another.

Pogo said it best: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Where there is laughter, there is hope.