Inherently Funny Words, Humor, and Howard Stern

Here’s a question: Which of the following words is most inherently funny?

• Boob (and its variations, such as boobies and boobery)
• Chinchilla
• Aardvark
• Urinal
• Stroganoff
• Poopie
• Underpants
• Underroos
• Fart
• Booger

Feel free to advocate your favorites or suggest new ones in the comments. Some words are just funny for no reason. Why is that? In Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, a character says:

Words with a ‘k’ in it are funny. Alkaseltzer is funny. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. All with a ‘k’. ‘L’s are not funny. ‘M’s are not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomatoes is not funny. Lettuce is not funny. Cucumber’s funny. Cab is funny. Cockroach is funny — not if you get ’em, only if you say ’em.

Well, that is certainly a start, but it doesn’t really tell the whole story. Words with an “oo” sound are also often funny, especially when used in reference to bodily functions (as in poop, doody, booger, boobies, etc…) In fact, bodily functions are just plain funny. Witness fart.

Of course, ultimately it’s a subjective thing. To me, boobies are funnier than breasts, even though they mean the same thing. To you, perhaps not. It’s the great mystery of humor, and one of the most beautiful things about laughter is that it happens involuntarily. We don’t (always) have to think about it, we just do it. Here’s a quote from Dennis Miller to illustrate the point:

The truth is the human sense of humor tends to be barbaric and it has been that way all along. I’m sure on the eve of the nativity when the tall Magi smacked his forehead on the crossbeam while entering the stable, Joseph took a second away from pondering who impregnated his wife and laughed his little carpenter ass off. A sense of humor is exactly that: a sense. Not a fact, not etched in stone, not an empirical math equation but just what the word intones: a sense of what you find funny. And obviously, everybody has a different sense of what’s funny. If you need confirmation on that I would remind you that Saved by the Bell recently celebrated the taping of their 100th episode. Oh well, one man’s Molier is another man’s Screech and you know something thats the way it should be.

There has been a lot of controversy recently about the FCC’s proposed fines against Howard Stern (which may have been temporarily postponed). Stern has been fined many times before, including “$600,000 after Stern discussed masturbating to a picture of Aunt Jemima.” Stern, of course, has flown off the handle at the prospect of new fines. Personally, I think he’s overreacting a bit by connecting the whole thing with Bush and the religious right, but part of the reason he is so successful is that his overreaction isn’t totally uncalled for. At the core of his argument is a serious concern about censorship, and a worry about the FCC abusing it’s authority.

On the other hand, some people don’t see what all the fuss is about. What’s wrong with having a standard for the public airwaves that broacasters must live up to? Well, in theory, nothing. I’m not wild about the idea, but there are things I can understand people not wanting to be broadcast over public airwaves. The problem here is what is acceptible.

Just what is the standard? Sure, you’ve got the 7 dirty words, that’s easy enough, but how do you define decency? The fines proposed against Stern are supposedly from a 3 year old broadcast. Does that sound right to you? Recently Stern wanted to do a game in which the loser had to let someone fart in their face. Now, I can understand some people thinking that’s not very nice, but does that qualify as “indecent”? Apparently, it might, and Stern was not allowed to proceed with the game (he was given the option to place the looser in a small booth, and then have someone fart in the booth). Would it actually have resulted in a fine? Who knows? And that is what the real problem with standards are. If you want to propose a standard, it has to be clear and you need to straddle a line between what is hurtful and what is simply disgusting or offensive. You may be upset at Stern’s asking a Nigerian woman if she eats monkeys, but does that deserve a fine from the government? And how much? And is it really the job of the government to decide these sorts of things? In the free market, advertisers can choose (and have chose) not to advertise on Stern’s program.

At the bottom of this post, Lawrence Theriot makes a good point about that:

Yes a lot of what Stern does could be considered indecent by a large portion of the population (which is the Supreme Court standard) but in this case it’s important to consider WHERE those people might live and to what degree they are likely to be exposed to Stern’s brand of humor before you decide that those people need federal protection from hearing his show. Or, in other words, might the market have already acted to protect those people in a very real way that makes Federal action unnecessary?

Stern is on something like 75 radio stations in the US and almost every one of them is concentrated in a city. Most people who think Stern is indecent do not live in city centers. They tend to live in “fly-over” country where Stern’s show does not reach.

Rush Limbaugh by comparison (which no one could un-ironically argue is indecent in any way) is on 600 stations around the country, and reaches about the same number of listeners as Howard does (10 million to 14 million I think).

So in effect, we can see that the market has acted to protect most of those who do not want to hear the kind of radio that Stern does. Stern’s show, which could be considered indecent is not very widely available, when you compare it to Limbaugh’s show which is available in virtually every single corner of the country, and yet a comparable number of people seem to want to tune in to both shows.

Further, when you take into account the fact that in a city like Miami (where Stern was taken off the air last week) there may be as many as a million people who want to hear his show, any argument that Stern needs to be censored on indecency grounds seems to fly right out the window.

Anyway, I think both sides are making some decent points in this argument, but I hadn’t heard one up until now that took the market and demographics into account until last night, and we all know how much faith I put in the market to solve a lot of society’s toughest questions, so I thought I’d point this one out as having had an impact on me.

In the end, I don’t know the answer, but there is no easy solution here. I can see why people want standards, but standards can be quite impractical. On the other hand, I can see why Stern is so irate at the prospect of being fined for something he said 3 years ago – and also never knowing if what he’s going to say qualifies as “indecent” (and not really being able to take such a thing to court to really decide). Dennis Miller again:

We should question it all; poke fun at it all; piss off on it all; rail against it all; and most importantly, for Christ’s sake, laugh at it all. Because the only thing separating holy writ from complete bullshit is your perspective. Its your only weapon. Keep the safety off. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

In the end, Stern makes a whole lot of people laugh and he doesn’t take himself all that serious. Personally, I don’t want to fine him for that, but if you do, you need to come up with a standard that makes sense and is clear and practical to implement. I get the feeling this wouldn’t be an issue if he was clearly right or clearly wrong…