In 1981, a bunch of hill staffers, goaded by my guitar and a couple of rounds of "he had his arm around'er, but he didn't mean to drown'er," started writing parodies and singing them around town (the group is now known as "the Capitol Steps.") In those ancient days, one could have a sense of humor regarding politics.
For a long time, though, politics hasn't been fun any more. People have often asked me why it’s so hard to find humor in politics these days, and a concise answer is not easy to give. Observing the grim, unapologetic, and menacing apocalyptic of both parties, humor is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind. But I recently came across the best answer to that question – and it appears that the problem is not unique to our own time.
Back in the 1920s, Karl Kraus explained why it is so difficult to have a sense of humor in such perilous times: “It is next to impossible to write satire when a situation has become so grotesque that reality surpasses the flight of a satirist’s imagination.”