Comedy is not pretty
I wonder what Colonel Hogan would think?
Y’know, from Hogan’s Heroes – the 1960’s sitcom that sensitively explored the inherent rollicking hilarity of life in a Nazi prison camp.
What got me wondering was a long story at the top of page 2 in Saturday’s B section of the Minneapolis Strib. It seems the Minnetonka school district administration has its collective undies in a bunch over an invitation to a high school dance posted on a private Instagram account. The Minnetonka superintendent of schools stepped up to the plate in a public statement asserting that the students had engaged in “an outrageous act” and “will be disciplined for their actions.” Other school administrators and adult Minnetonkites enthusiastically joined in the righteous chorus of outraged harrumphing.
So what was in this online invite to the school’s annual Sweetheart Dance that generated such a flurry of public distain and dismay? Well, let me quote directly from the Strib story:
“’The photo … shows a teenage girl and boy doing a Nazi salute as they clasp and apparent invitation to the school’s annual Valentine’s Day dance, called Sweethearts.
“Sweethearts would be a Hit(let) w/you, and I could Nazi myself going w/anybody else. Be Mein? Yes or Nein?’ the poster reads.”
Maybe a little dark for Hallmark, but as wordplay goes, I’ve seen worse, and with the visual context – yeah, I could see Corporal LeBeau trying the line on Colonel Klink’s secretary on CBS prime time.
Oh, and before anyone works up a whole new firestorm of PC outrage, asserting that neither the Minnetonka teens nor the cast of the ‘60s sitcom understood the depraved gravity of the Nazi régime or acted in sympathy with it … well, of the series cast John Banner (Sgt. Schultz), Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink), and Leon Askin (Gen. Burhalter) were all German Jews who fled the Nazi regime. And Robert Clary, who played Cpl. LeBeau, had been interned in a real German concentration camp.
‘Nuff said about them. Safe to say they got it.
As for the kids, all I know is as soon as the scheisse sturm broke, the post came down, and an apology went up in its place. Probably not the reaction of an underage member of Aryan Nation.
Alright, let’s be real clear, real Nazis are no laughing matter. The original Brownshirted variety or the contemporary Hitlerite wanna-be’s stinking up the armpits of our body politic. Any fool realizes that.
But treating everything related to the Turd Retch with tight jawed, butt-cheek clenched seriousness is its own kind of foolishness. Nothing robs pompous evil of its power as effectively as pointed fingers and a belly laugh. Nothing is so “not funny” it won’t end up a punch line somewhere, somehow.
And that’s ok. Healthy, in fact.
And no, laughing at Ole and Lena doesn’t make you an anti-Scandinavian bigot.
Nor is telling a dead baby joke equivalent to advocating for infanticide…
C’mon people, let’s get a grip.
Steve Martin said it, comedy is not pretty.
Or tasteful. Especially the adolescent variety. Yeah, we were all eighth graders once.
Which of course begs the question of when did a Minnetonka teenager’s questionable humor become cause for top level intervention by a government agency?
For that matter, what was the Minnetonka school district, its officers and employees doing trolling a kid’s private Instagram account in the first place?
And if the authorities do not approve, the individuals “will be disciplined for their actions.”
How?
A forced apology? Self criticism? Mandatory re-education?
Send them to the Rrrrusian Frrrront?!?
Didn’t we put a stop to the Gestapo?
It’s what made the real Hogans heroes.
And that’s no joke.