Funny Scary

Funny Scary

So ... what can we say about Putin?

Worst man in the world I guess now.

He's evil, he is, sure as shootin' ---

            He is, isn't he? Despite all the reasons not to relish throwing the word "evil" around -- Putin has chosen to do what he has done. Blowing up bomb shelters to bury people alive. Nobody forced him. He doesn't even have to pander to the Republican base.

            I jest. Ha.

            Can we make fun of evil? I don't think so. Not even Charlie Chaplin's Hitler (aka Adenoid Hynkel) in The Great Dictator works for me -- not scary enough. We can only imagine how bad Jerry Lewis's concentration-camp movie is. Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be, to be sure, is a classic. The great American radio and TV comedian Jack Benny plays a ham actor who perilously poses, for a noble purpose, as a Nazi amidst Nazis in occupied Poland. I love everybody involved in that movie, and friends of mine call it one of their favorites. But I have never been able to feel the jeopardy. My heart doesn't accept the possibility that kind, dotty, justly beloved Jack Benny, however immersed in a character (a character much like his radio persona, which apparently was not much different from him in real life), was at risk of being tortured to death by the Gestapo. For decades on his own weekly show, Benny was fondly egotistical -- doting on his own blue eyes -- and a notorious miser.

            A robber puts a gun to Benny's head and growls, "Your money or your life."

            A beautifully timed pause.

            The robber prods.

            Benny:

            "I'm thinking! I'm thinking!"

            One of comedy history's most famous lines. Funny every time. Wouldn't work against the Gestapo.

            Now a comedian is leading Ukraine's resistance to evil. He has already given new substance to the term "stand-up." And we do feel his jeopardy, not to mention ours.