Might laughter still be the best medicine?

There's laughter there and it can work

Find ways of laughing at Trump, I say quietly, knowing I live 3546 miles away from Trump's Palace of All the Vanities.

Oh no, he's too awful, say some of those who live nearer.

But isn't that dangerous? Isn't it giving in? Acknowledging that he has the power to strangle laughter at birth, a great weapon for a narcissist who hates being laughed at?

Ask Stephen Colbert who hosts A Late Show, a US chat show. Or Alec Baldwin. Or The Guardian's cartoonist, Steve Bell, who portrays this portly displaced businessman by substituting a toilet for his head. I laugh at all three. Not happily, you understand. Wryly, perhaps. Maliciously. Recognising the strange truths.

And because of a secondhand book I devoured soon after WW2. Cartoons by those who pursued caricature in occupied Europe. Notably in countries like Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. At a time when monsters even more awful than Quiffman were in charge. Ah, the bitter imagination. The ghastly fun.

I am old enough to have known the McCarthy Era in the US (late 40s into the 50s). And to have read newspapers throughout. This jowly, distinctly unfunny guy, with virtually no qualifications other than a talent for slander, ruined thousands of lives. Perhaps some poked fun but I can't recall; mostly, fear reigned. Eventually a judge, Joseph N. Welch, stood up and called him a reckless liar and that started McCarthy’s downslide. Welch became a national hero. Better still, he played a persuasive role in a great movie, Anatomy of a Murder. Now that was kind of funny.

We need a new Welch. Not perhaps a judge. Someone who recognises the dark comedy in Trump and Plague-masks. Great, says Stephen Colbert, we’d see less of his face.

Stale and unprofitable

Even after all these years I am still counter-programmed: when a band strikes up God Save The Queen my reaction is always “This is a joke.” Surely no one responding honestly to that lugubrious (ie, mournful, esp. exaggeratedly or affectedly so) tune hears it as a persuasive invitation to reflect on Britain’s good points.

And I have a further musical nightmare. In the mid-fifties I did national service which meant that the government was technically entitled to require me to lay down my life for the Tories. That that wretched tune might be played at my obsequies haunts me now, more than half a century later.

Of course, I’m being naïve. Most people don’t hear it as a tune but as the end-product of a Pavlovian exercise. A command: suspend thought, act foolishly.

The fact that they once played it in cinemas after the last performance triggers a poignant memory. Connie, an American, was going home because her husband had been unfaithful. I took her to the cinema to cheer her up. As that tune started and people hurried up the aisles to escape it, she burst into tears again. She’d miss that British experience, she said.

Having watched the Olympic cycling events I’ve been beset by GSTQ. However, the organisers’ version starts with a flourish on the brass (vs. the bass or snare drum) and the tempo is raised a little. This does improve things*. I wondered if this was Elgar’s arrangement but sorting through clips on YouTube on your behalf proved so depressing I gave up.

And I agree with Plutarch. Injecting tiny snatches of Vangelis' Chariots of Fire theme into the Olympics is not only tawdry. it spoils the memory of a goodish movie
* This improved version is not used at all disciplines