Comedy to Tragedy – Sunday, May 19, 1946
There is prevalent among us a kind of counterfeit humor concerning which we need an occasional reminder. It is the kind of so-called humor that passes from person to person because someone has mistaken a bad story for a good joke. But a story which has indecency as its principal ingredient is not genuinely humorous, even though listening groups often break into loud laughter after someone has told one.
The speaker, the entertainer, the writer of yarns and anecdotes, or the man who draws you aside on the street, are merely fake humorists if they have to resort to things suggestive or indecent in order to get a laugh. Dragging in such off-color stories and trying to make them seem to have a point isn’t really humor; it is merely the prostitution of humor. It is a spurious substitute for a great art. And a good way to stop it is to walk away when someone persists in the common error of mistaking a bad story for a good yarn.
If there is no audience, there will be no recital. Sometimes such stories stick indelibly in the minds of the young and impressionable, and do far-reaching harm—and always they are an offense to sensitive, high-minded people. Clean, subtle, keen-witted humor is an indispensable part of our great heritage of freedom; but mistaking something that is filthy for something that is funny has no legitimate place among us. To mark the dividing line between comedy and tragedy is notably difficult at times, but when we cross the line from real comedy to obscenity—that is tragedy. There are two kinds of people from whose association we should like to be spared: one is the man with no sense of humor, because we find it difficult to enjoy him; and the other-infinitely worse-is the man with a perverted sense of humor, because he befowls the moral and intellectual atmosphere wherever he goes.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, May 19, 1946, 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon, EDST.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
May 19, 1946
Broadcast Number 0,874