humor

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  11/7/2021
  

  Inside the 1980s Phenomenon of "Truly Tasteless Jokes" and What it Says about a Cultural Shift around Offensiveness

  The wildly successful series of paperbacks heralded a moment when the embrace of offensiveness as a political weapon was shifting from the left to the right (audio contains the contents of some Truly Tasteless Jokes). 

• 
• 2/21/2021
  

  Advice to POTUS 46 from POTUS 1

  by David O. Stewart

  The author of a recent political biography of George Washington wonders how the first president would guide the most recent one. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/30/2020
  

  128 Tricky Questions That Could Stand Between You and U.S. Citizenship

  Irish Immigrant Maeve Higgins looks at the expanded civics test for naturalization, and gives it a failing grade--unless its purpose is to reduce immigration. 

• 
• 10/4/2020
  

  Corrected American History: The Cheery Colonial Period

  by Lawrence Baron

  Peruse a leaked lesson plan from the 1776 commission. 

• 
• SOURCE: YouTube
  9/29/2020
  

  Bawdy Civil War Letters, In the Style of Ken Burns

  by Katie Hemphill

  Historian Katie Hemphill's recent crash course in video editing for Zoom teaching let her fulfill a longtime goal: set the bawdiest Civil War letters she found in her research to the stirring sounds of documentary music. Content Warning: Cuss Words.

• 
• SOURCE: The Onion
  9/24/2020
  

  New Patriotic 1776 Commission Struggling To Find Ways To Improve Upon Education System’s Existing Propaganda

  "Members of President Donald Trump’s new patriotic 1776 Commission struggled Wednesday to find ways to improve upon the education system’s existing propaganda."

• 
• SOURCE: Mel Magazine
  9/11/2020
  

  An Oral History of the Onion's 9/11 Issue

  The satirical newspaper The Onion struggled to find a way to apply its trademark irreverance to the 9/11 terror attacks. For fans, however, the issue of September 27, 2001 met the grief and anger of the day with humor. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  7/26/2020
  

  As a Teenager, I Hated Johnny Carson. Then Came the Pandemic.

  As a teenager, I thought his ‘Tonight Show’ was a bland, uncool relic. Now I appreciate his deadpan humor and the loose weirdness of his interviews.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/9/2020
  

  The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic

  National economies collapse; species go extinct; political movements rise and fizzle. But—somehow, for some reason—Weird Al endures.  

• 
• 4/5/2020
  

  Laughter in an Age of Pandemics

  by Michael A. Genovese

  We are all struggling, and we all need the distractions that only absurdity can provide. So laugh now and then; see the silly, the absurd and the comic in life.