The Counterculture, Comedians, and Commentary

Sometimes, and maybe most of the time, there’s more honesty in a joke than there is in the evening news. This in an album cover from the infamous, ground-breaking duo: Cheech and Chong. Mike has three of their albums and when I asked him why he liked them so much, he said: “They used dirty language and made references to drugs.” If you’re 15, or 16, and sometimes even 65 (I guess), this is kind of thrilling.

Cheech, an American Chicano, and Chong, of Canadian and Chinese descent, were irreverent enough that Mike’s senior room monitor would not let Mike play certain albums (check out The Wedding Album) during free period. Mike played some of it for me this morning and I could see immediately why she nixed the album. Still, Cheech and Chong represented the counterculture. They lampooned religious school (Sister Mary Elephant), the police (Dave Isn’t Here—my favorite), movies (Pedro and The Man at the Drive-Inn), and cannabis prosecution (Sargent Stadanko). They were funny, subversive, and unflinchingly honest.

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Like many, I’ve been reading newspapers and listening to people give opinions concerning the Israeli-Hamas War. In Florida while visiting my mom, the TV – Fox News – was on 24-7. When my mom and I weren’t eating or talking, we were listening to “newscasters” promoting the pro-Israeli position. They never presented any Pro-Palestinian counterbalance.

Sometime later, back in Ithaca, a friend of mine brought up how the war was affecting Palestinians. I was at a loss for words. My friend, who is Muslim, felt very strongly that the violence perpetrated on the Palestinians was being minimized.  

“I think most Americans aren’t for the war,” I said with discomfort, believing my statement to be superficial and simplistic.

Later that day the same friend sent me an article:  Opinion: Here's what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com, November 19, 2023).

The author said: “I cannot stop thinking about the dozens of Israeli children held in captivity by Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad in underground tunnels in Gaza, while above them Israel’s attack has killed, so far, nearly 4,500 Palestinian children. Stopping the violence, and returning the hostages, is urgent for any person who values all lives. That it is very difficult to imagine how this happens tells a terrible truth: Those with the most power to effect change refuse to recognize the humanity of all people.”

My friend wanted to make sure I really understood that last statement: “Those with the most power to effect change refuse to recognize the humanity of all people.”

The author mentioned shirts printed by the Israeli Army “depicting pregnant Palestinian women and children as military targets, calls of death to the Arabs…” He mentioned that Biden described Russia’s attack on Ukraine as “genocide”, yet “the Israeli Defense Minister’s “total siege” policy, together with the forced displacement of more than 1.5 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, [has] created what sure seems like genocide.”

How could Ukraine be a genocide and not Gaza? my friend said.

I was surprised to find that the article’s author was Jewish.

So I searched on the internet for more information on the war, and came across John Oliver on the Israeli-Hamas War. John Oliver is a comedian and a commentator, but unlike Cheech and Chong, Oliver has a committed research and support staff. His subject matter is a little more serious, and that can make for some uncomfortable moments.

This is what I gleaned from his show that aired in mid-November. I did not know that Hamas, a relatively young organization, had been elected in 2006. Hamas promoted themselves as an “open-minded organization that believes in democracy and freedom and political pluralization.” There have been no elections since 2006. I did not know that most Gazans (68 percent) would not feel “safe” to participate in peaceful demonstrations. Or that seventy-three percent of Gazans favor a peaceful settlement with Israel.

Seventy-three percent. Wow.

If that last statistic is true, then why are we providing the 3.8 billion dollars to bomb them? (Ninety-nine percent of US-pledged money goes to the miliary). This seems counter-intuitive. In one striking video clip, a Gazan says the rubber bullets used against Palestinians are American, the guns are American, even the Jeep and the uniform is American. “Everything is American.” 

I did not know that Israel protested for peace for a full 40 weeks before the October 7^th attack. Or that Netanyahu gave suitcases of money to Hamas. My friend mentioned this, and I thought: no, no: too bizarre. But Netanyahu did, reasoning that the Israeli government could control Hamas, and use them to undermine the PLO. I officially apologize to my friend for my inability to be open-minded, and not just on the “suitcases of money”, but with respect to other matters.    

I did know that the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was censored for a comment she made in support of Palestinians, and some have said in support of Hamas, but I did not know Brian Mast, a Florida congressman, wore his Israeli military uniform to the Capitol and said, “. . . there are very few innocent Palestinian citizens.”

If you can equate the “innocent” with the seventy-three percent who want peace (seems reasonable, right?), then this does not seem like “very few innocent Palestinian citizens.” Maybe our lawmakers should be watching John Oliver.

At one point Oliver, while musing about what it would take for peace to happen, said, “It has to be possible to feel the pain in one community, without denying it in another. It has to be.” Applause from the audience. He gives an existing model for how this could work. Ram Elhanan, whose 14-year-old daughter was killed by a suicide bomber, is an Israeli, and part of a Parents Circle, which includes Palestinians who have lost children. They work together for peace. “You cannot put two million people in a box, close the lid, and expect nothing will happen,” Elhanan says. Oliver’s program ends with Elhanan’s statement: “We have to choose, whether to share this land, or to share the graveyard underneath.” 

Maybe the demonstrations and the press has had some effect: just before Thanksgiving, Israel agreed to a pause in the war in exchange for hostages.

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Like many others, I do my gratitude meditation, and I thank my friend, and John Oliver for enlightening me. I thank Cheech and Chong, the duo I dismissed when I was a naïve teenager, thinking that all these guys were about was smoking gargantuan blunts and cracking sophomoric jokes. We do need humor, not only because it’s fun and entertaining, but we need it to soften our edges, so that we can be more honest with ourselves.