Word: laughs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...through the crowd, introducing folks to Jerry Ford. When he finally made it up to the platform, Dole told how the President had called "and asked me if I would like to be on the ticket with him. I thought about one second and said yes." That drew a laugh -Bob Dole has always drawn laughs, even growing up in Russell-but later, unexpectedly, his mood changed abruptly. "You can come from a small town in America and you do not need wealth to succeed," he was saying. "If I have done anything, it was because of what...
...Reagan's suite on the last night, Schweiker seemed a rather forlorn figure. He gamely tried to laugh along with some of the inside staff jokes about the Reagan campaign just ended, but mostly he gazed silently into the TV screen. He and Reagan had little to say to each other; there was not a great deal more familiarity between the two men than when Schweiker's name was first proposed and Reagan did not even know who he was. It had been a ruinous mismatch...
Jargonwise, the conference was a regular laff riot. Toronto Teacher John Atkin proposed establishing "designed, unifunctional anxiety-release centers in a community situation." Translation: maybe it would be a good idea to have a string of government-supported laugh parlors, where people could go to chuckle. A group of Canadian researchers reported on "Ethnic Humor as a Function of Social-Normative Incongruity on the Basis of Multiple Dependent Variables." The report questioned whether Chinese immigrants found Canadians funny, but reached no firm conclusions. Another paper analyzed "Glee Rates" of nursery-school children. Among its findings: playfulness decreases when kids...
Without a doubt, the U.S. delegates were the top bananas of the conference. Professor Jennings Bryant of the University of Massachusetts tried to explain why the victim of a joke does not usually laugh unless he can think of a halfway witty comeback ("Degrees of Hostility in Squelches Featuring Retaliatory Equity as a Factor in Humor Appreciation"). Paul McGhee of Pels Research Institute, Yellow Springs, Ohio, read an almost incomprehensible dissertation, "Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Considerations for a Theory of the Origins of Humor," referring to "intrahumans," "arousal fluctuations" and "stimulus discrepancies." His conclusion: if you can't think...
Little League Jokes. Professor Fine-whose current work involves analyzing the jokes of a Minnesota Little League team-is anxious to discover why people laugh. "When we learn that, we will be able to use humorous material as a tool." Fine believes most people laugh as much as 1,000 times a day. If so, the news should alarm California Psychiatrist William Fry, who several years ago developed a theory that laughing is physically harmful and can actually kill you. That might still be a better fate than sitting through an academic conference on humor...