ABSTRACT
Aristophanes boasted of old that he was “the only poet who had the nerve to tell the truth to the Athenians.” Charlie Chaplin in modern times described his art of making people laugh as “telling them the plain truth of things.” Will Rogers, commenting on his own “rustic” humor, said: “I guess I wouldn’t be very humorous if it wasn’t for the government. I don’t make jokes, I just watch the government and report the facts.” And E. B. White, at the other pole of the comic universe, discussing the “civilized” humor of The New Yorker—“awful damn civilized” was what he called it—said: “Humor at its best is a kind of heightened truth—a super-truth.”
