"The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow."
--Mark Twain
When the Illinois Humanities Council staff selected humor as the topic for this newest issue of Detours last summer, it seemed a timely topic. Late night talk show hosts were regularly skewering George Bush, and for most Americans Britney Spears was the most appalling thing around.
Of course, after September 11th, our choice of topics felt naive and inappropriate. Even humor seemed a luxury -- a throwback to a much earlier time. A few short minutes on September 11th seemed to propel us eons away from the world we knew before. But as Mark Twain reminds us above, humor is not only a natural response to tragedy, but it often grows out of sorrow. However, anyone who saw David Letterman's show the week after the attacks will never forget how hard it was for him to go on at the personal request of Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Certainly, being funny has been difficult since the terrorist attacks.
With this in mind, we explained to our Detours contributors that their articles didn't need to be funny, but rather we asked them to explore humor as a genre or topic. The result is an issue that delves into a diversity of humor-related topics -- from Illinois humor to dark comedy to social satire. Cartoonist Nicole Hollander and playwright Rebecca Gilman offer some wonderfully personal reflections on how humor can respond to the shifting world views in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
The larger question for us, of course, is what role the humanities themselves can play in the wake of September 11. Bruce Cole, the newly appointed Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, explained it well in the Washington Post: "We [the NEH] are here because democracy does demand wisdom. Our democracy will be as good as our citizens. Our citizens will engage best when they know who we are, where they come from, what our institutions and freedoms are." This goal of engaging citizens in democracy is at the heart of many Illinois Humanities Council programs.
This year, the IHC has devoted one of our "True Learning, True Teaching" seminars for Illinois K-12 teachers to the study of Islam entitled, "Islam the Fundamentals", this seminar considered the historical context of Islam. In much the same way, the IHC's library discussion program, "Choices for the 21st Century: Defining Our Role in a Changing World," engages citizens and communities in open dialogue about issues such as conflict resolution, terrorism, and the global economy. In April 2002, high school students debated just these issues on the floor of the State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois at the culmination of a year-long program called "Capitol Forum on America's Future," a program that provides interactive curriculum units for high school social studies teachers and their students. This program is offered in partnership with the Illinois Secretary of State's Office.
We want to thank Ivan R. Dee for permission to excerpt materials from Bernard Sahlins' new book, Days and Nights at Second City. We also wish to thank Groucho Marx Productions and Robert Finkelstein for permission to reproduce our cover image, which first appeared as part of an exhibition mounted at the Spertus Museum Chicago entitled, "Let There be Laugher! Jewish Humor in America."
Phoebe Stein Davis
Senior Editor, Detours
Director of Public Affairs, Illinois Humanities Council
