The Cutting Edge of Humor

They're saying that it's a sad day for American political humor. Russell Baker has lowered his flag to half mast. Oliphant is mourning.

Once it seemed like it would go on forever, but deep down they should have known the end would come. MX jokes are all used up, and "window of vulnerability" puns are passe.

Of all the arms of government, the Reagan Pentagon has been the most cooperative recently in providing inanity suitable for ridicule. So no one should complain about the mothballing of the nuclear shell game concept. First of all, it'll probably be back before you can shout "Hit the deck! It's a preemptive first-strike attack!" And second, the military is hard at work hustling new yuks all the time.

Why just about ten days ago, Cap Weinberger '38 turned the tables on us at The Crimson and produced many a chuckle. We called to ask the former president of 14 Plympton St. for a comment on the Army-Harvard football game, being that he has ties to both schools and isn't that ironic and all that. Well, Cap, through one of his secretaries, mind you, told us that "as Secretary of Defense he doesn't have time to follow the details of college sports." Quite a card, that Cap.

To get back to the main point: let's get off this self-pity kick on the end of the MX and look elsewhere in that funny five-sided fortress for our laughs.

Take the Pentagon Officers' Athletic Club, for example. None other than the eminently authoritative New York Times noted last week that this "linoleum oasis" offers a crop of one liners ripe for the picking. "Reagan orders military belt tightening; Joint Chiefs hit the Universal for sweat-and-strategy session. Stock-man urges they 'Drop for 40 more."' You could go on all day.

But the really interesting thing about the Pentagon gym is that it's not actually reserved for officers. Anyone, from the secretarial pool on up, can pump a little iron with the top brass. "We talk about movies, we talk about exercise, we keep tabs on everyone's weight, and we have a lot of laughs," the Times quoted on participant as saying.

Sounds like fun, and it sounds like the perfect opportunity for enlisted folk to launch some harmless barbs at the big bosses. Can't you just hear the casual patter as another morning of exercise draws to a close, with a stenographer saying to a general:

"Yes, sir, I loved Raiders of the Lost Ark, but about my desk...Well I was just wondering why it keeps disappearing."

"Disappearing? Whatever could you mean by that?"

"Well, I'll be sitting there like always, and all of a sudden--poof--it's gone."

"Oh, my. You must have of the new Stealth desks. Lucky you asked me about it here, where we're all stripped down to our gym shorts and can talk man to man. As an officer, I would have had to give you the old 'no comment' on that one, soldier."

"Right, sir. But what's a Stealth desk?"

"It's quite a long story, soldier, but in a nutshell, the Air Force started out with Stealth for planes; the Navy wanted it for subs; the Army couldn't thing of anything so it asked for more tanks; the commies said it would cost too much; and some smart ass in the Senate found out it wouldn't be ready for anything larger than a desk until 1998. So we didn't improve national security, but for only a million per unit, we've leapfrogged the Russians on office technology."

A little confused, but encouraged by the camaraderie created whenever overweight people get together to do sit-ups, the stenographer pursued the point.

"When would we use invisible desks, sir?"

"We wouldn't, soldier. It's kind of like the B-1 bomber: it wouldn't do us any good under any conditions, but we don't know what else to do with the money until we get a new idea. Lets people around here feel a little better about themselves and keeps the Russians guessing."

It's kind of lucky we live in a country where the little people can talk to the big people every now and then even in the halls of power. And don't be too quick to whine about government taking itself too seriously. It was always Cap Weinberger who used to break 'em up around the Crimson by saying, "Whaddaya think this is, The New York Times?"