Ask Dr. Atta J. Turk, May 7, 2006

It has been several months since we received a letter from a reader asking me a question, but over the weekend reader Billy asks:

"Dear Dr. Attaturk,

This week you wrote a column saying that Richard Cohen cannot know comedy because he starts out an editorial saying that "he was funny". As you are a doctor, I thought I'd ask you to explain the premise and dynamics of comedy."

Well Billy, I don't consider myself a comedian per se, but rather an individual who is qualified to study the psychological and sociological dynamics of comedy.

I spent several years studying under one of the nations most prominant gigglogists Dr. Lawrence Fine at the 'Pep Boys Institute of Jibelistics' in Jamestown, North Dakota. One of Dr. Fine's theories of comedy was that there are essentially three levels of mainline comedy with examples. He published this theory in his seminal work, the Laughter Dynamics of the Testicles being as follows:


Lowbrow Humor: Kneeing your neighbor in the nuts.

Middlebrow Humor: The dynamics of joking about a metaphysical third party kneeing your neighbor in the nuts.

Highbrow Humor: The sociological premise of joking about kneeing the President of the United States in the nuts.

These levels of humor vary from satire which take actual, or true events, and recast them into a format for humor for the masses.

An example of this is a joke about the President desiring to have sexual approval from his mother and her reaction by kneeing him repeatedly about the testicular compartment. This produces the resulting bombing of third world nations to prove himself worthy or a motherly gonadal caress.


Well, I guess I'll see you in another nine months when someone again writes me a question.