Funny Times: High Tee-Hee

By Peter Carlson
The Washington Post; Tuesday, September 1, 1998; Page B1

Many magazines are informative, insightful, even important, but only one is absolutely essential to understanding the human condition in this postmodern, pre-millennial era. That magazine is, of course, Funny Times.

In an age when the astonishing technological power of the FBI crime lab is brought to bear on a stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress, when the president of the United States describes his blatant lies as "legally accurate," when the weather is going south and so is the stock market, America needs a magazine that understands that, as the great spiritual leader Mr. Natural once said, "the whole universe is completely insane."

Funny Times is a sort of Reader's Digest of contemporary American humor. Its editors scour the nation for the best cartoons, columns and comic essays and gather them every month in 24 pages of newsprint. The result of this valuable public service is an unpretentious little magazine that deserves a place of honor in every American home -- the bathroom, for instance.

The September issue is typical. It's got News of the Weird, the Harper's Index, a column by Dave Barry and cartoons by Matt Groening, Jules Feiffer, Lynda Barry, Nicole Hollander and the delightfully demented soul who signs his work "Mueller." Other recent issues have included works by Andrei Codrescu, Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower. And those are just the big names. There's also lots of good stuff by unknowns like Glasbergen, who drew the cartoon that shows a worried dog gazing longingly at its master and asking, "When you're patting me, do you ever think about other dogs?"

Dogs are the subject of a gallery of cartoons in the September issue, including one captioned "Confessions of a Bad Dog, "which shows two pooches in a confessional, one wearing a clerical collar, the other, who is visibly guilt-ridden, confessing: "I ate my doo twice, I coveted my owner's leg, I piddled on the carpet and I drank from the toilet!"

But Funny Times isn't merely funny. Serious issues are addressed here. Bill Gates comes in for some major mockery. So does our health care system and the Southern Baptist Convention's recent mandate that wives submit to their husbands.Sometimes, the humorists in Funny Times demystify politics better than all of America's op-ed pundits combined. In one cartoon, a Democratic donkey pretty much sums up our politics: "Big Business and the Christian Right are fighting over the very soul of the Republican Party," he says. "With us, there's absolutely no doubt. Everybody knows Big Business already owns our soul."

As that cartoon suggests, Funny Times has a political viewpoint that could be described as left-wing populist. In fact, Funny Times may be the best leftist magazine in America -- not that there's much competition for that title these days. Big Business is regularly bashed, which is refreshing in an era when most commentators worship at the Church of the Invisible Hand of the Almighty Free Market.

In the August issue, for instance, a cartoon portrayed the "New Era of Free Trade": Mexico, China and the United States are scantily clad hookers strutting their stuff for a cigar-smoking businessmen. "I'll do anything, please," says the United States. "I'm cheap and only 13," China says. "I'll let you degrade my environment," Mexico says. In the same issue, the owner of a baseball team sings an updated version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame": "Bail me out with a ballpark! Build me a new stadium! Buy me skyboxes at thousands a crack! I'll raise player salaries and never look back! So it's loot, loot, loot for the home team! If you don't pay it's a shame! 'Cuz it's sub-si-dize or you're out of the old ballgame!"

Funny Times carries no advertising except for an ad touting its own line of T-shirts. The latest is a parody of a heavy-metal tour shirt. It's black, of course, and it shows a big, ugly rat and the caption "Black Death. European Tour 1347-1351." You've got to love a magazine that jokes about the bubonic plague.

Funny Times is available for $2.95 at larger newsstands or by calling 1-800-811-5267, Ext.444.