Comedy, tragedy: Too soon — or perfect timing?

As an earthquake rocked Japan last March, flooding the streets and threatening nuclear power plants, Alec Sulkin, a writer for the animated TV comedy “Family Guy,” decided to share his humorous thoughts on Twitter.

“If you wanna feel better about this earthquake in Japan, google ‘Pearl Harbor death toll,’” wrote Sulkin. Though he likely expected praise from comedy fans for his hilarious insights, Sulkin soon found himself apologizing instead.

“Yesterday death toll = 200. Today = 10 thousand. I am sorry for my insensitive tweet. It’s gone.”

Meanwhile, comedian Gilbert Gottfried tweeted, “I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent. I said, ‘Is there a school in this area?’ She said, ‘Not now, but just wait.’”

Sulkin kept his job as a TV joke writer, but Gottfried got fired from his job as the voice of the Aflac duck.

Was either man wrong for joking while people died? Is it funnier when 200 die than 10,000? Or was their mistake joking about a current tragedy instead of one long past?

Q: What did Ted Kennedy tell Mary Jo when he found out she was pregnant? A: We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

In Woody Allen’s 1989 movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” a character shares his comedy philosophy, one that has since become commonplace. “If it bends, it’s funny. If it breaks, it’s not funny … You’ve got to get back from the pain … Comedy is tragedy plus time. The night Lincoln was shot, you couldn’t make a joke about it … Now, time has gone by, it’s fair game.”

So was the 1969 joke about Kennedy’s tragic accident funnier then, or now?

“My only thought is ‘never’ too soon for funny. Funny is so subjective, though, and one man’s hysterical is another’s heretical,” says Andrew Solmssen, a comedian from Los Angeles who has been in comedy for more than a decade. “I was with people the day of 9/11 who were finding comedy in the coverage and the hysteria, and even the morbid stuff like the jumpers, and some of the things they said would not have been universally funny. But they were funny to me, and it helped get me and all of the people I was with through it.”

“As a New Yorker, you constantly come across people whose lives were impacted by 9/11,” says Gayle Kussoy, who works for a nonprofit in Queens. “I think the most important thing one can do is be respectful of that, so any jokes should be avoided.”

“Nothing is really offensive — it’s either funny or not funny,” argues Louisville comedian Raanan Hershberg. “So when a joke that’s not funny is made, one processes it, and their intellectual justification for not laughing is that it’s offensive — but really, the issue is that it’s not funny, and that’s why you’re even processing it in the first place. The only thing sacred in comedy is that nothing is sacred ... Make fun of it all, just make sure you’re funny.”

Q: What do Christa McAuliffe and Donna Rice have in common? A: They both went down on the challenger.

In 1986, the preceding joke was timely, in awful taste and, as jokes go, pretty clever. To those who witnessed the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, it was a vivid reminder of life’s tragedies. To supporters of Sen. Gary Hart, it was a pre-Clinton confirmation that getting caught in a sex scandal would be lethal to a charismatic Democratic presidential hopeful. To anyone under 30 today, however, it probably just sounds like a sex joke about a handsome boxer.

Last week, the Huffington Post ran an item in their comedy section called “Funniest Post-Hurricane Irene Tweets So Far,” featuring tweets like, “I didn’t even get halfway through my emergency beer stash. #ireneregrets.”

Gilbert Gottfried didn’t make their list, but not for lack of trying. “My thoughts and prayers are with victims of the East Coast Earthquake who had their cell phones temporarily disrupted,” he tweeted on Aug. 25.

This time, when many were annoyed by media hype — and “only” 40 lives were lost — no one complained that his jokes were “too soon.”

No-Play List

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, our nation was attacked. All normal sense of everyday life and logical thought was overtaken by fear, and that was true at the corporate level as well as on the streets of Manhattan. The country’s largest radio chain, Clear Channel, soon issued a list of songs that were not — legally speaking — “banned”; they were merely suggestions for local programmers to consider avoiding. Explanations were not provided.

Either way, the list itself suggested censorship of the weirdest kind. While all Rage Against the Machine songs were forbidden, the band Bad Religion was left alone but Godsmack’s song “Bad Religion” made the cut.

Any songs about “falling” in love were in trouble.

Some selections only make sense in that they exist on the border of racism and xenophobia (The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian,” The Clash’s “Rock the Casbah,” Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”). Some refer to New York in some irrelevant way (The Drifters’ “On Broadway”), Chicago (“The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace) or Los Angeles (Everclear’s “Santa Monica”).

Some excerpts from a very long list:
Louis Armstrong — “What a Wonderful World"
Barenaked Ladies — “Falling for the First Time"
The Beatles — “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”
Pat Benatar — “Love Is a Battlefield”
Brooklyn Bridge — “Worst That Could Happen”
Neil Diamond — “America”
Dio — “Holy Diver”
Shelly Fabares — “Johnny Angel”
Filter — “Hey Man, Nice Shot”
Foo Fighters — “Learn to Fly”
Fuel — “Bad Day”
The Gap Band — “You Dropped a Bomb On Me”
Norman Greenbaum — “Spirit in the Sky”
The Happenings — “See You in September”
Carole King — “I Feel the Earth Move”
Korn — “Falling Away from Me”
Limp Bizkit — “Break Stuff”
Lynyrd Skynyrd — “Tuesday’s Gone”
Dave Matthews Band — “Crash Into Me”
Alanis Morrissette — “Ironic”
Red Hot Chili Peppers — “Under the Bridge”
Rolling Stones — “Ruby Tuesday”
Steam — “Na Na Na Na Hey Hey”
The Surfaris — “Wipeout”
U2 — “Sunday Bloody Sunday”

The Shondes walk the walk, rock the rock

Like most bands today, The Shondes are a queer political Jewish punk band. OK, so maybe they’re pretty unique, but the Brooklyn residents are more than a novelty — they’re a band first, and they write songs about their lives and their interests like everyone else. Currently on tour promoting their third album, Searchlights, the band has also been dealing with violinist Elijah Oberman’s cancer struggle.

LEO: Louisville audiences might know more about punk rock than they do about Judaism. Can you explain the interrelatedness of the two?
Elijah Oberman: Well, there’s certainly a rich history of Jewish punks, but for us, it’s mostly about allowing our music to be the place where all the things that inspire us interact and merge together naturally when we’re creative. So we’re each inspired, in different ways, by aspects of Judaism and also steeped in different kinds of Jewish music, from liturgical to Klezmer. I don’t think I can point to a song or part of a song and say, “That’s Jewish!,” but it’s in there somewhere, and people tell us they can hear it. When you’re making music, all these different parts of you percolate and combine, and that’s really exciting to me.

LEO: What causes more confusion or weirdness on the road — Jewishness, queerness or being from Brooklyn?
EO: (laughs) I think what surprises people most is when we say we’re Jewish in the context of being pro-Palestine activists — yes, there’s lots of us out there. But honestly, I don’t think people are very confused by us. I think people come to see us because they’re excited about who we are and the music we make. It’s usually our music that people are surprised by and talk about, that magical thing that happens when something moves you and you weren’t quite expecting it. That’s the best part of performing.

LEO: How do you feel about the current state of LGBT rules and regulations in the U.S.?
EO: It’s really important to me that there be safety and justice and dignity for queer and trans people in the U.S. and around the world. Rules, regulations and laws can be an important part of that, but it’s not everything. A lot of the organizations I support aren’t doing work on gay marriage or Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which I know are the queer issues getting the most media and governmental attention right now. They’re working on things like supporting homeless queer youth, stopping police brutality and trans rights in prisons and foster care, and talking about how these issues disproportionately affect queer people of color and poor people. It’s not that I don’t care about gay marriage, but I care about these things more.

LEO: How is your health today?
EO: I’m doing well, thank you. It’s been a really hard year, and I’m cancer-free, but still have a ways to go in terms of recovering from chemo and getting strong again, finding a new balance in my life, and processing what I’ve been through. It’s just the next step in the journey. It’s definitely been a life-changing experience in a lot of really awful ways, but in a lot of really good ways, too. I’m grateful to have been given that opportunity for that learning and also the chance to have a healthy long life, so I can act on what I’ve learned and do something good with it.

The Shondes with Madame Machine and Ohlm
Sunday, Sept. 11
The Rudyard Kipling
422 W. Oak St.
www.shondes.com
$5; 7 p.m.