For the past 12 years I have leaped out of bed with a bounce on Friday mornings to edit Ammo Grrrll’s weekly Thoughts from the Ammo Line. This morning my body rhythms are off. Ammo Grrrll has left the building. I need a laugh. I’m thinking about my Grrrll.
Working with Ammo Grrrll over the years made me think about the difficulty of humor in general and of political humor in particular. Coincidentally, this week I received an email from HarperCollins director of publicity Theresa Dooley. Ms. Dooley announced that How To Test Negative For Stupid: And Why Washington Never Will by Senator John Kennedy has sold over 100,000 copies “across formats” the first week on sale in the U.S. The combined sales figures of pre-orders, print books, ebooks, and digital audiobooks put it on track to be the fastest selling conservative book of 2025.
Ms. Dooley’s message quoted Senator Kennedy: “It’s more obvious than ever to the American people that Washington’s ways have gotten deeply weird, dysfunctional, and, yes, downright stupid. I’m grateful that many of you have decided to look to my book…for an explanation. I truly hope it’s a useful guide for everything that’s gone wrong with Congress, and that it makes you laugh along the way. I’ve just been blown away by the public’s response.”
Senator Kennedy’s trademark is humor. He has built up a following on Fox News by commenting with biting wit on the news of the day and his colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I think of the scene in When Harry Met Sally — “I’ll have what he’s having.”
I hope Senator Kennedy has a sequel in mind — something like How To Test Positive for Humor: And Why Washington Never Will. The cover might be illustrated with a drawing of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries droning on and on. Is it possible to parody them?
We miss the late and prolific P.J. O’Rourke. It turns out he was irreplaceable. Andrew Ferguson (photo above), however, is still with us. Of whom does he remind us? I wrote about the guy Andrew Ferguson reminds us of in “Still funny after all these years” and in “The fate of humor.”
