SunSentinel.com Rob Borsellino

Grim jokes show the healing process has started

Published October 23, 2001

The dark humor is starting up.

What's a Taliban moderate? Somebody who wants to crash half-empty planes into 50-story buildings.

The ultimate punishment for bin Laden? Catch him, give him a sex change, and send her back to live in Afghanistan.

The absence of these jokes up to now is just one more sign that this particular tragedy has been unique. In the past we've always used these silly, tasteless lines to help us get by, to help us deal with the fear and anxiety.

Sometimes it can be unsettling. The smoke from the shuttle explosion had barely cleared, and already the jokes were starting. And sometimes it's just a matter of trying to get something out there, like this riff from the Gulf War: Why does the Iraqi navy have glass-bottom boats? So they can see the Iraqi air force.

But this tragedy was starkly different. The late-night jokesters weren't on the air, and when they did reappear they were reluctant to touch the story. And folks did not seem to mind. We didn't feel comfortable laughing.

So this willingness to crack a smile is apparently seen as a sign of recovery, a sign that we really are getting back to normal. But it's going to be a slow process.

McKinley Cheshire, a West Palm psychiatrist, says the level of suffering is still acute, and it'll be with us for a while.

"We use humor to try and downplay the seriousness of something, to try and blunt the perception of a threat to our well-being. But with this one, the threat is ongoing, and the danger and anxiety are still very much with us."

Cheshire says as time goes on we'll be able to find humor in things we can't deal with right now.

"We're feeling a physical and psychological threat. We feel helpless. Give it time. Before long we'll be feeling real macho, laughing and joking."

As low as those jokes may seem, it's a step up from where we were in the days after the tragedy, when rumors were the outlet.

A lot of it's been fueled by the Internet, where people turned to try to make sense of something they couldn't get their minds around. And it's been relentless.

These are some of the more prevalent rumors, the ones that won't seem to go away:

About 4,000 Jews -- employed by Israeli companies at the World Trade Center -- got a heads up on the terrorism and stayed home from work on Sept. 11.

An American woman got an early September letter from her Afghan boyfriend telling her to stay off planes and out of tall buildings on the 11th and to stay out of malls on Halloween.

Osama bin Laden owns Snapple.

About 30 rental trucks -- rented by Arabs -- are missing in New York.

None of those is true. That bit about the Jews missing work was rampant in New York last month, and now it's making its way around the country. I've heard that Afghan boyfriend story from somebody in my family who said she knows a friend of a friend of the woman who got the letter. For a while I believed it.

And then there are pieces of information that -- in this atmosphere -- have taken on the aura of rumor. These are a few of them:

ABC News staffers have been asked not to wear American flag pins and red, white and blue ribbons because it'll look like the network is taking sides and isn't being objective.

Reuters news agency banned the use of the word "terrorist," claiming it showed a bias. The line being: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

A veteran anchor at a CBS affiliate in the Midwest was fired for sprinkling face powder around the newsroom -- while the rest of the staff watched.

Bert the Muppet was on posters being carried at a rally by bin Laden supporters.

All true.

I even saw the Bert poster. And funny as it sounds, I couldn't work up a laugh.

Rob Borsellino can be reached at rborsellino@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6626.

-- Anonymous, October 23, 2001