This comedian ranks Boston’s Big Dig ahead of three famous construction projects of the last century. Granted, the Panama Canal, the Alaska pipe line, and the tunnel under the English Channel seem to have made some important connections: The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; the North Slope of Alaska and its south shore; England and France; all seem impressive enough.
But we are truly awed to think of what the Big Dig connected: Dorchester and the Financial District!
This is one of many jokes that stand-up comic Jimmy Tingle recently told to an audience of some 150 people in a church hall. His performance has led me to reflect on the art of comedy and what makes us laugh.
Though he has appeared many times on national television, this 51-year-old entertainer has not yet become the household name he deserves to be. Perhaps his reputation as “political,” and more specifically, “liberal,” limits his big-time invitations. But I consider him one of America’s best comics, right up there with Garrison Keillor and Jon Stewart.
His routine about the rise of a first-class stamp to 39 cents is a work of art. The constantly increasing cost of this postage supplies a renewable riff for him on American values. He envisions the year when he hits 150 and that stamp costs six dollars. But, he will claim, it will enable you to send a letter anywhere in the American Empire ─ Iraq, Iran, Syria, wherever.
For Tingle, as with other skilled comics, words as they appear in the script are only part of it. The sound of his voice has a vital function; so does the timing of his words and sentences. Pauses play a crucial role in any good comedian’s presentation.
If you could see Tingle’s face as he delivers a line, you would appreciate that line’s true meaning. He knows how to screw up that face in anguish, to pull down his forehead as he frowns in doubt or look aghast in feigned horror. His facial expressions thus become an integral part of the comic message.
Sometimes he will trudge along the stage, as the celebrated mime Marcel Marceau is fond of doing. He knows how to make like a duck, waving his bent arms up and down. The man can twist his torso to indicate a person in psychic difficulty.
All of this serves his ironic view of life and the world around us. He loves to talk about the way things have changed since his boyhood. For instance, Columbus no longer holds the place that his teachers led him to believe. Now he envisions the Vikings coming to New England after first landing in Newfoundland.
Armed with a case of Tuborg, those hardy warriors work their way down the coast on badly marked roads so typical of Massachusetts and run into some of the highly stressed people of our state. Six of these Vikings stop and get married on the Longfellow Bridge.
Since he was speaking at a Catholic parish, Tingle directed some of his jokes toward people who belong to the church. Not all members of the parish had welcomed the choice of this particular entertainer. Someone was said to have scrawled on a poster advertising his appearance “A liberal comedian for a liberal church.”
In his riff, Tingle asked if there were any “cafeteria Catholics” in the audience. Some hands went up. He then extended the title, affirming the existence of cafeteria Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, and others. He even claims that some people are cafeteria atheists.
For himself, he likes to walk down the line with an imagined tray in his hand: holy water, fine; candles, I’ll light one; discrimination against gays, definitely no; and God loves each one of us unconditionally, oh yes.
Jimmy Tingle does not consider himself a fan of Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster who recently announced that, after all, Jews can get into heaven. That, as the comic sees it, will enable St. Peter to leave his post at the golden gate where he has been waiting for 21 centuries. Now, thanks to Robertson, we know that St. Peter can at last enter the abode of the blessed.
Fortunately, Tingle knows how to offend some people but he does so with grace and style. Being a comic with religious and political convictions cannot be altogether easy. I suspect he wants his members of his audience to think as well as to laugh.
His persona ─ that of a fellow who has grown up working class, and had to recognize himself as an alcoholic ─ gives him credibility. It may enable him to get away with statements that would be regarded as simply offensive if they came from someone who grew up economically privileged.
The most important factor, however, remains the humanity of the man, his art, and his angle on the world that enables others to laugh at themselves and the often crazy world in which we all live.
Richard Griffin