Right On Cue: Laughter & Diplomacy In Congress

Whatever you think of King Charles’s speech at Congress, it was a masterclass in timing. He has received criticism for remaining overly-cooperative. Some saw this as a missed opportunity to make a strategic break from the brazen US, ushering in the dawn of more independent foreign policy à la Hugh Grant in Love Actually (alas, if only).

However, it was a speech full of laughs and comedy is bound, inextricably, to the principles of good timing. Whether these jokes were told at an appropriate moment will probably become evident further down the line. 

Humour throughout history has received negative press. Plato, in his Philebus, said that humour is often directed at the vice of self-ignorance, or unawareness; at those who fail to heed the Socratic adage, ‘Know thyself.’  Laughter then, for Plato, has something malicious about it. You must be a little cruel.

The French Philosopher, Henri Bergson later said, ‘The comic demands something like a momentary anesthesia of the heart.’ You have to experience a degree of unconcern in order to find something funny; you must be hard enough of heart for a joke to appeal. 

Timing Is Everything 

Any joke must have an object; the target of the laughing bullies. 

Here, Charles managed to navigate a delicate line. Accusations of self-delusion and ignorance undoubtedly apply to Trump, but making a laughing stock of the US president in Congress wouldn’t do. Comedic language was the perfect mode of reproach. It reminds us that soft power is a kind of power nonetheless. 

Professor Phillip Murphy, director of history and policy at the University of London, noted the ‘implicit’ nature of Charles’s rebukes, and the timbre of many of the King’s jokes could certainly be understood indirectly, without being stated directly. 

Comedy, in such instances, holds a dual capacity to both cover, and uncover, all manner of sins. Take as one example: 

‘The Founding Fathers were bold and imaginative rebels with a cause. Two hundred and fifty years ago, or, as we say in the United Kingdom ‘just the other day.’’

Timing, here, really is everything. It is the subject of the joke itself. The pioneering spirit of the Founding Fathers might, depending on which way you look at it, become less pioneering over the course of the sentence since, as Charles notes, the English had been all things pioneering long before. Charles’s speech writer makes short work of establishing the UK as the older sibling, reminding the younger that they have a few more years under their belt. 

It also opens up two potential lines of understanding or interpretation – whether you are British or American could dictate which line you choose to take (though not necessarily). In one sense, the use of such a well-worn expression (‘just the other day’) makes the history in turn seem slightly well-worn; something not unprecedented, and certainly not for the UK. We’ve seen it all before, is what it suggests. 

Of course, The English were no strangers to revolting against monarchs (Charles I, James II, etc.). Might this also be a comment on the fact that an English Philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), had a profound influence on the bedrocks of the American Revolution, and the principles on which the US Constitution was founded? Enlightenment ideas of liberalism, and the inalienable rights of the individual.

Alternatively, it might be a more self-deprecating jibe at the English. We are the old counterpart to disruptive America, founded on ideals and a go-get attitude. They have achieved more in 250 years than England could in its thousand years head start. 

The genial confusion of the subject and object means what you hear depends on what you are prepared to laugh at. 

Wildean Faultlines

It made sense to me that Charles deferred to the great aphorist himself, Oscar Wilde. His words were witty without being perverse:

‘And for all of that time, our destinies as nations have been interlinked. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.’’

The quote itself assumes an additional layer of irony as part of the speech: Charles enters into a coy showdown with Wildean rhetoric by reminding everyone that, right now, language might in fact be the only thing our countries have in common. Our objectives are increasingly misaligned. Language is our only hope. 

A meticulously forged royal speech has as its objective the identification and resonance of the two nations. It is exactly by virtue of carefully arranged language that commonality might be achieved. A true appeal, Bergson might say, to intelligence. 

Hard-Line, Soft Power?

Even if you undermine the core principles of everything else, language remains. The US has undermined many aspects of what the The Financial Times editorial board recently referred to as, ‘military, intelligence and security co-operation.’ The political aspect of that certainly seems to have fallen through. 

Perhaps one of the more controversial aspects of the speech is that Charles puts the question of the relevance of the alliance back on the US; requesting that Congress reevaluate the relationship, which not so long ago was one of trust. The UK, too, should be reevaluating it. 

Charles spoke of an ‘unshakeable resolve’ in the face of violence (specifically referring to the recent assassination attempt on Trump): ‘We stand united in our commitment to uphold democracy, to protect all our people from harm…’ The language of disarmament would be an apt way to communicate exactly how democratic principles should operate, stark against the context of Trump’s  increasingly aggressive, militarised tactics. How hard-a-line soft power was able to draw will become evident in due course.  

To return to Bergson, I find myself hopefully disagreeing with him. It would be nice to think that the laughter ricocheting through Congress was not the laughter of ‘burned out unconcern’; that of Bergson’s, ‘momentary anaesthesia of heart.’ This might have drawn a laugh if so: 

‘I come here today with the highest respect for the United States Congress, this citadel of democracy created to represent the voice of all American people to advance sacred rights and freedoms.’

Right on cue.