Laughing Matter Putdown Humor

Disparagement as a thema in humor is alive and well. The media abound with apparently amusing putdowns, slurs, digs, and barbs. So do faculty meetings, business lunches, factory cafeterias, and cocktail parties. And so it may have always been. A long line of thinkers--including Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Baudelaire, Bain, and Freud--have assured us that the disparagement of others underlies much of what we consider funny. In Hazlitt's (3) words, "we grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule and congratulating ourselves on their defects." For better or for worse, it seems, we enjoy seeing others ridiculed.