With a vote of 219-212, the House of Representatives has passed sweeping Humor legislation which, once signed into law, will ensure that 35 million additional Americans have access to humor.

Among the wide-reaching changes to the humor industry outlined in the bill, major points include:

• Effective immediately, the 2-drink minimum mandated by greedy comedy club owners and the exorbitant fees charged for said drinks will be permanently abolished, until Republicans regain control of Congress and reverse all of the laws that the Democrats have made.

• Within 12 months, the government will have in place a National Humor Exchange (NHE), where citizens will be able to trade jokes, stories, humor e-books and comedy recordings for free online, and where they can search for and buy tickets to comedy shows, even those across state lines, without having to pay the current industry-wide average fee of 472 percent charged by such ticket outlets as Ticketmaster and StubHub. Democrats plan to subsidize this exchange by holding bake sales.

• By 2012, a nationwide network of Humor Mobiles (HMs) will be created. These HMs will bring jokes, comedians, whoopee cushions and mockery to the homeless and people in the most remote outposts of the U.S., where currently many citizens have no access to humor. One HM will be designated to make weekly stops at the Cheney residence, one of the most humor-deficient regions of the Baltimore-Maryland Metropolitan Statistical Area.



Top Republicans call the bill unconstitutional and many hold firm in the delusion that they will somehow repeal the bill. It is rumored that Sarah Palin may be brought back into the ring to lead this charge. Leading Democrats welcome a Palin comeback, stating, “There can never be too much free humor.”

Speaking on terms of anonymity, Representative Mike Pence of Indiana stated, “This bill only passed as a result of back-room deals where all kinds of nasty jokes of a highly questionable moral nature were told. You know, stuff like the old, ‘Mommy, mommy, why am I running in circles? Shut up before I nail your other foot to the floor.’ Blasphemous. Humor is a serious matter and this is not the way a democracy is supposed to be run. A democracy is supposed to operate out in the open, where every elected official has the same opportunity to be offered kickbacks, sweetheart deals, and Final Four tickets. And besides, why do we want to waste perfectly good humor on those with pre-existing conditions such as the depressed and downtrodden? Do you have any idea how much humor these people require?”

Asked why leading Republicans were left out of the back-room dealings, Speaker Pelosi answered, “They’re such a buzz kill. Would you invite them to your party? I mean, really, come on. What a bunch of stuffy, self-righteous, over-privileged dinosaurs. Plus,” she said, “they never pitch in for the keg.”

Republicans have intermittently claimed that they have their own Humor Bill, playfully nicknamed, “Joke’s on U."

“We have this incredible plan for Humor Reform,” said a leading Republican. “I can’t tell you too much about it but, essentially, it does everything good that the current bill does, it doesn’t do anything bad that the current bill does, and it does a bunch of other stuff, too, all good stuff, with absolutely no bad stuff. Republicans have been working on this bill for over 100 years because, well, humor reform is a complicated issue and you cannot rush into this sort of thing without careful planning, crafting, deliberation and condescension."

An anti-humor fringe group, calling themselves the No-Glee Party, has pledged to continue its fight to end universal humor. Small protests were held around the country today in states such as Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Idaho, where protestors held signs that read, “Repeal Humor!”, “No More Laughter,” “Kill the Bill: FumiGate HumorGate,” and “Let the People Cry.”

“This is going to kill the Democrats in the mid-term elections,” said one Noglee’er. “What fun is being happy if others, who don’t deserve it, are happy too? The whole fun about being happy is to gloat in that happiness in the face of other people’s misery, distress and oppression. Nobody wants everyone to be happy. That’s communism.”

Shaking his head as he meandered down R Street following news of the historic vote, Senator John McCain of Arizona was reported to have been heard mumbling, “Socialized humor. It’s going to be just like the Soviet Union in the 80s – nothing but jokes about bread lines, babushkas and drunken cosmonauts.”

Godspeed,
LJL