Many reviews and commentaries about Leonard Cohen characterize him as humorless, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Nonetheless, most folks playing the word association game do not respond to “Leonard Cohen” with “Funny.”
Consequently, when I serendipitously found two internet items yesterday that featured Leonard Cohen as key to laughter-inducement, I felt compelled to share them.
Item #1: The McSweeney’s Leonard Cohen List
McSweeney’s, in case there is someone using the internet who is unaware of this site, is famous for its humorous lists. Today’s new lists, for example, includes the Donald Trump version of the Five Stages of Grief (#1 is “Distract self by marrying a new trophy wife”).
While looking for a ill-remembered McSweeney’s List in the archives, I happened onto a list (not the one for which I was originally searching and never found), published some time ago but new to me, which sported “Leonard Cohen” in the title.
The entire list is worth reading at Leonard Cohen’s Seven Immutable Laws of Business
My favorite is #3:
Item #2: Tony Blair’s Leonard Cohen Joke
Yesterday, the BBC online news carried a story, Heads summoned to Mr Blair’s office, about educators and businessmen meeting with Tony Blair. As the BBC’s education reporter, Sean Coughlan, notes, “If Tony Blair is the nation’s head teacher - then presumably a meeting at 10, Downing Street is the equivalent of being summoned to the head teacher’s office.” To create a sense of the scene, the reporter describes the setting,
And if the Queen lives in a world smelling of fresh paint, Mr Blair must inhabit a world filled with nervous laughter. When he cracks a polite gag about Leonard Cohen the new suits on show in the room are creaking with mirth.
OK, the future of the British educational system is, one supposes, important enough to warrant the concern the BBC displays. But, I hold that the true tragedy is the dismal state of affairs that prevails when the nation’s officially sanctioned news service mentions that the Prime Minister has cracked wise about Leonard Cohen but withholds the joke itself.
