The Geliophobia Epidemic
By Danny Gallagher

It's Thursday, just moments before my deadline and I'm furiously pounding my fingertips on the keys on my keyboard and my fists on the top of my skull for ideas for my weekly humor column.

This isn't something my editor expects me to do in my capacity as the city reporter for his small-town North Texas newspaper. It's also easier said than done. (You try producing jokes about the city appropriating federal funds to repair busted sewer mains.)

I manage to crank out a funny tale about the closing of one of the city's fiercest budget sessions. Specifically, the column was about how I would miss the budget: a giant binder full of financial line items, which I had to get to know during long evenings and learned how to appreciate like a person -- even like a good friend who would let me use him as a pillow during meetings that dragged on too long. (I eventually named him "Bud.")

The next morning I discovered my column wasn't on the paper's "Voices" page. My editor said there was nothing wrong or offensive with the column itself; instead he was afraid someone might take the knee-slapper about sleeping during a city meeting the wrong way. He suddenly came down with a familiar illness spreading among newspaper editors: geliophobia -- the fear of laughter.

Miami Herald humorist Dave Barry seems the think most of today's newspaper editors have contracted geliophobia because of easily offended readers, which keep them from taking chances on humorists.

"Here's what happens, I think: Someone tries to write something funny and a little bit edgy and most people get it," Barry said in an interview with columnist Joe Posnanski of The Kansas City Star. "But you get a few people who are ticked off or crazy, they make irate phone calls and write angry letters. This [creates] writers and editors who are more humorless, more easily offended, more and more scared, less and less daring."

Humorist Tom McLaughlin, whose humor column ran in The Maryland Middleton Citizen, remembers when an editor felt his readers might not get the butt of his jokes.

"One was about sitting on the beach and observing the bums (notice the word) of the ladies in bathing suits," McLaughlin said. "This column included many other ideas and the bums were just a small part of the picture."

Humorist Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post said his work still gets edited for content issues even now that he's one of the big dogs. His column is being nationally syndicated for the first time, and The Santa Rosa Press Democrat has dropped him after just three weeks because of an interview he did with Barry -- where they briefly discussed men who put mirrors on the tops of their shoes so they can look up women's skirts.

"It happens all the time," Weingarten said. "My editor, Tom Schroder, is always telling me I cannot write one thing or another. But he doesn't put it quite that way. He doesn't say he is 'afraid' or 'scared.' He says I am a 'pervert' or an 'idiot.' We work it out. I do not object to good editing. Everyone needs an editor and sometimes an editor's job is to tell you that you have gone too far or stepped over a line."

Humorist Maggie Van Ostrand, whose columns and feature articles appear in numerous newspapers including The Boston Globe and The Chicago Tribune, said an editor's geliophobia varies from region to region.

"An editor in Texas did not understand satire and thought I was insulting everybody in his city," Van Ostrand recalled. "When the article was sanitized and resubmitted, he loved it and published it in a prime Sunday spot. On the other hand, the article ran in a Texas online publication as originally written."

Suzette Standring, self-syndicated humor columnist and president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, said her columns are rarely pulled or edited but agrees with Barry's sentiments -- sort of.

"I'm a recent arrival to the newspaper/columnist field, so perhaps I'm not the best barometer of changes over the years, but generally, I do agree newspapers hesitate on new or original talent," she said. "I don't know if it's really so much fear as it is a desire to quickly cash in on a proven commodity. For instance, to many editors, Dave Barry is the face of humor, so they'll look to either rerun his columns or find someone like him."

Money is at the root of their geliophobia, and McLaughlin says it's not just over losing subscribers.

"Editors are not afraid of readers canceling their subscriptions," McLaughlin said. "There is a normal ebb and flow of subscriptions. The removal or addition of any one feature, humor columnists included, does not affect the total numbers at the end of the year. What editors are afraid of is the loss of advertisers. The businessmen across the nation have become much more conservative and this includes the publishers. A comment on the cocktail party circuit, a mention at a golf course or a wife's complaint can and does cause the death of anyone mildly controversial."

In fact, Weingarten believes readers aren't solely to blame for editors' geliophobia. He says they are clamoring for more humor.

"I think readers have become more liberal towards humor," he said. "They are certainly avidly consuming edgier humor -- as in The Onion or The Daily Show or even The Simpsons. It's the editors who have become touchier because the newspaper business has become touchier financially. So they whimper at any complaint."

 "Shakespeare, Wilde, Parker and Mencken could run anybody through with the point of their pen," Standring said. "Artful castration is a dying skill. Stop picketing for the right to say 'fuck.'.Having said that, truly controversial columnists -- those with something provocative and original to say, not just a matter of peppering profanity through their grafs -- probably do scare editors off. Being original means there is no measuring stick by which to assess you and bean counters don't want a commodity with no proven track record."

Overall, none of them have said an editor's changes or decisions have affected the style or content of their writing. McLaughin said his column was recently dismissed for unknown reasons. He is awaiting a conference with the owners of the newspaper for an explanation.

But even if the phobic newspaper they write for may not realize it, he and others like him know the value of having a humorist on a newspaper's payroll.

"I think we're a necessity," Van Ostrand said. "It's critical for a newspaper to supply laughter in order to balance the horrors on the front page."
 

Danny Gallagher is a freelance writer and newspaper reporter living deep in the heart of Texas -- where things feel clogged and congested thanks to years of no exercise and chicken fried steak eating contests.