Essays in Idleness

Tom Lehrer, who checked out of earthly life on the weekend, at age ninety-seven, chose the most suitable time to be pushing off. Above ninety-seven, one is likely to spend one’s extra time whining about geriatric conditions, and of course, if you turn one hundred you may attract unwelcome publicity. Best to be getting along to the next life, before your embarrassments in this one cloud a happy future.

Lehrer, a brilliant mathematician, and atom bombist at Los Alamos, who studied under Irwin Kaplansky at Harvard from age fifteen, was like this master an amateur musician and composer of show tunes. Unlike most show tunes they were satirical, and unlike most satires they were genuinely funny; enough so that he gave up writing them and kept his dayjob. I personally admired Lehrer immensely when I was young and adolescent because his humour was “dark,” “black,” or “sick.” My adolescent contemporaries appreciated it, too.

It was perhaps his wisdom that most appealed to me, for I was a connoisseur of the dark qualities. I could appreciate them even from the Left, where Lehrer seemed to be coming from the age of Eisenhower, as it exploded into the ‘sixties.

“One, two, three, what are we fighting for? / Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam. / Five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates! / Ain’t no time for wondering why, / Whoopee, we’re all gonna die!”

His “Vatican Rag” was also quite informative. He gave a most succinct account of the attempted destruction of the Catholic Church under Vatican II; the more impressive as he was a Jew. (Consult, “Hanukkah in Santa Monica.”)

But better still, he understood humour, and the use of sarcasm. He liked an audience that could belly-laugh. However, his leftwing college audiences would instead applaud, very loudly — for they were humourless scolds.

It is just the same on college campuses today.