In Defense of Bathroom Humor

By Spencer Dobson
Staff Writer

I just read an article about a certain politician from Minnesota who is running for President. The story was about how the writer had asked said Minnesotan to write a position piece about fluorescent bulbs and how her article helped him get to know her. The writer mentions that he has fluorescent lights in his bathroom and that’s what got him thinking about her, and then as an aside says “To anyone expecting bathroom humor, sorry,” Whaaaa? I was just assuming that I would get a couple of classic Duluth News Tribune poop zingers in here like “I know I chewed up the corn, but when it comes out, it still looks like corn, what’s up with that?” as the Duluth News Tribune is widely regarded as the dookie joke newspaper of record. I guess if you want to soft sell me a certain politician from Minnesota who is running for President without the benefit of a couple potty jokes, that’s your business.

I believe the writer is trying to imply that he is a classy sophisticated writer who finds “bathroom humor” beneath him. If you’re not sure what “Bathroom Humor” is, that’s because it’s kind of an antiquated term. Bathrooms used to be shocking, unspeakable places that people pretended didn’t exist. For example, according to multiple sources on the internet, there was an episode of “Leave it to Beaver” that had to be redone because Wally and the Beav wanted to hide a baby alligator in the tank of the family toilet, which meant they would have to show a toilet on TV. (Leave it to Beaver, American Policy Round Table. Retrieved on 3 July, 2011 http://www.aproundtable.org/tps/shows.cfm?ID=376&issuecode=casino).

Nobody was going to use the toilet for its intended purpose; they just needed a place to hide a baby alligator. I’m sure “hide a baby alligator” means something really horrible if you look it up on Urban Dictionary, but I mean they actually had a infant alligator and they needed to stash it someplace where their folks wouldn’t find it, so they put it in the toilet tank. And the Censors said “No Deal.” Apparently if you show a toilet on TV in the 50’s there is legitimate concern that people will become Communist.

It shouldn’t be too shocking that the people who were in charge of keeping America safe from filth at CBS had some hang-ups about the restroom. Here was a piece of toilet training advice that was floating around when some of the people who made “Leave it to Beaver” were children and teens: “One government manual instructed parents to enforce ‘absolute regularity’ of bowel movements by inserting a soap stick in the infant’s rectum at precise times of the day (United States Department of Labor 1935).(Dewar, Gwen 2007-2010 “What the scientific evidence reveals about the timing of toilet training” Retrieved 3 July, 2011) http://tiny.cc/TOILET. Maybe if you got goosed by a bar of dial everyday at Nine, Noon and Three, you would have a shaky relationship with the water closet too.

Is there harm in being uptight about poop?  It’s hard to say for sure. Let’s look at John Wayne Gacy for a second, though. First off, he is apparently a big inspiration to one of our presidential candidates. Second, is there a connection between his uptightness about poop and his being a serial killer? Welllllllll let’s just say I didn’t have to spend too much time googling “John Wayne Gacy” and “Toilet Training” to find someone who felt just that: “Gacy was considered by many to be compulsively neat and orderly. Even when he buried the bodies of his victims under his house, he made sure they were all lined up symmetrically with each other (Linedecker, 1980). This would indicate that he was fixated during the anal stage of development. During this stage, if one’s parents are too regimented during toilet training, one can become overly neat.”(John Wayne Gacy. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 3 July, 2011) Does that mean that a light, somewhat whimsical attitude towards poop, pooping, toilets, ka ka and dookie might stop your kids from becoming serial killers? I wouldn’t go that far, but maybe we should err on the side of caution and crack a little wise while jr. is learning the proper place to put a deuce.

In the article that is not filled with “bathroom humor,” the writer points out that the certain someone who is running from president from my state only makes outlandish manipulative, false statements because it will help her win. That’s like saying “She only cheats because it helps her get ahead” or “He only robbed them because he wanted their stuff.” So you see, it’s ok that she’s misleading you to gain power, because she wants power and…she’s doing it in a poop free manner. 

It’s not like she said something really bad like “have you ever pinched out a doo-doo so nice you take a cell phone picture of it and send it to your friends?” That would be horrible. She does stuff like calling for MacCarthyesque trials to find out if anybody in congress is Un-American, and makes up stuff like “Planned Parenthood is the Lens Crafters of Big Abortion.” And I will admit, all of this is free from references to bathrooms or dookie balls or Stanley Steamers or…(you see where I’m going)

This article started because a writer who doesn’t do poop jokes thinks a certain politician from Minnesota is a super nice lady who really makes you feel welcome and doesn’t like the government telling her what light bulbs to use. She, however, has no problem if the Government wants to tell you that you can’t have an abortion.

The writer himself feels that the candidate had the right idea about the light bulbs but for the wrong reason.  He doesn’t like the new light bulbs because they take too long to warm up in his bathroom, not because the government told him to use them. Well, that’s valid: sometimes people aren’t willing to wait for a few seconds, even if it means huge savings in electrical bills and overall power usage; children, for example. But at least children like a good bathroom joke.
Spencer Dobson is a Stand up Comic who lives and works in East Grand Forks
http://www.spencerdobsoncomedy.com
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[Editor’s Note: To read the original article in the Duluth News Tribune, see: ]http://tiny.cc/DULUTH]