Battleland

Testifying Before Congress: Laughing Through the Pain

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Battleland Research Division

Testifying before Congress repeatedly on the defense budget is tough work. “I’ve been in hearings for the last three days — shit, I think I should get some kind of award going through that crap,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told airmen in Louisiana on Friday. “I mean, I told General [Marty] Dempsey [chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who shared a foxhole with Panetta during the hearings], I need a new combat badge for going to Capitol Hill. With clusters.”

The troops laughed at Panetta’s earthy bluntness. It can be tough when you’re the defense secretary trying to cut $487 billion out of the next decade’s spending, and facing the prospect that that sum could double before the year is out. So it’s always a good thing to be able to chortle, guffaw and chuckle. “Some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life,” the late Time columnist and long-time White House correspondent Hugh Sidey said. It can even have international repercussions: check out The Geopolitics of Laughter and Forgetting: A World-Systems Interpretation of the Post-Modern Geopolitical Condition.

Sure, toting up the “(laughter)” mentions in reams of transcripts is an inexact science…

But we’ve got to start somewhere to humanize the process; the solons have to sit through only one hearing, but Panetta and Dempsey had to endure a trifecta. Not sure what these numbers mean (just why is the House Armed Services Committee apparently five times as grim as the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee? If you think you know, please share).

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

Battleland’s chart shows how many words had to be spoken for each “(laughter)” citation in the transcripts maintained by the Federal News Service. Here’s is Battleland’s completely arbitrary assessment of the funniest lines – all of which garnered a “(laughter)” citation by FNS:

SASC, on Tuesday:

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, R-S.C.: So I’m going to have lunch with the vice president of China in about 20 minutes. So what do you want me to tell him?

GEN. DEMPSEY: Happy Valentine’s Day (laughter).

HASC, on Wednesday:

REP. JOE WILSON, R-S.C.: And indeed, Mr. Secretary, I’ve been very positive about your service because I know sincerely you believe this, but we’ve got to get the message out. It’s just the word sequestration puts people to sleep. (Laughter.) And so please be the Paul Revere I know.

HACD, on Thursday:

SEC. PANETTA: I mean, as an Italian, I’m a control freak. (Laughter.) I don’t like anybody doing anything like that without running it by me.

OK. So Panetta and Dempsey shouldn’t jettison their day jobs for a Comedy Central gig…but it’s nice to think of their laughter as WD-40 for the soul…