Humor is a funny thing.

My husband and I have very different taste when it comes to being tickled, and it sometimes feels like a big deal. For instance, when he casually informed me – long after our wedding – that he doesn’t find ‘Seinfeld’ funny, it almost felt like grounds for divorce. Who was this freak, and how could he have withheld such crucial intel?!

I would later learn that he doesn’t like sitcoms in general, because “people don’t act that stupid in real life.”

Of course, this is also the man who doesn’t like musicals, because “people don’t actually break into song and dance on a regular basis,” and who can’t understand why I sometimes cry while watching reruns of Law & Order: SVU. “You know these people aren’t real, right?” he’ll deadpan. “What’s your point?” I’ll sob.

Okay, so maybe our differences go a bit deeper than “humor,” but I have already done that thing Jeff hates – oversharing – so I’ll move on. (Sorry, babe. Just trying to draw ‘em in.)

Lately, a couple of newsy events got me thinking about humor. First, it was announced that the Late Show with Stephen Colbert would soon be coming to an end. Next, South Park launched its 27th season with an outrageous episode skewering, among other people and things, President Donald J. Trump.

The discussions on social media surrounding these two events sparked my fascination with the question of why we find certain people funny… and others not at all. Throw in the conversations about Donald Trump that go on all day, every day, and the question becomes even more intriguing.

In an effort to explore it more deeply, I tried a little experiment on my Facebook page. I asked my FB friends to answer three questions, feeling free to elaborate:

1) Do you find Stephen Colbert funny?
2) Do you find Donald Trump funny?
3) If you saw the season opener of South Park, did you find it funny?

I got a wealth of responses – thanks, y’all – and they mainly mirrored the conversations I’d been seeing around social media. Most of the enthusiastic Trump supporters on my page think Trump is funny but Colbert is not. Most of the enthusiastic Trump disdainers on my page think Colbert is funny but Trump is not.

There were definitely exceptions and distinctions worth noting. Some Trump disdainers acknowledged that Trump can be funny, but qualified that word with others like “silly,” “absurd,” and “childish.” Meanwhile, those same people described Colbert’s humor with words like “clever,” “witty,” and “smart.”

On the other side of the fence, not a single Trump supporter acknowledged any humor on the part of Colbert. A few said he used to be funny, but now comes across as angry, arrogant, and petulant. Interestingly, those same words were used by some Trump detractors to describe the president, himself.

The responses to South Park were a bit more diverse, but let’s just say the Colbert fans were decidedly more amused than the Trump fans.

Then there were those I’ll call the “moderates,” the FB friends I’ve come to know as neither passionate Trump supporters nor detractors – just curious people following the scene with as much emotional detachment as they can muster. Many of them answered “yes” to all three questions. (Yes, Colbert is funny. Yes, Trump is funny. Yes, the South Park episode was funny.) But some answered “no” to all three, and others mixed it up. In short, the moderates were all over the place . . . and very talky about it.

My people.

One Trump enthusiast said something simple that really resonated. “Trump is very funny… if you get him.”

Which got me wondering: Does the humor divide inform the political divide in this country? Or is it, maybe, the other way around? Or both?

It’s kind of a chicken/egg question, I think. Which comes first, the humor or the politics?

Do people think Trump is funny because they like him as a leader? Or do they like him as a leader because they think he’s funny – i.e. they “get” him in a way others don’t? And what about Colbert? Everyone on social media who says he’s not funny – and they are legion – seems to be a Trump supporter. And those Colbert fans who argue that Trump’s “jokes” – his Truth Social posts, his Pope and Superman memes – aren’t funny? Well, they have made it clear that they hate Trump for copious other reasons. Is that why they don’t get his humor? Or is their failure to get his humor just another reason they hate him?

An interesting sub-thread emerged in the “survey” on my FB page – a discussion of Colbert’s recent cancellation, and the public reaction to it. Edited for space and clarity, it essentially read like this:

Friend #1) “I think the angst that Colbert’s feeling—and I know the angst that his supporters are feeling—has to do with the capitulation of major institutions (e.g., CBS/Paramount, Columbia University) to DJT.”

Friend #2) “I’m thinking it would have been really hard to be a Jewish student at Columbia last spring, and the 60 Minutes piece with VP Harris was pretty clearly edited in her favor, so not sure if that is capitulation or bringing truth to power with a hefty price tag.”

Friend #1) “I’m very interested in who/what you define as having ‘power.’ Knowing how people in our country view that issue might bring great insight to this moment in our nation’s discourse.”

Friend #2) “That’s an interesting question. I think there are a lot of institutions (media, education, government, corporate, Pharma, etc) that have largely been operating with unchecked authority for quite some time. But with a new sheriff in town a lot of that has changed. Some I agree with and some I don’t, but in this case perhaps power has to do with the ability to demand accountability? Maybe that’s too simplistic.”

This is where I jumped in and tried to steer the conversation back to the topic at hand, commenting:

“Great discussion. It seems to me that Americans have very different ideas about who is ‘powerful’ in this country, and those ideas affect who we do, or don’t, find funny. Nobody likes a comedian who ‘punches down,’ you know? But when we don’t agree about who is ‘up’ and who is ‘down,’ well…”

Other than that open-ended tidbit, I mostly stayed out of the comment section.

Because I’m not going to argue with people about their sense of humor. Why would I? It is what it is. You can’t convince someone that something is funny – or not funny – by sheer force of will. At the end of the day, humor is subjective. No matter how hard I try, I will never nag or shame my husband into laughing at George Costanza. (Freak!)

Still, my impromptu survey confirmed what I suspected, that what – or whom – we find funny often depends, at least in part, on the butt of the joke. As one FB friend astutely noted, both Colbert and Trump come from the genre of humor called “insult comedy.” There is almost always a butt. If it’s your proverbial ox being gored, you’re far less likely to be amused.

So, take it from a political nomad: If you love to laugh – and they say it’s the best medicine, after all – don’t get too attached to the oxen. Any of them.

For the record: I answered “yes” to all three questions.