Once you start saying 'Let's talk political my own politics my own aspirations ' it can become not just distracting in that it takes time but it can become confusing and frustrating and is this now a political agenda or a governmental agenda.

Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it that the Union was preserved.

I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.