But not if Mayor Lightfoot has anything to say about it.

For a joke or witticism to be funny, it needs to be slightly imperfect. It needs to have a texture, a weight that allows it to move—like silt down a river—through the brain, picking up memories and knowledge and experiences to create enough debris that we can understand and personalize the joke. Without a bit of mental erosion, funny just isn’t really funny.

The Simpsons “Bible Stories” episode (Season 10, Episode 18), begins in an Easter Sunday service in which Reverend Lovejoy decides to read the first six books of the Bible as his homily. (It also features a church marquee with the message “Christ dyed eggs for your sins.”)

With Exodus droning in the background, Lisa falls asleep and dreams of being an enslaved “wee Israelite” escaping Pharaoh & Overseer Willie with Milhouse/Moses and her Springfield friends. In the dream, Bart re-tools his “ay caramba” catch-phrase as “oy caramba.” It should be really funny, but it is only slightly amusing because it is just so perfect. It doesn’t bounce off of anything—it’s a slam-dunk.

Everyone knows the Monty Python skit about the funniest joke in the world, right? In WWII, the British develop a joke, in German, that is so funny that if anyone hears the whole joke, they will die. Once, someone heard part of the joke and had to spend two weeks “in hospital.” The plan is to have the advancing British troops who don’t know German recite the joke, causing German troops to simply laugh themselves to death, clearing the way for the victorious Allies. Now that’s funny. It dragnets through your brain picking up a familiar joke, a cliche, and a well-known event and repurposes them all; upcycling the over-used and restoring the antiques. (To spare you the medical bills, I won’t repeat the joke here, but the punchline is “How does it smell? Terrible!”)

The Lori Lightfoot “stay home” memes have been circulating since the mayor ordered Chicagoans to shelter in place in late March (I referenced her ability to clear Parisians out of La Grande Jatte in this post.) Since then, she has cleared out Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and made Grant Wood’s elderly farmers get off their own lawn.

At first, I wasn’t sure if the memes were meant as a criticism that Lightfoot was going overboard with the social distancing (which we now know she wasn’t) or if they were a compliment to her power in getting people to stay home. Regardless of the intent, even the usually somber mayor recognizes the humor in these memes and reposts them to her own social media accounts; some are shared officially by the City of Chicago.

Because they are damn funny.

The Last Supper is a painting we all know, with a cliche image of the mayor we recognize, set against an event we are all experiencing. The ‘Rona rearranges everything. Even iconic 500-year-old paintings painstakingly preserved to be just as they always were have a brand new reality. Photoshop and the Internet make the real unreal or new real or really real, real for everyone. Instantly. Now we know Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus chose Israel in 4 BC because it had no mass communication.

Today, some of us are celebrating Easter in the corona with pared-down meals. Last week, some of us hosted Passover Seders and set a place at the table for Zoom. And some of us are just trying to eat Cadbury Creame Eggs without dying. The reality we expect at this time isn’t happening—no egg hunts, no visits to family, no religious services. C & E Catholics can only C and the Easter Bunny remembers the last myxomatosis plague all too well and is staying home.

I sometimes wonder why we can make light of some tragedies and not others or how long the wait between catastrophe and jokes about the catastrophe lasts. 2,000 years seems long enough. Monty Python shows us that mid-20th century wars seem fair game. I’ve seen comics that compare September 11 to the Death Star’s destruction (Imperial Stormtroopers at a bar reflecting on how they were supposed to be there that day). In the corona, there is no waiting. You may not be able to get a Covid-19 test or hand sanitizer or teleported off this rock, but you can get a joke. It’s funny because it’s just not quite right.