ARE WE IN A CARTOON OR A TRAGEDY?

Take your choice -- life is either cartoon or tragedy. Probably a little of both...!

At first I was thinking cartoon, because this week is the 50th anniversary of the classic TV cartoon "Rocky and Bullwinkle." If you're too young to remember, it piquantly squeezed life into breezy 30 minute episodes. There was Evil (the snarly Boris Badenov)...Innocence (the loopy moose Bullwinkle)...and Reason (the lovable flying squirrel Rocky). I ask you now -- when it comes to the basics, really what else is there?

Kids -- of all ages -- laughed and learned from Rocky's daily misadventures. The best kind of learning, the kind you don't even suspect is learning. But many of today's cartoons and comics have grown considerably more serious. And pretentious. Almost as if laughing at ourselves is now deemed less valuable. Comedies almost never win Oscars, master humorist Neil Simon just watched a revival of his play die on Broadway, and comedians from Bill Maher to Jon Stewart are intentionally edgier and angrier.

Of course we still have the gentler comedians like Newhart and Cosby, the softer cartoons like Peanuts and Blondie. But by and large, we're a much richer yet bitter society. Is there a connection here, I wonder...?

However, then there's the distinct possibility we're living in a tragedy. The ancient Greeks spent a lot of time writing tragic theatre in which little Man was constantly being buffeted by angry Gods. There were Greek comedies, but it is their tragedies which have echoed down the centuries. So that by the time of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov in the 19th C, his conclusion was: "Life is a tragedy filled with joys....!"

With all due respect to comedy and to my Christianity, I really believe that pronouncement catches the cadence of what this is all about. Doesn't make me stop laughing or hoping or praying. But it sure helps me explain a lot of things. Among which are why the smoke from burning fall leaves is both perfume and poison at the same time...why we can cry at weddings...laugh at wakes....doubt the God we believe in....oh, and miss "Rocky and Bullwinkle."