No Soap, Radio, PC Fairy Tales, and the Joy of Not Understanding Anything

I’m not embarrassed to admit when I don’t understand something—even when armed with today’s online tools and AI, ready to spoon-feed me explanations on topics like “woke” or political correctness. Some things just resist comprehension, and I’ve learned to embrace the confusion. 

Back in the day, I voraciously watched the Dennis Miller Show for his RANTS, even though I couldn’t pass a comprehension test on what I just listened to. It was funny, sharp, rapid-fire, and I had no idea who half the people were. The same goes for my admiration of James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct books. I read them, laughed hysterically, and wasn’t entirely sure why. 

I’ve sat on this blog idea for weeks, gathering courage to put something witty down about these topics. I hope you aren’t disappointed. After all, this feeling is a lot like the old classroom gag “No Soap Radio”, a bit of history lesson here: when a student left the room for an extended bathroom break, I’d tell the class that when they returned, the Papa Bear would say to the Mama Bear, “No Soap Radio!” The students would laugh non-stop, while the student who reentered would ask, “Wait… I don’t get it.” Inevitably, they’d begin to snicker when they realized the joke was on them. 

That’s exactly how I feel now, trying to make sense of these modern concepts and humorous books. Some of it makes sense, some of it doesn’t, but it’s all supposed to be funny, and somewhere in the absurdity, there’s joy. And so, armed with confusion and curiosity, we dive in. 

Politically Correct Holiday Tales: For an Enlightened Yuletide Season, Politically Correct Holiday Stories: For an Enlightened Yuletide Season, and Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life & Times by James Finn Garner were absolute knee-slappers for me back in the 1990s. I used to read them to my classes during DEAR time; Drop Everything and Read, because nothing says “literary enrichment” like a reimagined fairy tale where Santa is held accountable for reindeer labor rights.

For the uninitiated, DEAR time was that glorious daily ritual where teachers like me forced students to sit quietly and read for 20–25 minutes. The idea was noble: if we made them read every day, surely, we’d produce a generation of literary savants, maybe even the next Shakespeare, or at least someone who could spell Shakespeare. Instead, I may have just cultivated a room full of future bumbling bloggers… myself included.

Once Upon a Politically Correct Time

Garner’s books were brilliantly absurd. In his world, fairy tales were rewritten to be more inclusive, equitable, and sensitive, essentially, the proto-woke bedtime stories before “woke” was even a thing.

Take Snow White, for example: she wasn’t rescued by a prince but instead joined a collective bargaining unit with the Seven Vertically Challenged Men.

Cinderella didn’t attend a ball, she challenged the systemic glass ceiling (literally). And my personal favorite: Santa Claus was depicted not as a jolly patriarch, but as an overworked small-business owner facing ethical dilemmas around reindeer labor rights and toy production sustainability.

At the time, my students and I laughed our tails off. But, looking back, I’m not sure we actually understood why we were laughing. We just knew it was funny—like hearing your grandpa say “woke” before realizing it wasn’t about getting out of bed.

Politically Correct or Prophetically Woke?
Sometimes I wonder, was Garner’s Politically Correct series the ancestor of today’s modern “woke” movement? Both twist language into semantic pretzels, weaponize adjectives, and leave us wondering if we need a thesaurus or a therapist.

Back then, satire exaggerated social awareness to the point of absurdity. Today, we’re living inside the exaggeration. What used to be punchlines, trigger warnings on fairy tales, renaming Mother Goose to Guardian Goose of Non-Binary Hatchlings; feel eerily like draft legislation in some circles.

In Once Upon a More Enlightened Time, Garner even warned of “the dangers of monarchical privilege and patriarchal symbolism” in stories like King Arthur and The Little Mermaid. I used to think that was satire. Now, I’m half-expecting an academic journal to publish The Mermaid as a Tool of Marine Colonialism.

Why Do We Laugh When We Don’t Understand? Maybe that’s the beauty of it, we don’t have to understand why something’s funny to enjoy it. Humor, after all, is the human body’s way of saying, “This makes no sense, but please don’t let me cry.” 

Back in the DEAR days, my students laughed because adults were poking fun at adults, and the word “heteronormative” sounded like a Harry Potter spell. Now, I find myself laughing because the line between parody and policy has grown so blurry that I can’t tell whether Garner was mocking society or writing its instruction manual.

Other Enlightened Lunacy Worth Revisiting

If you, too, miss that brand of absurdity that made you laugh and question your own intelligence, consider revisiting a few classics:

·        The Darwin Awards: A loving tribute to those who improved the human gene pool by removing themselves from it in spectacularly idiotic ways. 

·        Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader: Because nothing pairs better with enlightenment than trivia about wombat poop or the history of Velcro. 

·        The Onion Anthologies: Satire so sharp it cuts both ways—half the time you don’t know if you should laugh or apologize. 

Each of these, like Garner’s tales, celebrates the bizarre ways humans try to be clever and end up proving the opposite.

Happily Ever After (Sort Of)

Maybe laughter doesn’t require comprehension. Perhaps it’s just the sound we make when the world gets too complicated. Or maybe, deep down, we all know that if Snow White had a lawyer, the story would be 600 pages long and end with everyone attending court-ordered therapy.

So, here’s to the Politically Correct stories that made us laugh, the Darwin Awards that made us shake our heads, and The Onion that continues to blur the line between farce and fact. Somewhere between satire and sincerity lies truth, and a good belly laugh. After all, back in the ‘90s, woke just meant you were done napping.