"Dead man talking"

On Ben Sasse, bad news, and laughing to keep from crying.

Former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse was on Morning Edition Friday discussing his terminal cancer. Sasse was diagnosed in December, at the age of 53, and was given a prognosis of a few months. He has been going through a clinical trial that may extend his life, but is realistic about his chances.

He’s married with three children, including a son who is 14. “And he feels like he needs a dad for a little while longer,” Sasse told me. “So I want to knock him upside the head and wrestle with him and tell him how much I love him and tell him stuff I wish I had done differently in my life.”

The Republican lawmaker and university president approached his public life with a sense of humor, and he seems not to have lost it in this grave situation. He chose to take up a long-delayed idea to start a podcast with a friend, the journalist Chris Stirewalt, and in the opening episode they discussed possible names for the program, such as I’d Rather Die than Do a Podcast, or Dead Man Talking. They settled on Not Dead Yet, which is a line drawn from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

“Because we don’t know how many episodes we’re gonna get,” Sasse said.

In the same episode, the hosts had this exchange:

Sasse: The hard part for the post-production staff is how often I vomit while we record.

Stirewalt: Yes. Prior to beginning this recording, I said that I’ve had a lot of people who I’ve interviewed who have wanted to throw up while I was talking to them, but never this frequency and never with this kind of enthusiasm.

Sasse: And this one’s not because of you, which is fresh for you.

In our conversation, Sasse talked about this approach.

We decided to go ahead and embrace some of the humor of the fact that I need to run from the room a lot. I don’t want to throw up. But if you throw up, you kind of want to check a box of getting the laugh out of it.

But I need to laugh at death because death is terrible—but death doesn’t get the final word. I think laughing at the suffering is a way to make it communal, but it’s also a way to to tell a bigger truth.

This perspective applies to all manner of bad news.

As a journalist, it’s generally my job to keep my opinions out of the story. The news is the news. It’s intelligence information for citizens. I should bring it to you regardless of my personal opinion, and I should cite my sources and prove my case with facts so that you can see for yourself that the story was impartial. It’s not my place to tell you who to vote for, and it most certainly is not my place to tell you to embrace this or that faith.

But I am comfortable sharing opinions about journalism, one of which is the value of a sense of humor. Even when covering wars, disasters, economic calamities, political division, laughter helps. Even if it’s gallows humor. There is a lot of that kind of laughter in a newsroom! And also in war-torn nations and disaster zones.

Laughter is human. And it shows we are not defeated. For many years, I have explained this perspective by quoting the Langston Hughes poem Laughing to Keep from Crying. I will leave you with a part of it:

Laugh,

in the face of death.

Live,

with no regret.

Laugh,

with every step.

Let,

laughter become.

Our final breath.