Why is seeing people fall so funny?

Why do so many people seem to think it’s the funniest thing in the world to witness another person fall?

Trent Knuckles is publisher of The News Journal.

First, allow me to fill you in a on a little personal history.

There are moments in your life that, while they may seem inconsequential to some, shape your attitude about things forever.

I remember vividly my first day of seventh grade. I was going to a new school and full of the nerves and concerns that sort of change in life entails for a young person. All students would congregate in the gymnasium if they arrived before the first bell. On this day, the gym was packed.

I got to school via the bus. Some friends of mine were seated in the top row of the bleachers on one side. They motioned for me to come sit with them. I was climbing the steps to go toward them, but miscalculated and caught my toe on a step. I went crashing, face first into a hardwood bleacher. It darn near knocked me unconscious!

Staggering, a little bloody, and most likely concussed, I got back on my feet only to be greeted by a gym full of people laughing a guffawing. Tears welled in their eyes it was so funny. Many were holding their stomachs in pain the laughter came so frequent and intensely. Not one person bothered to check if I was all right. It was all too funny!

To this day, probably due to that personal experience, I’ve never thought it a riotously funny thing to watch someone fall. Oh sure, if someone is doing something totally stupid or dangerous and they fall, a certain sense of cosmic justice does flash through my mind. But I always check to see if they are all right as quickly as possible.

That is generally not the reaction I’ve witnessed from most others. Not everyone is the same, of course. There are those that don’t take the misfortune of someone falling as a reason to laugh their lips off and snort like fools. But my own personal experience tells me it’s a minority.

This is a pet peeve sort of rant, I suppose. But it’s behavior that’s always bothered me and I wanted to say something about it.

I know there exists a huge number of people who think it is the height of comedy to watch others fall, and often very seriously hurt themselves. Thousands of videos exist on YouTube showing people taking terrible tumbles, all for the amusement of the millions of people who obviously watch them. I can see them now, sitting in front of their computers in their underwear, dumb grins on their faces as they snicker and watch strangers fall nearly to their deaths. Could there possibly be anything funnier than that!

It’s such cruel, vicious behavior if you ask me.

SOME OTHER STUFF

• So after watching about an hour of television coverage of the Iowa caucuses Monday night, I’ve decided pretty much the whole affair is a complete farce.
Here’s what I don’t get.

Ted Cruz got exactly ONE more delegate on the Republican side than either Donald Trump or Marco Rubio (8 to 7). This miniscule number of delegates is almost meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Iowa’s caucuses are a proportional representation sort of scheme. Yet, it’s being presented as though Cruz has won some enormous victory.

And don’t even get me started on the Democratic side of things. Monday night’s “precinct” caucuses actually don’t assign any democratic delegates to the national convention. Instead, those delegates go on to district caucuses where people fight and argue to elect delegates who go to a state convention where they were fight and argue and eventually elect delegates to go to the national convention.

What a mess!