The Prime Minister of Humor

Grady Nutt, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, was professionally known as The Prime Minister of Humor.  He appeared weekly on the country music and comedy based television series, Hee Haw. His hilarious church-related comedy was based on the culture of the southern region of the United States. His appearances at churches and religious events always led to a sermon based on the jokes with which he began his talk.

Grady Nutt died in an small airplane crash.

http://www.the-cartoonist.com/Nutt/Nutt.html

http://www.gradynutt.com/about.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6w-HkQrxgQ

Gone!

     I just spent the last week in Mundelein and Vernon Hills in Illinois and came away with an odd feeling.  I saw maybe eight black people the entire time I was there and several of them were employees of restaurants and stores I visited.  I saw plenty of Asians and Hispanics but almost no blacks.  It felt creepy, a whole group of people suddenly just gone.  I live in the Deep South where African Americans have a heavy and very visible presence.

     During my alone time during the week I read Cracking the Bible Code by Jeffrey Satinover.  One of the prime movers in the Torah Bible Code movement was Rabbi Michael Dov Ber Weissmandl,  who spent the last years of his life pursuing the codes.

     The more obvious historical significance of Rabbi Weissmandl is his role in at least being able to delay the extermination of the Jews of Slovakia by bribing and deceiving numerous Nazi officials.  It haunted him the rest of his life, but, ultimately the rabbi was not able to save even his own immediate family.  In total, over six million Jews were murdered.  It was as if the entire Jewish population (about 5.2 million in 2009) of the United States were missing.

     The near absence of black people reminded me of the sudden disappearance of the Jews from Europe.  There and then suddenly just gone.