Politics and humor …

… ‘How to Tell a Joke’ Review: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Cicero was the first intellectual to rise to prominence in politics, and his life offers perhaps the best warning on record to intellectuals to steer clear of politics. A novus homo, or new man, which is to say a man born without a distinguished lineage, the first of his family to enter public life, Cicero, through talent and cunning, achieved the office of consul, the highest in the Roman Republic. But, owing to thugs employed by Mark Antony, he ended with his decapitated head and hands nailed above the rostrums in the Forum.