BANGKOK – The Royal Thai Government made its first official expansion in over 30 years today with the official launch of the new Ministry of Humor, which will oversee the Kingdom’s expanding humor industry and regulate the humor trade.
“Humor is an important part of both business and culture in Thailand,” said Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva at the inauguration ceremony, which took place at Government House this morning at the auspicious hour of 9:19AM. “It is long overdue that this government devote a ministerial position to this important sector of our economy and society.”
Senior monks were in attendance, as well as a representative of the Palace to provide Royal endorsement to the Constitutional amendment adding the Ministry, as well as the appointment of former Interior Minister Purachai Piumsombun as the first Minister of Humor.
Purachai, a former servant in the Thaksin administration, was seen as an ideal compromise candidate because of his reputation for honesty and his experience in regulating Thailand’s social culture for the good of the nation. Upon his swearing-in, Purachai promised to uphold the highest tenets of humor in Thailand and restore comedy to its rightful place in Thailand, serving the kindom’s unity, harmony, and monarchy.
“I am told that people have been laughing at the things I say for years,” Purachai told the assembled press. “I believe that qualifies me to make Thailand funnier than ever.” His statements were greeted by laughter.
Effective immediately, the new Ministry of Humor will be the nation’s highest authority on anything funny or attempting to be funny, including on all jokes, puns, comic monologues, one-liners, slapstick, sarcasm, irony, satire, comic strips, political cartoons, artistic caricatures, weird voices, cross-dressing, celebrity impressions, and Chuwit’s election posters.
Additionally, the newly appointed Minister of Humor will by merit of position be the nation’s highest-ranking game-show host, as well as its top katoey – which has generated some controversy. Although The National Association of Transgendered Persons has formally accepted the Ministry’s regulatory authority, many of its members have openly refused to recognize a straight man wearing neither a dress nor mascara as its cultural executive.
Academics and some UDD leaders have also questioned Purachai’s stated intentions of centralizing the humor industry in Bangkok, which many claim will damage Thailand’s humor competitiveness by undermining local sourcing for jokes. Members of the opposition Pheu Thai party have also suggested that the new Ministry is another attempt by the Democrats to disenfranchise the upcountry population.
Some of Purachai’s other new proposals that have raised eyebrows include a national rating system for jokes similar to film ratings; the prohibition of laughing above 15 decibels after 10pm on weekdays; a total ban on humor during Buddhist holidays and election days; the restriction of TV stereotypes to just 12 government-approved characters; an excise tax on sex, tobacco, and alcohol jokes; an import tax on non-Thai jokes, visa restrictions on foreign comedians, and the trademarking of Thailand’s original humor as cultural treasures.
Most controversial of all is the Ministry proposal to criminalize anything that makes other people laugh but which the Ministry’s own Humor Committee doesn’t find funny. Human rights activists and Thailand’s political cartoonists have unanimously denounced the law as “absurdly subjective,” with Abhisit defending it as a necessary way to maintain the borders of Thailand’s comic consciousness.
“It’s an issue of sovereignty,” said the PM. “If we can’t define what Thais laugh at, we can’t define what is Thai at all. Do you really want that?”
