One of the trademarks of modern liberalism is its lack of a sense of humor. Perpetually prudish, it is yet another sign of how the politics of earlier Democrats such as the witty John F. Kennedy and the ebullient Hubert H. Humphrey have been rejected for the stern, schoolmarmish Barack Obama and his legion of equally humorless followers.

Case in point this morning is showcased by the inimitably great James Taranto over at the Wall Street Journal.

Taranto, himself a man of considerable wit, highlights the plight of the terminally humorless liberal by illustrating the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf’s laughably clueless zing at Rush Limbaugh. The latter, who of course has a well-documented and considerably robust, not to say occasionally mischievous, sense of humor, suggested the other day that the way to get liberals to stop demanding gun control was require that guns be used to perform abortions. I confess to laughing out loud when I heard it — both for the clearly intended absurdity of the joke itself but even more because I was certain that somewhere in America some clueless liberal would not only not get the joke at liberalism’s expense but would be spluttering in righteous indignation.

Lo and behold, Mr. Taranto has scouted the turf and found just that liberal — our old jousting friend Mr. Friedersdorf. Read Taranto and weep — with laughter.