I never met a Dave I didn’t like.
I discovered Dave Barry when I googled “humor columnist”. At first I was not inclined to read his work because we don’t have much in common. He’s a white Florida man, I’m an Asian California woman. What convinced me was discovering that Dave has a Pulitzer Prize!
I know, right? That’s what I thought too. Who knew Pulitzer People had a sense of humor?
It’s no joke. Dave knows how to write comedy, the hardest form of writing.
Career
Dave began as a bookkeeper. He escaped self-immolation by becoming a local news reporter in the aptly named Daily Local News. One of his beats was staying awake in zombiefying council meetings. This is where he first submitted a humor column and enjoyed it immensely.
After having too much fun, Dave moved to the wire service the Associated Press where he realized he disliked No Joke Journalism. So he became a business writing consultant to help nerds be less boring writers. In the meantime, he continued writing humor columns for the Daily Local News.
Then God decided Dave needed to make newspaper readers laugh before newspapers became extinct. So Dave was invited to write for The Washington Post. But Dave preferred his crocodiles to be in the everglades rather than in congress, so he became a weekly columnist for the Miami Herald.
Dave wrote about the usual breaking news: dog farts, bursting cows, stupidest US states, inflammable Rollerblade Barbies, a detonated whale, combustible Pop Tarts, and the ordinary exploding toilets. As proof he’s a Pro who is willing to get down, down, down and dirty, Dave wrote about his colonoscopy. This has inspired many reluctant readers to have one, which has helped detect and treat early colon cancer—proof that toilet humor saves lives.
Dave has always been very engaged with his fans, whom he calls Alert Readers. “Probably half the columns I wrote, maybe more, were inspired by newspaper articles people mailed to me.”
Heaps of humor
it’s hard to be prolific at the same high level. It’s harder still to stay funny especially when you’re a journalist. Yet Dave has written 29 nonfiction books, 17 novels, screenplays, and tv shows—all while his column was being syndicated in 500 newspapers.
I read Dave’s Substack, past blogs, Miami Herald columns, old stuff, and books from the 1990s. He pretends he’s not that smart but he’s insightful and sharp, his writing concise, and his columns well-crafted.
Dave continues to write weekly on his Substack, where he adds videos and graphics, sometimes AI-generated, all purely to heighten the reader’s fun and laughter.
In true comedic misdirection, Dave starts off on a serious topic then proceeds to sillify it to insignificance. He can weave an isolated unconnected topic into anything he writes and you would welcome it because he does it deftly and with well-timed laugh buttons.
It’s hard to write comedy because you cannot control the pacing and how the reader will ingest your words. But Dave does it so elegantly that you don’t realize he’s been taking you on a silly ride to nuttiness. When you get to the end of the joke, you don’t care how you got there. You just want some more!
Class Clown
In Dave’s 2025 memoir Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up he gives us a glimpse of how he became this way, but doesn’t give away his comedic secrets. Maybe Dave’s a natural-born clown?
Dave’s comedic influences are his Mom, Dad, and sometimes, Robert Benchley. And like every sensible shopper, he gets his ideas from Costco.
In his memoir, Dave briefly becomes vulnerable and shares some darkness from his past. But before it bums us out, he smoothly ends it with a wink. The rest of the chapters are tightly written fun stories that I’ve been rereading to get me into the Dave Barry Let’s Have Fun! mood.
Dave’s memoir is an easy, fascinating read into the heady times before the internet killed newspapers. I propose that his wacky work in the Sunday magazine Tropic (1982-1990) is a precursor to the satire newspaper The Onion (1988), which paved the way for comedy copycats.
Dave is different from other humorists in that he seemingly doesn’t care to be “accurate, fair or tasteful”. He’s not an outright satirist. He’s not a comedian nor stand-up comic. He’s not political–unless he’s writing about the country with the most waffle houses in the world. His sole beat is to find The Funny. “I was doing investigative humor.”
It takes great confidence, or complete lack of caring, to write with Comedic Authority. Writers struggle to find their Voice, or even just to say something. But Dave will say Anything just for laughs. In contrast to many cringey comedians who try too hard, Dave’s humor is relaxed, gentle, and unifying. His comedy is soothing. He makes us see that our life still has whimsy and fun. We like Dave because he’s obviously a Good Guy. We can count on Dave to save us from our Darkness. He’s the Hero who’s trying to make us laugh. And THAT is an honorable pursuit.
“Over the years I’ve been told, usually by serious, well-intentioned people, that my column performs an important societal function—that by writing my silly booger jokes, I’m making the world a better place, because laughter is the best medicine, because in troubled times humor is vital, because we all need to laugh at ourselves.” (Class Clown)
“My response to this well-intentioned people has always been: Thanks, but I’d probably be doing this even if it made the world a worse place. It’s pretty much the only thing I know how to do. It’s in my DNA. I’m a class clown.”
See? I knew it!
Ivy is a Jesuit-educated lawyer turned humor columnist. See the latest Silicon Valley Books @IvyDigest on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. She has a comedy channel @Humor Me Ivy on YouTube.
Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up
By Dave Barry
Hardcover, 256 pages, 2025
Simon & Schuster