The efforts of friendly officials to skirt regulations in behalf of the prisoners lead to sobering yet laughable absurdities, as when a man is allowed a proxy wedding with his fiancee's grandmother, since the fiancee herself is a prisoner.
To the people at Wednesday's meeting, who spoke only for themselves and not for Gamblers Anonymous, which takes no position in this matter, much of what Mr. Rose says is sad yet laughable.
"This is yet another laughable reason to delay a project that the federal government has been scrutinizing for more than five years," the Washington Post's editorial board opined on Wednesday.
There's been an amazing amount of soap opera in "Mad Men" — affairs, abortions, divorces, suicide, heroin addiction, even a Hare Krishna conversion — but the series has not yet become laughable, mostly because it has never lost its dark sense of humor.
Republicans are correct to focus on the fact that the country has been polarized by Obama's divisive leadership, yet the laughable alternative they offer is Ted Cruz.
He is frequently awful and laughable — yet unforgettable in his overblown way.
It's a ridiculous image, openly laughable, yet it's the kind of outrageous, excessive flourish that can make Mr. Scott's work so enjoyable in the moment.
Yet it's laughable to think that swearing could even be an issue on a recent evening, when Dana Tai Soon Burgess is rehearsing the members of his dance company.
While England slumps ever further into ignoble disarray, Amis's book may help maintain in me, for a little while longer, our laughable yet indelible sense of British superiority.
Yet it is laughable to suggest, as this movie does, that there are real analogies between Lily and Snow Flower — who are forcibly maimed and married, and have all the rights of animals at slaughter — and their designer-wearing modern counterparts (who were invented for the movie).
Dave Barry, a 37-year-old director of capital advisory at a financial firm, calls the prices of the boutique classes several female acquaintances have dragged him to "laughable". Yet he ponies up over $3,000 annually for a membership to the New York Athletic Club, where he and a group of friends regularly meet to play squash.
