Wednesday, May 15, 2019

The Death of Humor




Comedian Tim Conway died recently ... and apparently so has much humor in American life. Some of Conway’s famous skits on the Carol Burnett show were side-splittingly funny ... the dentist’s erroneous Novocain shots (see above), his Swedish executive’s dealing with a clueless secretary (played by Burnett). He and Harvey Korman (passed in 2008) wee always tear-bringing hilarious together.

This kind of broad humor has pretty much disappeared from the American entertainment scene. If it is not dead, it is certainly on life support. What often passes for comedy in late night TV and variety shows is nothing but political applause lines bashing the Right. Kinda sad ...

And, ironically, this lack of laughs is occurring in a target-rich environment. Think of what could be panned —  “safe spaces,” “white privelege” (actually Dave Chappelle did a clever treatment of this subject ... but quite a while ago), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, un-free speech, the Green New Deal, the snowflake generation, the Mueller Russian hoax, diversity/inclusion hypocrisy, DNA testing, etc. I did offer a possible funny treatment of this last subject once on this blog ... see: DNA Test. No?

Sometimes it feels that even President Trump is more jocular than Saturday Night Live’s lame skits

1 comment:

ChillFin said...

You regularly post the conservative parallel of late night skits. The political cartoonists on Powerline and MostlyCajun often bash the liberal camp with poignant illustration. And remarkably, the right watches SNL and Bill Maher. The left is not focused on Bannon Hannity the Five Ingraham in their next day news. At least not as much.

In either camp, It’s like porn. If you do not like it, do not watch it.