A July 4th Remembrance: When Comedy Was Funny
Conjugating ‘F’ Is Not Comedy
In my car, I now automatically tune my XM radio to Fox News. I used to try the comedy channels, but they are not funny anymore. The contemporary era’s idea of comedy is who can say or conjugate the word “F – – -” in the most variations as frequently as possible. F. (present tense). F’d (past). Will F (future). F’ing (gerund). Having been F’d (past perfect). Will have F’d (future perfect). If were to F (subjunctive). Why don’t you just go F (interrogative). Oh, go F! (imperative).
I just cannot listen to XM radio’s comedy channels anymore. Most of the segments are not witty, just trying and not worth the invasion of solitude.
Yes, Jeff Foxworthy is a blast. Larry the Cable Guy may be gross deliberately, but there is a cleverness to his stuff. I wonder: have they ever bothered to listen to the garbage on their radio channel? The same for Netflix. I can watch a Netflix special featuring Sebastian Maniscalco any time. But don’t they have anything else — y’know, stuff that is funny?
Conjugating “F” is the sum and substance of contemporary American comedy. The idea of all comedy is to surprise your audience with something they never saw coming. In the old days, it would be shocking to discuss toilet matters in public: digestion, excretion. Therefore, “toilet humor” was common because, theoretically, it was shocking to hear someone on stage talk about his clostridium difficile or urinary incontinence. Get it? Isn’t that hysterical? (READ MORE from Dov Fischer: Kamala v. Jill: The Ugly Catfight Ahead)
It also was acceptable and common in those days for people to use horribly racist and hurtful epithets about Irish people, Greeks, Germans, Italians, Poles, Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Southeast Asians — but only in private or among friends, even respectable friends, at work. Therefore, a performer who would go on a big public stage and start ranting about any or all of those minority groups, even using the most vile epithets, would get big laughs. Isn’t he funny, the way he nailed that group over their excessive inebriation or involvement in organized crime or their financial stinginess or their pure stupidity, or whatever else? And he actually used that unspeakable word to describe them! Wow! What daring! I couldn’t believe it! Isn’t that hysterical?
Well, now everyone talks publicly about private matters. Tampons are advertised on television. Morons who know very few four-syllable words except “Ocasio” know “incontinence.” A former defeated presidential candidate, who could not claim a cold (i.e., senility) to justify his decision, openly discussed in commercials why Viagra would make him happier. All of that talk about such matters had become so ubiquitous that the only joke left on those subjects was Jackie Mason’s observation that, if he took one of those medicaments, and if it caused a reaction extending beyond four hours, a phenomenon for which commercials warned male users to seek immediate medical attention, Mr. Mason would not go to a doctor in such a case. Rather, if the phenomenon would not stop even after four hours, he would immediately seek someone in Stormy Daniels’s line of work.
Thus humor.
Michael Richards, who had played (Cosmo) Kramer wonderfully on “Seinfeld,” never got the memo about continuing to use racial-based vitriol as humor. That took care of him for several years. So, digestion-excretion “humor” no longer was “funny” because it no longer surprised “from out of nowhere” because everyone talks about it in public, and with ethnic-racial “humor” no longer “funny” because no one may talk about it in public anymore (except within their own circles).
Remaining Types of Comedy
That now leaves only two types of comedy — only two kinds of things that can draw laughs because the audience never sees it coming: (i) variations on the “F” word, because no one would dare say that in public, and (ii) truly witty things that the audience never sees coming because they cleverly do come out of nowhere. However, since true wit requires thoughtful intelligence and a keen insight into the human condition, most comedians and comedy writers are left with “F.” Wit is beyond their pay grade.
Their problem — and that of a decent human being who is listening — is that the “F” now has become so ubiquitous in everyday America that no one is surprised or shocked anymore when the stage performer or television actor says it, whether once, twice, or a hundred times, and no matter in how many different conjugations.
Yes, in the 1950’s days of Lenny Bruce, that word was beyond shocking to hear uttered publicly on stage. And he also had some wit. That mixture of wit and F made him a household name remembered half a century later, even as it also got him arrested lots of times for violating public morals laws in an era when America concerned itself with morality. And George Carlin made a lifetime career out of the seven words forbidden to be said in public. But those days are over … except, perhaps, in a Jason Aldean-quality small town. Perhaps. Perhaps not even there anymore.
Today those words are all over cable TV, all over the internet, all over social media, most of them even are on commercial TV during family hour. So they have lost their shock value. The term that gave Lenny Bruce a career and immortality now is just one more utterance about a rear and immorality. “F” does not generate laughs by coming out of nowhere. Quite the contrary: If the comedian does not use ten F’s every five minutes, people feel cheated. Is he a real comedian? Was she giving us her best performance? Or did we get suckered with a sub-par act?
The only truly funny people today are those who are truly witty. Fortunately for most comedians who are not, the vast majority of their audiences are so mediocre in their expectations because their own sharpness is so lacking that they are satisfied with F “humor.” (READ MORE: Democrats Can’t Stand Trump’s Constitutional Immunity)
I am not. I just cannot listen to XM radio’s comedy channels anymore. Most of the segments are not witty, just trying and not worth the invasion of solitude. They leave the listener a bit less spiritual, dignified, and holy than when he or she began. If there are children in the car, the parent feels embarrassed all the more.
Which should raise additional red flags for Moms and Dads: If the parent indeed has that much self-dignity and self-respect to feel uncomfortable in the car that his or her child is hearing that garbage on XM radio, then really the parent ought to see what the child is seeing, reading — and writing — the rest of the day on social media.
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