(image: marktwaincircle.org)
Mark Twain is, in my mind, the best creative mind that America has ever put forth. Go to any quote aggregation site, and there are many to fuel the twitterverse and Facebook inspirational status updates, and Twain will always be well represented. He stands as the greatest American writer by many. He is held up as the greatest American humorist. The Mark Twain Prize by the Kennedy Center Honors is regarded as the most prestigious award for a comedian.
It's no coincidence that the most significant voices on current events are Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert. The latter having elevated satire to a level heretofore unseen. Colbert's satire is so good, and complete, many conservative friends of mine think he actually is making "a god point" at times. You can say it's sad that Jon Stewart's The Daily Show is actually more respected as a news source than traditional news sources. You might be right. I only hope that the mocking done to current events, political discourse, and what passes for news on the 24 hour cycle breaks the current paradigm of ratings driven content. Comedy has always had that power to show the ridiculousness some take seriously as just that.
Archie Bunker as a character most certainly said, and did ugly things on our televisions. What he also did was take the mask off the corner bigot, and show him to be the ignorant fool he's always been.
George Carlin's monologues, notably the 7 words you can never say, while appealing to the lowest common denominator of laughing at naughtiness, also exposed the veneer of consumer culture's preoccupation with how things looked as opposed to how they actually are. 40 years hence we still are.
Richard Pryor made us look at, and compare, the white/black side of the American coin. He joked that drug use was an epidemic in 1983, and that meant that white kids are doing it.
I guess the question is how ridiculous does it have to be before the collective laughter crumbles the facade? I don't know that it ever will, because we're still uptight about language. We still collectively worry more about how things look than how they actually are. There is still a bigot on most every corner, and instead of the n-word they use words like "thug." You could argue that all we've done since the 1970s is add another word to the 7 we can't say on television, which is too bad because the racist word association Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor engaged on SNL in the 70's did more to show how stupid, and ridiculous it all was.
I was hopeful when this post started, but now, fuck it. Twain was wrong.
Archie Bunker as a character most certainly said, and did ugly things on our televisions. What he also did was take the mask off the corner bigot, and show him to be the ignorant fool he's always been.
George Carlin's monologues, notably the 7 words you can never say, while appealing to the lowest common denominator of laughing at naughtiness, also exposed the veneer of consumer culture's preoccupation with how things looked as opposed to how they actually are. 40 years hence we still are.
Richard Pryor made us look at, and compare, the white/black side of the American coin. He joked that drug use was an epidemic in 1983, and that meant that white kids are doing it.
I guess the question is how ridiculous does it have to be before the collective laughter crumbles the facade? I don't know that it ever will, because we're still uptight about language. We still collectively worry more about how things look than how they actually are. There is still a bigot on most every corner, and instead of the n-word they use words like "thug." You could argue that all we've done since the 1970s is add another word to the 7 we can't say on television, which is too bad because the racist word association Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor engaged on SNL in the 70's did more to show how stupid, and ridiculous it all was.
I was hopeful when this post started, but now, fuck it. Twain was wrong.
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