Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Once, while bemoaning a generation’s regrettable reliance on television rather than books as a conduit to learning, the great novelist Kurt Vonnegut had to allow for an exception to his complaint. He famously noted, “I would have rather written Cheers than anything I’ve written.” Obviously, this is no faint praise, given than it emanates from the author of some of the most justly revered novels … Continue reading Laughing Matters: “Cheers,” The Dime Bet

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter matters, too. Lorne Michaels smartly maintains that everyone’s favorite Saturday Night Live cast is the one that was in place while they were in high school. The creator and longtime producer (with only a brief interruption in the early nineteen-eighties) of the venerable late night sketch comedy program is certainly correct in identifying the perception bias that compromises any individual attempt to identify one era’s superiority over … Continue reading Laughing Matters: “Saturday Night Live” Bush campaign ad, 1988