Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Comedy Is Not Pretty, and Nowadays It Isn’t Even Funny - Note for a discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."


Joseph Epstein, Wall Street Journal

Image (not from article) from

With sanctimony having replaced humor, the only thing left to laugh at is the farce of politics itself.

Excerpt:
In a political time as divisive as ours, a public figure loses roughly half his following—and hence his charm—just as soon as he announces his politics. For an entertainer to do so is perhaps even more hazardous. ...

[I]nsufficiently funny comedians, with their crude political humor, do little more than add to the sad divisiveness that is rending the country. Something, surely, has been lost if one can no longer turn to comedy as a relief from the general woes of life and the greater farce that has for some years now been playing out in our everyday politics.

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