SENSE OF...
I find myself wondering, at times, about men and women who were noted for having possessed and who made use of a superior sense of humor - let's say Will Rogers, Mark Twain and others of that ilk, and what they would think of events of our New Century.
I have great respect for those who can saw the simple, underlying reasons for seemingly complex happenings. I think we actually felt better about many things when Will Rogers, for example, translated the unpleasenmt events of the news into terms we could understand. He had a sense of ridicule which could puncture puffy politicians or the overly pious perfectionists with equal candor and common sense and he could do it without rancor.
Such a person, set free to comment on our world today, would be faced with new problems.
They would be overwhelmed, I'm sure, by the tremendous funds of information available to every ctizien today. Will Rogers would have to modify his slogan "all I know is what I read in the papers" to include media channels he never dreamed man would have available. When those humorists thought of the world's knowledge it was still something individuls had to seek out and find, and develop is now available to us at our fingertips - literally
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Most of them would, no doubt, be taken aback concerning the unseemly haste with which we must live today. They enjoyed a more leisurely passage thruough the events which made up daily routines. How they could adapt to such a changes of pace is questionable, and I doubt if they could function in the present world with anything like their success they enjoyed decades ago. Life is too fast today. It tumbles over itself in an at-times erratic, panic-fired eagerness to force its way on stage. No one medium seems to be fast enough to keep pace with the lava-flow steadiness of all types of news... good ...bad, or - worse yet!. Newspapers have changed radically in the past fifty years and more of them will be failing in the next few years. The pace of happenings has far outrun their capacity to be current.
In like manner, I think the humorists of the past are gone and that the current crop is meeting a special transitional need. Their comedy is more open and admittedly contrived for the moment. Cosby led to it, Seinfeld and others have it in their hands, for the moment, and the writers on the talk shows play an enormous role, as well. The late night TV stars relate to humor chiefly in relation to it all through their writing staff and few, if any, are humorists in their own right. The constant need for new material puts such a career beyond any one person. Those who star as funny men and women are often mere fronts for several writers feeding them material which, once used, is heard by mllions in the one performance and many repeats and re--runs and, therfore, virtually useless until revised by writers with a newsy slant in mind
I don't think the old-timers could hack it today,
Our sense of humor today is heavily burdened with an overwhelming reality pressure.
What appears to be comical today is , all too often, is accepted in a "funny-odd" sense rather than in a "funny-ha-ha" way. That is not a healthy sign at all.
A.L.M. February 5, 2003 [c640wds]
