Lionel, Franken, and the Trap of Humor
Recently I heard a person, a host on Air America radio, say that he could think of nothing, absolutely nothing, that he considered to be beyond the reach of his humor, or words to that effect.
That confirmed the low opinion of him that I formed almost from the start and that hasn't changed since. A statement like this means that nothing at all is of real importance to him. No matter how much time and effort he might spend harping on one particular subject, employing all sorts of exaggerated mannerisms along the way, in the end the topic really didn't matter to him. Therefore he's a vaporous person, with no true convictions or feelings.
Washing up on this kind of spiritual desert island is where an overwhelming compulsion to elicit laughs can get a person.
I think Al Franken suffers from having landed in the same trap. Until the recent economic downturn he was way behind in his effort to try to unseat the incumbent Senator from Minnesota, a Republican, N. Ooleman. Now Franken is still behind, but the race is awaiting a recount, because Coleman's margin is so thin, by only about 200 votes out of nearly 3 million cast. Though Franken's stands are generally good (I wonder if he is still shaky about Iraq?), during the campaign he was looked at askance because of his longtime career as a comedian and his obvious lack of distance from that.
His opponents found plenty of material in jokes he had written, especially for "Saturday Night Live." That was long ago, but during his campaign appearances, he couldn't resist still indulging in comic bits. Humor has its place but not everywhere, and I think that his turn as a talk show host a few years ago on the Sundance Channel was likewise marred by the way that no matter how grave the subject, you could easily see how his mind, in spite of itself, couldn't never stop searching for ways to make a comic remark about things.
For most people there must be many areas where joking about them is only a careless or deliberate affront. Few people can have led lives so devoid of things that really mattered and that went so badly wrong that laughter as comment was the last thing they cared to hear.
That confirmed the low opinion of him that I formed almost from the start and that hasn't changed since. A statement like this means that nothing at all is of real importance to him. No matter how much time and effort he might spend harping on one particular subject, employing all sorts of exaggerated mannerisms along the way, in the end the topic really didn't matter to him. Therefore he's a vaporous person, with no true convictions or feelings.
Washing up on this kind of spiritual desert island is where an overwhelming compulsion to elicit laughs can get a person.
I think Al Franken suffers from having landed in the same trap. Until the recent economic downturn he was way behind in his effort to try to unseat the incumbent Senator from Minnesota, a Republican, N. Ooleman. Now Franken is still behind, but the race is awaiting a recount, because Coleman's margin is so thin, by only about 200 votes out of nearly 3 million cast. Though Franken's stands are generally good (I wonder if he is still shaky about Iraq?), during the campaign he was looked at askance because of his longtime career as a comedian and his obvious lack of distance from that.
His opponents found plenty of material in jokes he had written, especially for "Saturday Night Live." That was long ago, but during his campaign appearances, he couldn't resist still indulging in comic bits. Humor has its place but not everywhere, and I think that his turn as a talk show host a few years ago on the Sundance Channel was likewise marred by the way that no matter how grave the subject, you could easily see how his mind, in spite of itself, couldn't never stop searching for ways to make a comic remark about things.
For most people there must be many areas where joking about them is only a careless or deliberate affront. Few people can have led lives so devoid of things that really mattered and that went so badly wrong that laughter as comment was the last thing they cared to hear.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:10 AM
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