Lileks' Screedblog

James Lileks, of Regrettable Food and Interior Desecrations fame, has a new Screedblog http://www.lileks.com/screedblog/index.html in which he briefly mentions someone else's take on prudery. In this case I agree with Lileks- as in most cases- because I think that when Chevy Chase gets on stage wherever and says the president is a dumb whatever- first of all, this is Chevy Chase, but never mind- this lowers our level of public discourse. Think of the bon mots and brilliant writers that would have been missed if the level of public discourse had been, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, at the level it is today. Churchill's, Wilde's, Disraeli's, Lincoln's, and countless others brilliant wit and repartee would have been stillborn. It's a tragedy- not so much because I am a prude, and you know I am not- that we are reduced to shouting Hey F*ck You at each other- because it's stupid.
This view was reinforced also by our watching George Burns and Gracie Allen on DVD last night; the DVDs came from Dollar Tree, which is getting fancier and fancier- and George and Gracie are really, really FUNNY. I'm sure the jokes are ancient warhorses and were probably first told in hieroglyphics but they're still hysterical. Example: Blanche said there was a salesman at the door with a bald head. I wonder if she bought one.
Now this is clean, pleasant, and FUNNY. It takes a good deal of practice to be funny like that, and they pull it off brilliantly. Although I do enjoy some fairly raunchy comedy, some of the bitterness underneath it is not so enjoyable, and I find it overall much more amusing when comics aren't.