Replies

It's hard to say if Percy Dovetonsils could be done today. The closest thing I can think of is Al Franken's Stewart Smalley, but even that's been 15-20 years ago, if not more.

Still, libs could get away with gay spoofs (Seinfeld and Frasier both did it) AS LONG AS IT WAS MADE CLEAR THAT NO REAL CONDEMNATION OF HOMOSEXUALITY WAS INTENDED. So you could spoof about people's REACTION to homosexuality, but not homosexuality itself.

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2010/05/the-homophobia-of-jack-paar.html

Fairies and Communists by Jack Paar

There used to be a time when it looked like the Communists were taking over show business. Now it's fairies. They operate a lot alike, actually; both have a tendency to colonize. Just as there used to be no such thing as one Communist in a play or movie, now there is no such thing as one fairy. Where you find one, you usually find a baker's dozen swishing around. I had a little game I used to play when I was an actor in Hollywood, back in the days when Communists or Communist sympathizers were nearly as plentiful in the film capital as yes-men. If I spotted someone in a picture who was a Communist or leftist, I could usually pick out several others. They always came in sets. Now I play it a different way. When I hear that some fairy is producing or directing or acting in a play, I can often name some of the rest of the cast, even if I've never heard it. But Communists and fairies do differ in some respects. The Hollywood Communists had their “Unfriendly Ten,” who refused to testify before a Congressional Committee, but the fairies are overfriendly. They do say no occasionally. “When a fairy says no,” Alex King has observed, “he almost throws his back out of joint.” The poor darlings, as they sometimes call themselves, are everywhere in show business. The theater is infested with them and it's beginning to show the effects. “The New York theater is dying,” the late Ernie Kovacs complained recently, “Killed by limp wrists.”