I love Steyn, but I don’t agree with him on this. “Funny lines” are lines that any decent comedian could deliver, but “funny men” are something different, i.e., they are usually comic figures in and of themselves, regardless of their lines, and America has had a lot of them: Laurel & Hardy, The Three Stooges, Don Knotts, Ernie Kovacs, Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Chris Farley, and so on.
Watching Uncle Buck as I write this. John Candy always cracks me up even if the plot stinks. HE’S a funny man. Shame he died so young
The ‘funny men’ came mostly out of vaudeville.
Red Skelton, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle.