Lena Dunham Privately Doubted Hillary Clinton for Discrediting Rape Accusers

Washington Free Beacon ^ | January 20, 2016 | Morgan Chalfant

[ponygirl]

I adore Carol Burnett. And Vicki Lawrence, too. How can anyone say they are not funny?

[presidio9]

None of the SNL crew is funny.

In spite of what I said, I disagree with the premise that no women are funny. SNL in general has gone way downhill. However the current cast features Kate McKinnon, who is consistently funny, and Cecily Strong, who is usually funny. In recent years, SNL has featured Kristen Wiig, who was hysterical, and (before her) Tina Fey, who is one of the funniest people on the planet -male or female.

It is usually fair to say that when comedians (male or female) get political, half the audience is not going to think they are funny, and half the audience is going to agree and clap, and then later remember that they laughed -even though they didn't. This is especially true for conservatives watching young comedians because -being young -they are typically liberal.

However, in the case of McKinnon, her impersonation of Hillary Clinton is spot-on, hilarious, and devastating (other than the time when Mrs. Clinton made a guest appearance and McKinnon was clearly nervous). And whether you like or hate Sarah Palin, you have to admit that Fey's impersonation was very good.

A lot of the other impersonations that the current cast does are terrible, and there's a simple reason for that: The cast of SNL works very hard every week to get a live show done in three days of rehearsals. That doesn't leave a lot of time to study a character for impersonation. And its not like these kids are going to, say, watch a Republican candidate on their own time. Because they're kids. They just don't care.

So you wind up with a Republican debate sketch, where one guy plays Ben Carson as a flaming homosexual, another plays Marco Rubio as a clueless child, and Chris Christie is a fat crazy person.

The only way to impersonate anyone is to study them. So past impersonations on SNL of Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and both Bushes have been excellent. Darrel Hammond's Donald Trump is excellent, but for some reason they keep bringing out Cecily Strong as Melania. Nobody can do Melania, because we've only heard her speak a couple of times.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Barr and DeGeneres were the other two HBO “Women of the Night” comedians I was talking about. When they first started out, they were great.

Their “ HBO Men” counterparts were Louie Anderson?, Jerry Seinfeld, Sam Kinnison (talk about raw and funny as hell), maybe Rodney Dangerfield (one of the funniest comics ever and similar to Henny Youngman in his material/approach), and one other.

Smart comedy doesn’t have to be crude comedy. Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, among others, drifted to using curse words way too often and lost their comedic value.

Some of the best black comedians never used curse words in their general public performances - Nipsy Russell, Godfrey Cambridge, Slappy White, and Redd Foxx (on TV, but I heard that he was wildly risqué in private clubs), and a few others. Rochester, of “The Jack Benny Show”, was hilarious with just a few words, as was Robert Guillaume of the show “Benson”.

Bill Cosby was great. I saw him when he first started (we both went to Temple Un.), and he was a street observant smart man. Sherman Hensley could be very funny, as was JJ “Dynomite” Walker.

Good humor needs to be “intelligent humor” not gross humor. That is why Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl went into decline. They became bitter comedians and lost that “edge” they once had. The same for Dick Gregory, who was one of the pioneering black comedians of the late 50’s, early 60’s. He went Left and Bitter and never came back.

I nominate the Carol Burnett Show cast as the funniest ensemble around (Burnett, Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, Vicki Lawrence) aided by Mel Brooks, the late Morrie Amsterdam and his female cohort (one word name), Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and their out-of-their-mind writers group/performers of the 50’s.

There is a lot of truth in the phrase “Oldies But Goodies”.