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Guest
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Tom Lehrer is the most famous living satirical songwriter says Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald.
The U.S. performer, who stopped recording four decades ago, has been named one of the 10 great figures of the previous 100 years, by Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert; “Lehrer was able to express and expose, in humorous verse and lilting music, some of the most powerful dangers of the second half of the 20th century.”
Years ago, Mr Lehrer himself quipped. ”Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” And the 74 year old doesn’t see a good climate for satire these days.
“I see it with these late-night TV show people, Jay Leno, David Letterman and so on, the audience applauds the jokes rather than laugh at them, which is very discouraging. Laughter is involuntary. If it’s funny, you laugh.
But you can easily clap just to say (deadpan) ‘Ah ha, that’s funny. I think that’s funny’…..they are applauding madly. But they’re not laughing”.
Sophisticated jokes about politics only worked in – now vanished – coffee clubs. “The people who go o comedy shows today are kids that don’t know anything, I think, and so you have to make jokes about your girlfriend or your family or that kind of thing only and make them as vulgar as possible.”
It’s not funny to say something insulting about the president. “Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.”
The U.S. performer, who stopped recording four decades ago, has been named one of the 10 great figures of the previous 100 years, by Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert; “Lehrer was able to express and expose, in humorous verse and lilting music, some of the most powerful dangers of the second half of the 20th century.”
Years ago, Mr Lehrer himself quipped. ”Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” And the 74 year old doesn’t see a good climate for satire these days.
“I see it with these late-night TV show people, Jay Leno, David Letterman and so on, the audience applauds the jokes rather than laugh at them, which is very discouraging. Laughter is involuntary. If it’s funny, you laugh.
But you can easily clap just to say (deadpan) ‘Ah ha, that’s funny. I think that’s funny’…..they are applauding madly. But they’re not laughing”.
Sophisticated jokes about politics only worked in – now vanished – coffee clubs. “The people who go o comedy shows today are kids that don’t know anything, I think, and so you have to make jokes about your girlfriend or your family or that kind of thing only and make them as vulgar as possible.”
It’s not funny to say something insulting about the president. “Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.”
