Word: comedian
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David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, likening the cover to comedian Stephen Colbert's mocking portrayal of a right-wing newscaster...
...line. I ask the Massachusetts Democrat, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, if he thinks the housing bill that he and Senator Chris Dodd are on the verge of pushing through Congress will really do much good. Frank first trots out a joke from the late comedian Henny Youngman: "How's your wife?" Answer: "Compared to what?" Then he gets a bit more serious. "Do I think it's gonna have a great impact?" he says. "It's gonna have an impact. I think it will be helpful...
...comic who spent much of his career railing against America's war culture, George Carlin had some pretty good war stories of his own from his tour of duty on the 1960s cultural battlefield. Once a popular, short-haired comedian who did parodies of commercials and fast-talking DJs, Carlin saw the counterculture revolution and decided he was talking to the wrong audience. So he grew long hair and a beard and began doing routines about drugs and Vietnam and uptight middle-class values...
Like his idol Lenny Bruce, Carlin saw the comedian as a social commentator, rebel and truth teller, exposing hypocrisy and challenging conventional wisdom. He pointed out that America's "drug problem," for example, extended to middle-class suburbia, from office coffee freaks to housewives hooked on diet pills. He talked about the irony and injustice of Muhammad Ali's banishment from boxing as punishment for evading the draft: "He said, 'No, that's where I draw the line. I'll beat 'em up, but I don't want to kill 'em.' And the government said, 'Well...
...Carlin's career, and his comedy, was anything but a downer. He was unique among stand-ups of his era in remaining a top-drawing comedian for more than 40 years, with virtually no help from movies or TV sitcoms. His influence can be seen everywhere from the political rants of Lewis Black to the observational comedy of Jerry Seinfeld. He showed that nothing - not the most sensitive social issues or the most trivial annoyances of everyday life - was off-limits for smart comedy. And he helped bring stand-up comedy to the very center of American culture...