It's official: The Joke is dead.

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on May 24th, 2005

Hey: Anybody interested in a large, steaming pile of horse manure? Warren St. John, writing in Sunday’s New York Times holds forth on the “death of the joke.” You know, like joke jokes. Mr. St. John doesn’t so much offend and annoy as do all those quoted, professors and the like, throughout the article:

Scholars say that while humor has always been around – in ancient Athens, for example, a comedians’ club called the Group of 60 met regularly in the temple of Herakles – the joke has gone in and out of fashion. In modern times its heyday was probably the 1950’s, but the joke’s demise began soon after, a result of several seismic cultural shifts. The first of those, Mr. Nilsen said, was the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Read the rest, if you must, by clicking here (Registration required). It proves that folks will say anything when a reporter from the NYT is on the other end of the blower. (Full disclosure: If a reporter from the New York Times calls us, we’ll yak and yak until he/she says “Enough!” And, the good lord willing, it will make sense and support the reporter’s thesis. And we’ll get quoted in The Paper of Record. The Holy Grail of media coverage for any blog!)

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