The Voice of the Mountains hath spoken!

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on March 17th, 2008

Tim Rawal, columnist for the Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times (“The Voice of the Mountains”), sets up his March 14 column, “The popularity of Dane Cook is killing comedy,” by boldly brandishing the axe and commencing with the grinding:

For most of my childhood, I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. No, seriously. Then I realized it involved being considered humorous by more than just your brain-dead friends and having the ability to tell jokes that had beginnings, middles and ends.

Then Dane Cook became famous, and I reconsidered my dream.

Oh, yeah. It’s personal.

Most comedians (real comedians, not imaginary ones), when they recall the incident that made them get into comedy (or think or believe or imagine that they could/would/might be one some day), tell the story with a sense of awe or wonder, or at the very least, in an upbeat manner.

Other people, like our Mr. Rawal here, are embittered, downbeat and disappointed. Their experience turns them not into comedians, but hecklers. And Mr. Rawal’s “column” here is nothing more than a lengthy, 537-word heckle from waaaay back in the rear of the theater.

He should be ashamed. Apparently, his personal enmity has gotten in the way of any worthwhile analysis. If Mr. Rawal is the astute observer of standup comedy that he claims to be, he could observe standup that may not make him laugh and still be able to discern the structure, the timing and the skill set that makes it palatable (and often intoxicating) to large segments of the population.

The money quote:

He (Cook) and a handful of other new comedians who claim their humor comes from a happy place are ruining the honesty of great comedy (see Andy Samberg).

Of course, there is no evidence to support this preposterous assertion, Mr. Gloomy’s petulant whining notwithstanding.

Our favorite quote, however:

Comedy comes from a dark place. There were only three seemingly happy comedians who ever told good jokes; Billy Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld and Bob Newhart. And even those cats weren’t ecstatic about life. But they were intelligent and articulated universal feelings that made semiboring human quirks seem more enlightened and interesting than they actually were.

But they were (Attention: STILL ARE!) three of the most enormously successful and inflential American comedians of the latter half of the twentieth century!

Comedy should not necessarily come from a “dark place” or a happy place– it should come from a funny place.

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