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What do people think of comedians?

It’s a question we’ve pondered for coming up on eleven years now.

We were driving through Virginia, listening to the AM band, picking up all manner of stations from who knows where, when we heard a snippet of conversation between two radio hosts who were obviously talking about Artie Lange.

Here’s what we heard (from memory):

…he’s in a lot of pain, but that’s obviously where a lot of his comedy comes from… but we hope he recovers and gets well… but not too well, because we want him to still be funny.

Oh… my.

Here you have two people who have the awesome power of radio at their disposal (and it is awesome, make no mistake), and as they contemplate the eventual fate of a comedian whose bloody near-corpse was discovered by his mother in his apartment after a near-fatal self-inflicted stabbing (nine wounds!), and they sincerely hope that he recovers… but not too much. They hope he recovers, but only to the point where he can still provide them with the (supposedly) pain-based humor that they’ve come to know and love.

Nice!