"The First Comedy Strike" UPDATE

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on February 5th, 2008

This Time magazine article compares the current WGA strike to the Comedy Store strike of 1979. Richard Zoglin calls it “the first comedy strike.” Interesting, because this current strike is a writers’ strike and not necessarily a comedy strike. We suppose that when people hear “writer,” they automatically think “comedy writer.”

The Hook: The ’79 strike was a “cautionary– and formative– experience,” for Leno and Letterman.

But first, The Setup, in paragraph four:

That walkout was the culmination of a decade in which stand-up became the voice of the counterculture generation. Like George Carlin, Richard Pryor and other pioneers of those years, the new stand-up comics were not just anti-Establishment rabble rousers; they were intimate, populist artists who got their power by convincing us that they were ordinary folks, with the same gripes and anxieties as everyone else. They joked about furnishing their tiny apartments and riding the subways and trying to get girls. The strike against the Comedy Store, the leading comedy club in Los Angeles, reinforced their real-life status as working-class crusaders…

The article then relies heavily on quotes from Jay Leno, David Letterman and Tom Dreesen— comics who could hardly be described as “the voice of the counterculture” or “working-class crusaders.”

My, what overheated language (emphasis ours) Zoglin packs into that graf! He no doubt had to bring the rhetorical heat when pitching the story to his editors. Elsewise, it’s just a story about comedians! And, as we all know, if comedians aren’t saving the world with their comedy, they’re misogynistic, bigoted “monkeys,” (as Tom Shales so nicely put it!)

UPDATE: Commenter “Steve” astutely point out that Zoglin takes the tack that he does because he is seeking to promote his book, “Comedy At The Edge,” and examination of how comics in the 70s changed standup comedy. For a review of that book, click here

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