Comedy "kind of dead right now"

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on March 24th, 2008

Behold the inanity of this paragraph:

Stand-up comedy is kind of dead right now, if you ask some people. Sure there are still plenty of comedy clubs out there doing their thing, and Jerry Seinfeld makes a killing whenever he sets foot on a stage, but the rising stars all seem to be coming out of sketch or improv. It’s hard to be edgy these days when you stand up at a microphone and make joke after joke. Well, unless Dane Cook is your definition of edgy.

It is the lede of an article by CinemaBlend.com‘s “Chief New York Correspondent” Katey Rich on the proposed documentary based on Richard Zoglin’s book “Comedy On The Edge.”

You’ll recall that we posted on this last week (scroll down, or click “More Than Just A Documentary About Comedy”).

Why is it that when someone like Rich comments on standup comedy, the default attitude is dismissive or derisive? What manner of disease is this? Her opening graf isn’t just wrong, it isn’t just stupid, it’s… mean. Are we offended? Hurt? Angry? No. We just marvel at the spectacle of someone so eager to display her ignorance and so eager to deliver it with such empty malice. We’re also weary of the supreme hackiness of her trotting out of the “Dane Cook isn’t very edgy” meme.

She’s writing for a “snarky, fun, and informative” website about movies (their words, not ours), but she utterly fails to provide anything fun or informative over and above that which was contained in the original Variety piece that prompted the posting in the first place. Plenty of “snark,” to be sure, but snark without any substance ends up being boring petulance.

Her sole attempt at contributing something meaningful to the discussion, “It seems a topic worth exploring, especially since the legacy of these comics keeps fading as time goes on,” is howling, barking stupidity. The legacy of all these comics (if Time-Warner has anything to say about it– and they most certainly will) is going to be preserved, packaged, marketed, licensed, uploaded and downloaded tens of millions of times over the next few years. And that which is not sliced, diced and served by the folks at Time-Warner will be special-ordered through the myriad other channels of distribution. (Has Rich not heard of The Long Tail?)

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