Comedy

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• SOURCE: Slate
  12/31/2022
  

  What Happened to Pieing Powerful People in the Face?

  by Rossi Anastopoulo

  For three decades beginning in the 1970s, political groups used the time-honored comedy move as a way of humbling the powerful and (mostly) non-violently resisting bigotry. Why have public pieings nearly vanished? 

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• SOURCE: Vox
  12/20/2022
  

  Are Conservatives Really Pulling Ahead in the Comedy Race?

  Does a ratings boost for Greg Gutfeld's late-night show mean that today's conservatives are the funny ones and liberals are too "woke" to laugh? Answering the question means looking past party loyalty to ask what makes humor, says humor historian Teresa Prados-Terreira. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  10/4/2022
  

  The Writer of "The Onion" SCOTUS Brief Takes Parody Seriously

  The satirical newspaper's brief employed the rhetorical mode to lay out the free speech implications of a case involving a man who faced retaliatory arrest for making a parody facebook account for his local police department. 

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• SOURCE: Forward
  11/30/2021
  

  Mel Brooks Delivers 500 Pages on His Favorite Subject – Himself

  "The stuff that hasn’t been public, or at least is tough to find, makes the book worthwhile."

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• SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
  3/3/2021
  

  ‘We Had a Little Real Estate Problem’: Native American Comedians Get Their Due | Book review

  Charlie Hill’s TV debut, making him the first Indigenous comedian in prime time, is one of the milestones that Kliph Nesteroff chronicles in We Had a Little Real Estate Problem, an illuminating and stereotype-busting history of Native Americans and comedy.

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• SOURCE: The Intercept
  7/4/2020
  

  Carl Reiner’s Life Should Remind Us: If You Like Laughing, Thank FDR And The New Deal

  Reiner’s brother saw a small ad in the New York Daily News about free acting lessons being offered in lower Manhattan by the Works Progress Administration. Reiner had never contemplated acting before in his life, but his brother insisted, so he went.

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  5/13/2020
  

  Finding the Funny: Historians’ Lectures Provide Material for Improv Comedians

  A Philadelphia improv comedy group has been inviting historians to collaborate for years in performances mixing historical lecture and improvised reenactments.  

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/11/2020
  

  In Jerry Stiller, the Rage of Jewish Fathers Found a Hilarious Outlet

  Jerry Stiller mined a rich comedic vein that was rooted in cultural conflict between Jewish immigrants and their American-born children.