Jon Stewart, the Two Dollar Whore

Suppose you’re sitting in one of those little comedy reviews, like the Ice House in Pasadena or the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles.   The comic steps up to the microphone and starts in on your aunt, who is sitting one table over.   It’s a real Don Rickles hot wax and power-wash treatment.   He makes fun of her hair, her intellect, her legs, her clothing, her perfume, her shoes, her laugh, her everything.

She’s just a slab of beef to be hung up and graded.  Everyone is laughing, even your aunt, but you can tell — she’s not really laughing, and your uncle looks like he could kill someone.

But, heah!   It’s just a joke!  Nothing personal!

I had a friend who loved this sort of comedy.  He fell out of our orbit a decade or so ago, unremembered, because of this cranky, untouchable hide.    Certain people — certain comics — have a kind of sand-paper coarseness at the center of their being.   Nothing really moves them.   They are the kind of people who belch in the middle of a Christmas play, collect a random chuckle, and then deem themselves artists for it.

To be certain, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have a sense of humor.  There’s something downright alien about people who don’t see the comedy in life, but there’s something even more evil about people who don’t reverence anything, who never get choked up at anything, who have no sense of the holy or the God-breathed.   They’re the sort of joyless schmucks who look at a beautiful infant and can’t stop making diaper jokes.   It’s all a bit like hearing the national anthem at a ball game, really feeling the spirit, and then having to deal with a friend who keeps trashing the singer’s outfit.

Shut up already!

Last night, when Jon Stewart decided to embellish his “war on Christmas” sketches with a “time travel” trip to Benjamin Franklin’s bedroom, where he decided to show Franklin harpooning French prostitutes, (not kidding), I had the same sense of loathing.    Ben Franklin risked great personal fortune, sacrificed the harmony of his family, and signed off on a comfortable retirement in England to fight for American liberty.    Where does Jon Stewart stand up against that?

It’s a bit like watching a two dollar whore make fun of Mother Theresa.