On the way home today, I sat next to this man who I dubbed “Socrates on the LIRR”. He got off in Merrick – a thoroughly unphilosophical place. He was also carrying a cell phone – which seems to undermine any reflection in my experience. But he held it in his hands constantly instead of putting it in a pocket, which contributed to his other-ness. But the book he was carrying had no title, gold lining, and was ancient looking. He was constantly rubbing his beard in thought.
My eight-year-old son, Joel, comes into my office to ask if there’s a worse swearword than fuck. “No,” I say.
There’s a silence. “You’re lying,” he says.
No, not inventing the word “truthiness”. I’m talking about his speech in front of the president and press in which he speaks his character’s mind and gets to some truths as only an idiot can. Terry Gross of NPR described it as courageous. I would prefer to call it honest. Despite all the timely jokes, I think this is a speech that will age well over time, as a man, a comedian, brilliantly challenges the president, the press, and the establishment over their hypocrisy and stupidity, and does it to their face.
People called him rude for speaking the ugly truth at this social event. But if one cannot rudely speak the truth when the issue is life and death, you have no business holding any public trust. Perhaps this is why Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are trusted in a way that few others are. They speak the truth, rudely and leavened with humor. Here’s Colbert:
Because the truth is, if you laid the resumes of the five leading candidates for the job – Don Mattingly, Joe Girardi, Tony La Russa, Bobby Valentine and Torre – on a table and removed the names, one would jump out at you. The one with the 12 straight playoff appearances, 10 division titles and four world championships over the past 12 seasons. That would be Torre’s. And if that’s not good enough to keep his job, what ever will be?
For those talking about paying attention to the election next year after it starts, the New Hampshire primary is moving towards December.
The man who invented “yadda, yadda, yadda”, the inspiration for the cross-dressing Klinger in M*A*S*H, and the only guy to be granted a posthumous parden in New York history (in 2003 by George Pataki). And he also was a American stand-up comedian, writer, social critic and satirist. San Francisco columnist Herb Caen had this summary of Lenny Bruce in 1959:
They call Lenny Bruce a sick comic, and sick he is. Sick of all the pretentious phoniness of a generation that makes his vicious humor meaningful. He is a rebel, but not without a cause, for there are shirts that need un-stuffing, egos that need deflating. Sometimes you feel guilty laughing at some of Lenny’s mordant jabs, but that disappears a second later when your inner voice tells you with pleased surprise ‘but that’s true’.
Some Lenny Bruce quotations:
The liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
A lot of people say to me, ‘Why did you kill Christ?’ I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, you know.
And of course, like every other subversive in America, Lenny Bruce had an FBI file, helpfully now public here. An account of his infamous trial is here.
