Topic: Comedy

Comedian George Carlin dead at 71

By Christine Anne Piesyk | June 23, 2008 |

It seems that so many people in the celebrity spotlight of my youth are passing away. Designers, singers, actors, activists, even politicians — they’ve crossed that line that marks the last decades of their lives, and then they are gone.

The often irreverent and always funny George Carlin is the latest name on the list. Carlin died Sunday of heart failure at age 71. From the vantage point of youth, 71 was “old,” distant, beyond comprehension. From the vantage point closer to 60, his 71 years now seems pretty young. I remember Carlin first as “the hippy dippy weatherman” — a tamer version of Carlin in those early days.

In the very early 60s, Carlin’s comedy was tame. Then he fell under the spell of controversial Lenny Bruce, whose ribald and often vulgar comedy inspired and led Carlin in a new groundbreaking direction. Combined with the social unrest of the Vietnam era, Carlin quickly broke new ground using comedy to make his message clear. part of that message was simply to make us think. «Read the rest of this article»

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Comedy vs the Traditional News Networks

By Bill Larson | April 19, 2007 |

Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Bill Maher are often excellent sources of information on current world affairs.  Studies have shown that viewers of their new genre of news as comedy are more informed about world affairs, are generally also more cynical about candidates, campaigns, the electoral system and the news media than network news viewers. Like Clarksville Online, they are an excellent alternative to traditional media.

Using the entire half-hour programs as the basis of analysis yielded the same results: there was just as much substance to The Daily Show’s coverage as there was on the network news. And The Daily Show was much funnier, with less of the hype—references to photo ops, political endorsements, and polls—that typically overshadows substantive coverage on network news, according to the study…

Professor Fox’s study, titled “No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election Campaign,” will be published next summer in the Journal of Broadcast and Electronic Media. - Ars Technica interview with Professor Fox

Take a look and see what you think… «Read the rest of this article»

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