XPost: uk.legal, soc.culture.jewish, comp.misc   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   Long decline, sudden end   
      
   To be sure, morbid symptoms were apparent for decades. Woody Allen   
   hasn’t been funny since 1987 (Radio Days). Rodney Dangerfield is long   
   gone. Al Franken moved from SNL to the U.S. Senate — where he was   
   often quite funny — until he got caught in the crossfire of MeToo.   
   Sarah Silverman started off brilliant and outrageous; she and Gilbert   
   Gottfried were among the few comics who told Hitler jokes:   
      
   “They just discovered that Hitler for years molested his niece – now   
   he’s really cancelled.”   
      
   “I read somewhere that Hitler had a grandson who was a child molester   
   – Imagine the embarrassment to the Hitler family.”   
      
   But since 2016, Silverman has been a liberal pundit more than a   
   comedian — not funny!   
      
   Gottfried was notorious for being the first major comedian to tell   
   9/11 jokes. On September 29, 2001, at a roast for Playboy publisher   
   Hugh Hefner, he stared his routine by saying:   
      
   “Tonight, I’ll be using my Arab name, Has’n Bin Laide. But I’m afraid   
   I have to leave early because I need to catch a flight to LA. I   
   couldn’t get a direct flight; we have to make a stop at the Empire   
   State Building.”   
      
   He died in 2022, aged 67. Nobody has filled his shoes.   
      
   And then there is Larry David. For 25 years, he carried upon his   
   slender frame the weight of three generations of Jewish comics. Now   
   aged 77, he’s called it quits: Curb Your Enthusiasm is no more, but   
   the cache of 120 episodes remains. How do they stand up?   
      
   In season two, episode nine, The Baptism, Larry and his wife are   
   running late to a baptism in Monterrey: A Jewish man has agreed to   
   convert before marrying Cheryl’s sister. When they finally arrive,   
   Larry gets out of his car and sees from a distance one man holding   
   another under the surface of a rushing river. Thinking he’s witnessing   
   a murder, Larry screams and runs toward them. To his surprise, the   
   minister loses hold of the would-be convert and the latter floats away   
   with the current, nearly drowning. Afterward, the two families gather   
   to dry off and plan. The Jews pull Larry aside and congratulate him   
   for preventing the baptism; the Gentiles curse him. Soon the two sides   
   begin to shout and confront each other as hostile camps.   
      
   In the Palestinian Chicken episode (season eight, episode three),   
   Larry meets Shara, the Muslim proprietor of the Al-Abbas Palestinian   
   chicken restaurant. She becomes attracted to him after he tries to get   
   his newly orthodox friend Marty Funkhouser (Bob Einstein) to take off   
   his yarmulke before entering the restaurant: “This isn’t the raid on   
   Entebbe”, Larry says. When he and Shara later have sex, she moans:   
   “Occupy this, you Jewish fuck!” “Fuck me like Israel fucks my people.”   
   At the end of the episode, Jews and Palestinians face off in dueling   
   protests after the chicken restaurant owners open a franchise next to   
   Greenblatt’s Deli. Larry walks between the two, unsure which side to   
   join: “Larry, you’re a Jew,” Funkhouser shouts. “Larry,” Shara says,   
   “I have a sister, the three of us…” Watching both episodes now, it’s   
   hard not to think about actual, Jewish-Israeli violence. Curb is   
   history. But has history – Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza — killed   
   Jewish comedy?   
      
   The so-called golden age of Jewish comedy   
      
   Among the many paeans to Curb since its final episode was broadcast   
   last month, surprisingly few have focused on Jewishness. The New York   
   Times, American paper of record founded by Jews, run by Jews, and   
   partly written for Jews (1.6 million in New York City alone), barely   
   broached the topic. Even Wesley Morris’s long-read managed only a few   
   cliches about Jewishness, based upon the supposed connection between   
   the oompah theme music for Curb, and klezmer. (In fact, the tune was   
   composed by the Italian Luciano Michelini in 1974 in emulation of   
   circus music or screamers.) Morris writes that the “melodiousness of   
   Jewish tradition, of which Larry David is a part, assays the large   
   type and fine print of American life with the same meticulous relish   
   as Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Albert Brooks.”  Huh?   
      
   The appreciation by P.E. Moskowitz, titled, “American Jewish Comedy   
   Sings a Swan Song”, published in New York Magazine was better. There,   
   we read about the “split consciousness” of American Jews – a   
   reflection, albeit paler, of W.E.B. Dubois “double consciousness” of   
   African Americans. Jews are at once a threatened minority and members   
   of an exclusive club located in the upper echelons of American economy   
   and society. The paradox offers much grist for comedy: It’s why so   
   many scenes in Curb take place in Larry’s golf club. Despite his   
   wealth, Larry’s continued membership is dependent upon the forbearance   
   of the club’s redoubtable, gentile manager, the Japanese American, Mr.   
   Takahashi. Larry regularly challenges the club’s rules and etiquette,   
   but also fears being thrown out.   
      
   That split consciousness – insider/club member; outsider/Jew – is the   
   stock in trade of American Jewish humor. A half-century earlier   
   Groucho uttered his famous quip: “I don’t want to belong to any club   
   that would accept me as a member.” Twenty-five years ago, Jacob Cohen,   
   better known as Rodney Dangerfield, deployed the trope in his hit film   
   Caddy Shack (Harold Ramis, dir., 1980). The movie begins with the   
   nouveau-rich vulgarian Al Czervik sweeping into a golf course pro shop   
   and announcing to his Chinese-American companion, Wang (played by   
   Tsung-I Dow) “Hey, I think this place is restricted, Wang, so don’t   
   tell ‘em your Jewish.” Al then sets out to buy the club himself.   
   Larry’s character in Curb and the real Larry David are rich enough to   
   buy any golf club, but then split consciousness would be healed and   
   its comic potential erased.   
      
   Moskowitz argues that the insular, Jewish world of Larry David and   
   Curb, is rapidly passing if not passed. When the critic was a boy in   
   New York, he says, he was surrounded by Jews: old ones with numbers   
   tattooed on their arms who had watched The Jack Benny Show on TV   
   (1950-1965), and young ones raised on Seinfeld episodes (1989-98). My   
   experiences as a child and young person in New York were similar. I   
   attended public schools in Forest Hills, Queens and didn’t personally   
   know a non-Jew until I went off to college in Albany in 1973. Then I   
   was shocked to discover there were Gentiles from rural New York who   
   had never met a Jew! One I remember, Dawn — pretty and blond and   
   pursued by everybody — told me she thought all the Jews converted   
   after Christ was born. Was it ignorance or impish humor? My Jewish   
   roommate Harvey told me she checked his head for horns.   
      
   The world of entertainment – especially comedy – reinforced my   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)