Comments on: Art Buchwald Couldn't Make This Man Laugh

CBSNews.com Exclusive: Famed Columnist's FBI File Shows J. Edgar Hoover Was No Fan

[hermitdave]

WOW--so the old queen in the red dress didn''t have a sense of humor. I wonder if his lover Clyde thought Buchwald was funny.

[johnnyzmee]

Humor is in the eye of the beholder. I liked Buchwald, but I never Loved Lucy.

Political humor has come a long way. A free press, and Freedom of Speech are the bedrock of our nation, but in Buchwalds time there was a taboo about criticizing a sitting president. There was a line that couldn''t be crossed.

JFK started to break that ice as he invoked self depreciating humor. Nixon was a regression in that respect.

And now, the annual white house roast tells us it''s ok to poke fun at our country and president, and still be patriotic.

But, I see a regression on the horizon. One of the current campaigns is waging a war against criticism of their candidate. Any critic is charged with ______.

If you can fill in that blank, you know it to be true.

Centralized dictatorships make a priority of controlling discourse. That is a road we do not want to revisit. Criticism, like humor, is in the eye of the beholder. But, in this country, any attempt to stifle it, is unpatriotic.

[yongamerica]

Makes you wonder how many pages they have on you for making postings on-line, now don''''t it?
Posted by Nancy_Naive

Perhaps its just you and your paranoia that needs to fret.

[zykracosmos]

For those of you mourning Buchwald, I invite you to a nightly dose of satire with Steven Colbert (pick you time- 8:30pm or 11:30pm) on Comedy Central. He is number 1 today for folks with an intelligent sense of humor. I''ll leave Joe (below) with his "son of a gun" humor (hyuck hyuck).

[bogusbones]

the problem with our government is that we''re so paranoid. to allow a pudgy, bespecatled humorist to cause our government''s spy agency to worry is amazing. i can''t understand why the gorilla has to worry about the gnat. and our iherent paranoia continues. look out everyone, the iranian army is steaming directy to new york harbor. give me a freaking break.

[taddles3]

"He wasn''''t funny.

Posted by joe1022joe at 11:26 AM : Jun 25, 2008"


Good thing there are so many lefties with his kind of sense of humor that kept him contentedly in business for 60 years. I''m sure if he wrote bathroom humor or wrote in crayon you might have found him more humorous.

[missingamerica]

Makes you wonder how many pages they have on you for making postings on-line, now don''''t it?

Regards,

Posted by Nancy_Naive at 12:12 PM : Jun 25, 2008


lollll...methinks everybody should probably record everything they say themselves, because when you have people like Bush and Cheney - who have been known to hire people like Gonzo, and who want to make the Telcos immune from prosecution for anything that they do that this Administration has asked them to do - in charge, you probably should worry about them ad-libbing some stuff into any "recordings" they may have if what you have said isn''t QUITE enough to sic the dawgs on ya...

[zorar-2009]

Edgar in his cross dressing outfits would make anybody laugh!

[gangesdak]

It is rumored that Hoover was a Soviet mole who used to cross dress to hide his identity. But he used to frequently forget his Soviet identity, and used Soviet techniques to expose the enemies of the state.

[homespunlady]

Satire takes a certain sense of humor to appreciate it. Satire may be the Child of Irony and frustration.

We need MORE satire, not less when power becomes too pompous and oppressive.
It''s much harder to dehumanize, torture or kill a person if you have shared a laugh or personal insight.

BRAVO for the Art Buchwalds and Jonathan Swifts of the world. May they always exist to poke holes in overinflated egos.