Political candidates struggle to say everything without stepping over the line. They cast a Texas-sized hoop hoping to lasso as many voters as their taciturn words can capture. Politicos practice each phase until they turn it just right - with no sharp edges. The ultimate winner always puts on the best show at making us feel more optimistic. But what did they say? Was it direct or just more wishy-washy nonsense?
Comedians have been around since the Stone Age throwing rocks and breaking the rules surprising our earliest ancestors to get a laugh. Great comedy helps us to see ourselves, and our world - differently. Humor that endures is filled with laughs we can relate to. Lucille Ball's antics make her one of the most famous people in history. Her talent spoke to our humanity; now her legacy is working on her fifth generation of fans. Her honesty about 1950's life is hard-fought, funny, and timeless.
South Park debuted in August 1997. It pushes and pulls, demanding attention as it hammers home its points. With a short production schedule, it's often the second word on a national news story or the first commentator on our fads, infatuations, or celebrity foibles. South Park rubs its point of view in America's face, forcing us to laugh and open our mind. "The Passion of the Jew" mocked Mel Gibson while Adolf Hitler-Cartman rallied for more anti-Semitic hate. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have skewered everything from Catholic priests and Mormons, to global warming and Jennifer Lopez, to Tom Cruise and Scientology. Who can forget, "Come out of the closet, Tom Cruise!" These guys leave America with a dose of honestly that's neither left nor right but always thought provoking. Christmas has had Jesus Christ, Saddam Hussein, and Santa Claus battling it out, while other shows have had a piece of Poo from the sewer, or a bath towel who likes to smoke marijuana joining the cast of kids from Colorado.
Last week South Park kicked America in the teeth when it did battle with AIDS. The storyline infected antagonist Eric Cartman with HIV. There lay little overweight Eric, happily awaiting ice cream after his tonsillectomy. In walks his doctor telling him that a "one in a billion" botched blood transfusion has infected Eric with the deadly retrovirus. Eric learns that HIV and AIDS are more forgotten than feared as he tries to find compassion. Cartman looks for his new place in the world while pal Kyle watches in total disbelief. The writing subtlety conveys the justifiable fear of AIDS, while it whacks you over the head with its brutal candor. The kids find out that cash is not just powerful against AIDS - ground up into a serum, cash is the actual cure. Parker and Stone may not have found the real answer to this deadly disease, but in this episode they issued a challenge to redirect the America's spending from war to healing. Bravo.
Comedian Lenny Bruce busted down walls of correctness and broke barriers of politeness while he shined a flashlight into America's unexplored conscience. In the 1974 film of his life, Lenny, Dustin Hoffman is the rabble-rousing comedian. Bruce's act bashes humor from society's most honored and ridiculous beliefs. Hoffman's Lenny is rude, complaining, crass, and fundamentally correct in his direct hit on America's pre-Vietnam complacency.
Lenny Bruce was an insightful comedian who started his career being funny and died young while defending his right to free speech. He made comedy clubs the last refuge for honesty, but he was arrested nine times and convicted twice on obscenity charges for speaking his mind from the stage.
Filmed in raw bourbon and soda black and white, Lenny was director Bob Fosse's follow-up to 1972's Cabaret. Like Sally Bowles, Lenny takes refuge on the stage but cannot keep out the world. His enemy is not the Third Reich and imperialist greed but the dangers in repressive governmental first amendment control.
Hardly a funny movie it's raw look at life lived on the edge. Bruce honed his bluest, wildest, free form humor working in strip clubs like LA's legendary Strip City. Hoffman delivers Bruce's smoky strip joint one-two punch into America's eyeball. He never confuses the painful truth or reality with the fantasy of how we believe things should be.
Bruce plows into bigotry untwisting the lies that people believe. He threw a monkey wrench into the mind of a prejudiced nation when he pointed out he'd rather sleep with a black than a white - then he added who wouldn't when one was Lena Horne and the other was Kate Smith. Bruce called it as he saw it, never mincing words as he forced us to look at how ridiculously we were misbehaving in our proper and racist world.
The film has the greatest telephone scene ever filmed. Valerie Perrine as Bruce's strung-out wife, Honey, is playfully pleading with Lenny for $200 to help with her next chance at sobriety and a new career. From her cheap hotel on an antiquated payphone, she fingers the receiver and her teeth with her long chipped nails as she promises that "come Tuesday, things will be different." It's a moment of cinematic perfection that earned Perrine an Academy Award nomination on top of the film's five other Oscar nods.
Lenny Bruce defended himself against the choking obscenity charges pleading with the court not to persecute the deviant. Bruce said we need the warped to be brazen enough to point out society's most glaring and flawed beliefs. In today's presidential climate, that sentiment seems like a breath of fresh air. As South Park is following in Bruce's footsteps and boldly stating opinions candidly, I wonder if the candidates are listening.