In Good Humor...

What is funny? What is funny about edgy stuff?

First, let's celebrate National Brotherhood Week with Tom Lehrer and think about it.



Pretty edgy stuff without even having to drop the F-bomb, eh?

Richard Pryor, on the other hand, was on the opposite end of the spectrum. Here he is joking about being bombed, doing some domestic violence, and shooting his car to keep his estranged wife from leaving him. That's a little edgy, no?



Andy Kaufman, on the gripping hand, was just wayyy out there. Who is he making fun of here? Himself and Hollywood people? The people he mocks out? People who make fun of Southerners? Hard to say. I think maybe "all of the above." Regardless of what he was trying to do, it's pretty funny.



Man, that is just the edgiest stuff I've ever seen. It's funny, but damn, you just don't know what to make of it; and it's not funny at all if you aren't aware of the fact that Kaufman is joking. You're just a prop and he's making laughs off your cluelessness, and that's just cruel. But maybe even funnier because of it. I was laughing at it and I don't know what that says about me.

About 10 years after Kaufman's death, Jerry Lawler let on that the whole wrestling / insulting the South thing that Kaufman did, with Lawler as his opponent, was a big put-on. That routine I embedded was part of Kaufman's feud with Jerry Lawler's fans and a lot of the core Southern wrestling fans. It's a hell of a joke, when you can make it last a year and when people legitimately want to murder you because your humor is so oblique.