I would be amiss to not write something about Don Rickles. He was the king of the back handed compliment. He recognized people which is good then he went for the stereotype. He teased all people so no one got hurt. I have not watched all his stuff but from what I saw his was a gentle humor. He got people to laugh and themselves and at him.
Good humor is a gift. It is a mixture of the crazy with the truth. It gets past people’s defenses and leaves a lasting impression. It can be a surgical strike that changes the subject in a great way. It can change the mood so people can get along.
What I noticed about Rickles when he roasted someone, he got serious at the end and wished that person the best of life. He knew that in the end that was what life is all about.
Check out this video at the link.
Good stuff. There are lots of Rickles material on YouTube. His death motivated me to spend an hour or so watching.
He was a regular on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. I use to laugh at him almost as much as Jonathan Winters.
I thought he was hilarious! As Dime mentions, he would drop the shtick and be genuine at the end of his bits, so you could not possibly misunderstand and think he was serious in any of his barbs. I have hope that because his routines are preserved on film, the hyper-offended people might eventually come back to the reasonable notion that folks can laugh at each other, all in good fun.
If people get offended by this type of humor, it shows insecurity. By tiptoeing around things does not face the issues. PC is a way of making certain groups weak. Groups succeed by overcoming adversity not by avoiding it.
With Rickles he knew where the lines were and did not cross over into cruelty. He loved Sinatra and knew how to make fun of him. The tough thing with celebrities is to get all the fawning. They are protected from dealing with the obvious. A comic gets across things and people laugh and hopefully the celebrity can also laugh at themselves.
The sad thing about the left is their hyperseriousness. Putting yourself and your ideas on undeserving pedestals causes failure every time.
Remember this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyxjEuFfxV0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.P.O._Sharkey#The_cigarette_box_incident
I don’t remember seeing this at the time. I did see it recently on YouTube.