Sometimes our values sound strange to The Others...

MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 2022

...perhaps because they are: We didn't know the late Bob Saget, although we did hire and host him, for one weekend, a very long time ago.

We think it may have been our comedy club's anniversary weekend in November 1987. If that's correct, he was already well-known in the comedy world, but his very large fame and popularity—the result of the sitcom Full House and the TV show called America's Funniest Home Videos—wouldn't have happened yet.

In the past week, we've been very impressed by the (very large) number of people who have said he was the nicest guy and the best friend in the world. We also know how strange the headline shown below will sound to a wide range of Others:

The Sublime Beauty of My Friend Bob Saget’s Filthy Comedy

That's the headline on a guest essay in today's New York Times. The essay was written by Penn Jillette, who seems like a very nice person.

That said:

It's amazing to see how hard our tribe is sometimes willing to work to advance and advertise our outré, offbeat values and inclinations. In this case, that includes our love of "filthy comedy," a love affair which sometimes seems to overlap with other values we say we disapprove of.

What exactly was the "sublime beauty" of which Gillette's headline speaks? Gillette, who seems like a thoroughly good and decent person, opens his essay like this:

The Sublime Beauty of My Friend Bob Saget’s Filthy Comedy

My children are teenagers, ages 15 and 16, and they know the comic Bob Saget was my friend. They know he died earlier this week, and that I’m grieving. They want to comfort me. But when they saw clips of Bob on the internet, making hard-core jokes about pedophilia and incest, they were offended. They thought my friend must have been a bad person, and it was hard for them to understand how I could have loved him.

I don’t know if I can blame them. How could they understand that doing transgressive comedy was, in Bob’s hands, not about hate and pain but, rather, a daredevil act of mutual trust?

We're inclined to say, as a general matter, that Gillette's kids are right to be a bit suspicious of the impulse to give voice to "hard-core jokes about pedophilia and incest." As a general matter, we sometimes find that such impulses overlap with values and impulses which may not be entirely decent, respectful, healthy. Progressive.

Gillette say it wasn't that way with Bob Saget at all. As far as we know, he's entirely right—and we think his kids should listen to what their father says about his dear and departed friend.

That said, we don't think Gillette does a very good job explaining that "sublime beauty"—the "sublime beauty" involved in the fact that his friend, onstage and possibly off, "told filthy, disgusting, offensive jokes."

Where and when did that "sublime beauty" enter the scene? After some foofaw about Allen Ginsberg, Gillette is soon telling us this:

GILLETTE: I first got to know Bob when we were shooting “The Aristocrats,” an arty documentary from 2005 where we recorded comics telling the filthiest version they could of an inside comedy joke. It was a joke that comics loved—Johnny Carson was a big fan—but was never told to the public. It was meant for other comedians—siblings who understood the fun challenge of pushing boundaries while keeping trust.

Johnny Carson was a big fan of the joke! It's also true that, entirely brilliant though Carson was at what he did in the world of show business, his gender politics—at the Tonight Show and in real life—weren't necessarily always the absolute best.

We think Gillette's kids should retain their sense of concern, but should also listen to what their father has to tell them. Regarding their father's fairly ridiculous search for that "sublime beauty," we will only say this:

All too often, something makes our tribe work very hard to show The Others how remarkably different we are.  (We're often so inclined with respect to our high regard for the work of various types of "artists.")

That headline in the New York Times is going to sound rather strange to some of The Others. It's typical fare for the New York Times—but in this case, can anyone say that The Others are necessarily all that wrong?

Does "sublime beauty" lurk in "filthy jokes?" Except when we're remembering very dear friends, does anybody really believe that? And does anyone think such things but us, over here in our failing tribe?