All the Jokes That Fit, We Print
Tom Tomorrow has a post on his blog ridiculing the New York Times' Week In Review's recent printing of a Jay Leno joke in its "Laugh Lines":
Gay marriage now legal here in California. In fact, you hear who got married today in San Francisco? Rice and Roni. Yeah, finally got married.
It's true that the Week In Review at one time ran long-form political comics like This Modern World, Ted Rall and Tom the Dancing Bug with regularity. In the last few years that space has been devoted solely to single-panel gag political cartoons, and Laugh Lines, which reprints jokes from late-night comedians' monologues.
The relative merits of alternative, long-form political comics vs. the traditional gag editorial cartoon can be debated. But despite Tom Tomorrow's and my obvious biases, I think it's beyond doubt that this Laugh Lines thing is a total embarrassment to everyone involved. And I'm a huge admirer of all these comedians.
These jokes are written for the voice of the comedian, and are meant to be casually spoken, laughed at as part of the general atmosphere of jocularity created by the host, and then quickly forgotten as he moves on to the next item. To see them laying flat on the page is a disservice to the talented people who wrote them for a very specific purpose, and it's a disaster to the reader.
Believe me, if one of these late-night hosts had a spot where he read even the funniest political comics on the air, they would get as many laughs as these "laugh lines" get.
Yes, there are some monologue jokes that can survive the translation to print. But it seems as though the editors at the Week In Review don't even try to cull these out. Rather, it seems like they record the monologues and choose the throwaway jokes that would look just about worst in harsh black and white print.
When I look at the New York Times reprinting talk show jokes, I sort of cringe in embarrassment. Yes, the media is slowly and inexorably moving from a world of printed matter to a world dominated by video. But to so inartfully glom onto another form's material in order to find "hip" humor just reeks of desperation.
