This just in: Stephen Colbert has a pair

As many of you know, I spent much of my twenties trying to get things that were actually funny broadcast on television and published in magazines. This is relatively impossible when you're dealing with a large-scale outlet like The New Yorker (for which Jon and I wrote pieces) or SNL (for which Jon and I wrote Weekend Update jokes). The more layers of management that your stuff has to go through, the more anxiety it accumulates; every editor or producer loads his/her own fear of blowback onto the material until running the thing seems like a bad bet. The amount people might like it--which is abstract--is outweighed by the possibility that somebody might get yelled at or fired--which is all too concrete. So the gatekeepers at these august places aren't people who know how to spot something funny and nurture it to its maximum, they are people who know how to spot danger, and pare back that threat as much as possible (while still keeping funny in there somewhere). Most of the time, most of the funny falls in favor of safe.

To the outsider, this is maddening. You can't get considered unless you're funny, but once you're being considered, your ability (or desperate desire!) to say anything to anybody--makes people nervous. That honesty, though it is essential equipment for being funny, gets you labeled a loose cannon. And that is the kiss of death. Nobody--and I mean NOBODY--is perceived as so mindblowingly funny or talented as to be worth worrying about. So, the media constantly presents us the weakest tea imaginable and calls it "comedy." And then it puts a dash of brown food-coloring in it and calls it "satire."

Stephen Colbert's speech at the Correspondents' Dinner (which can be found here--scroll down and you'll see the three segments of the video) suggests that this might be changing. Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire was perhaps the first crack in the dam; not only did he not suffer blowback from it, he became even more popular than ever. Here's hoping the same thing happens to Stephen Colbert and "The Colbert Report." (Full disclosure: I know a smidgen of people on both shows.)

Because the truth is this: institutions like The New Yorker or SNL or Comedy Central are simply ways to get amusing material out to the audience; their efficacy in that job is what makes them useful, admirable or worth preserving. Of course, one feels differently if one receives a check every other week from Newhouse/GE/Viacom. Those people work to preserve the safety of the institution. If the material isn't as funny as it could be, well, that's a small price to pay.

The reason that Stewart and Colbert can take the risk is that their institutions are pretty small. Their audiences are vocal and influential, but not mass. Still, what I'm hoping will happen is that the people inside the bigger institutions will start to realize that popularity--in the end, their only real form of job security--comes from honest, fearless comedy. I'm not advocating all satire all the time, or the fascination with the morbid and profane that has stood in for "honesty" since about 1970, simply comedy that reflects some person's reality. Comedy that you can't relate to on a human level, that doesn't attempt to reflect reality as it lived by some human being--is deadening and worthless.

Basic cable isn't network--it isn't even HBO--but I'm hoping that this trend towards honesty strengthens and flows upward, to bigger and starchier and more fearful insistutions, and bigger and more mainstream audiences. I think there's a chance it will, because there are rewards there; financial as well as aesthetic. Being honest is the only way to truly make people laugh, and people who laugh give you more money than people who merely smile on their way towards falling asleep.