Will Farrell

Will Farrell has turned banality into an art form. A low art form. Those never introduced to real humor, that is humor that is actually funny, are moved to laughter by his somnolence. Exposure to decades of Saturday Night Live and other snooze fests, combined with the vulgarity that acts as a stand-in for comedy peddled by stand-up “comics”, have left the audience confused, befuddled, and ignorant of the wit that acts as the basis of comedy and humor.

Wit has seemed to elude Farrell and it doesn’t seem to bother him. He abandoned the effort, resigned from the chase. A case in point was his Broadway show, purported to be a comic impersonation of George Bush. When the banality ran thin, he sprinted to the vulgar like it was his long lost brother. It didn’t matter, his audience, seemingly composed of hand picked Bush haters, would laugh at any vapid comment directed at the ex-president. They showed as much sophistication as a cluster of rubes at a taping of Hee Haw.

So it is puzzling that Farrell was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. But, perhaps not. In the past the prize has been awarded to performers, or to a person who writes for performers. Although awarded in New York, it’s a Hollywood prize, as much as the Oscars or the Emmys.

True American humorists; Dave Barry, Ian Frazier and Calvin Trillin, to name just three, will likely never be celebrated with the Mark Twain Prize. They don’t stand on stage and act the fool. They don’t make asses of themselves, which seem to be the standard for past winners.