DO NOT MAKE ME INVOKE WOODY ALLEN
The complex Woody Allen. Let's look past the flaws and find the funny again.
Too late.
     Woody Allen, one of the finest stand-up comedians, film directors, and, sadly, sexual deviants of our time presents many problems to Yours truly in terms of quoting, admiring, or channeling the diminutive New Yorker. A generational talent, Woody, along with Alfred Hitchcock, is the only director to average one feature film a year over a six decade time frame. His stand-up act, though sometimes venturing into the ether of too cerebral, had elements found nowhere else in the comic strata.
     However, Mister Allen's sexual deviancy, particularly, or perhaps solely, at the diminishment of his children, is so uncomfortable, it can't be discussed at length. Over the years, I've avoided it, perhaps out of ignorance of the subject matter. I cannot speak knowledgeably about it, so I will not.
     But he is funny. His deriding of the Jewish faith is particularly insightful, as is his ability to take on the Goyim. Anyone who can watch "Manhattan" and not feel the range of emotion from loss of love to the euphoria of soul-mate discovery vacated their seat for popcorn during the trailers and never came back. If you can't laugh during "Manhattan," you are deaf or three days dead. It is a perfect movie.
    Woody, at this ironic best, is the best representative of the loss of the national sense of humor. He is deeply flawed, but as callous as this sounds, it does not make Woody Allen unfunny.
    Humor is steeped in more than laughs. At its foundation is tragedy, emotion, and loss. It is from those bottom strata we rise up and find comedy in the darkness. It is what makes us human.
    And along with the character trait of mature reason, humor has disappeared in the past few decades. Funny is far too offensive to express. Laughter, by some, is too loud, too explosive, too personal.
    Funny might very well be the defining characteristic of the individual. And, as the United States is discovering, the individual is no longer revered in a society drowning in groupthink.
    There is no cure for this other than to make a new start by laughing at yourself. Once you have that self-effacement down, move onto the courage to laugh at others, and maybe, just maybe, we will be able to laugh at ourselves as a nation.
    Because we could use it.