Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic

Okay, I'm just going to say it: we owe a great deal to the legacy of Andrew Dice Clay.

At the time of his (rather brief) popularity, "The Diceman" was reviled by critics, both conservative and liberal, who lamented the downfall of our culture at the hands of this obnoxious, racist, misogynistic loudmouth bully.

Appeals to common sense (most notably at the time by Dennis Miller) fell on deaf ears. Patiently explaining that what Dice was attempting was farce, to say loudly on stage what others only whisper at home, to articulate our darkest thoughts, got little traction.

And it didn't help that the Diceman's audience missed this subtlety and he did begin to capitalize on that which he started out mocking. The Diceman lost his way. Added to which, his material just wasn't that funny once you got past the shock value. There was no irony or cleverness to it.

In the years since, South Park, Dave Chappelle and the like have improved on the formula of addressing our deepest contradictions. They've picked up the mantle that Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor laid down and they've carried it better than Eddie Murphy or Andrew Clay did, but not letting their image overwhelm their message.

And now, we have lovely, perky, chewy-Jewy Sarah Silverman, who is to Ann Coulter what Stephen Colbert is to Bill O'Reilly.

What she does that Chappelle and Parker and Stone don't is stay on target. She never winks at the audience. She never lets on that it's all a joke. She sticks to her talking points like Condolezza Rice.

Her material covers the basics: the holocaust (excuse me "alleged" holocaust), rape, AIDS, teen pregnancy. You know, the fun stuff.

And she never flinches. "People always ask when the best time is to have kids and there's no right answer to that question but I think the best time to get pregnant is when you're a black teenager."

This is truly the only way to counter the Ann Coulters of this world. We can cluck-cluck that her outrageous shinanigans on Matt Lauer were cluck cluck unforgivable and cluck cluck insensitive and we'll just make everyone feel that, while they may agree, it's no clucking fun to have the good taste Nazis deciding what should and shouldn't be said.

People have bad thoughts. Nasty, politically incorrect, backwards thoughts. Those thoughts don't always translate into attitudes and actions, but they are there.

Abandoning the middle ground of farce leaves people with only two options: endorsement or purity. If you have the thoughts, you must be cleansed or must reach to justify them.

Stephen Colbert and Sarah Silverman have given us some much needed farce. A place where we can put all those niggling ideas about Mexican immigrants or Jews who buy German cars without having to cleanse ourselves of all darkness or embrace the politics of hate.

Ms Coulter, Mr O'Reilly, we're not laughing with you; we're laughing at you.

Three stars, Jason Bob sez check it out