Ugh...

I don't know what it is about comedy and comedians that inspires so much contempt from the MSM, but whenever it's a slow news week some bloggy person who has never stepped foot on a comedy stage (or once got booed off of one) dusts off her best cocktail party snark and aims it at stand-ups.

12 Comics Who Aren't Funny is the latest installment in this tired genre. Among the dozen targets are the usual suspects: Dane Cook, Larry The Cable Guy, Carlos Mencia...yawn, and a few guys (no women) whose inclusion makes it abundantly clear that the writer, Sarah Ball, had not reached puberty when these comics were at the top of their respective games, namely:

Jay Leno. Really? I can only assume that Ball is judging him solely on his late night TV career of the past 20 years because prior to that Leno was the guy to see. He was funny and respected by just about everyone in the business. He was a favorite on Letterman, and - oh yeah - he recently did a couple FREE shows in Michigan for folks hard hit by hard times. At the very least, give him credit for not being an asshole. And besides, no one is THAT funny on television. Why? Because it's television.

Andrew Dice Clay. Again, is there any point in going after The Dice Man in 2009? He still works, and I've heard mixed reviews of his current act, but if you were an adult circa 1989-90 and not an irony-deficient fuckstick, Dice was FUNNY. Not deep, not sophisticated, but funny. Congrats, Sarah, twenty years later you still don't get it.

Emo Phillips. I'll be the first to admit I can't take hours on end of Emo. Yeah, he's got that voice and that quirky delivery. But the guy can write jokes, good ones, lots of them.

In February I will have been doing comedy for five years, which is a day in this business, but it's long enough to know that bickering over who's funny and who's not is about as useful as arguing over what tastes better - bacon or sausage. I also know that no comic who takes comedy seriously would ever go on the record with this kind of bullshit, therefore...

Sarah Ball's opinions are utterly worthless.

The only people who engage in this kind of thing are first-year open-mikers and, apparently, news magazines who are about to go under. Which is funny when you note that everyone on Ball's list is still working.