As an habitué of Ford’s Theater, John Wilkes Booth knew the line in Our American Cousin’s third act sure to get a laugh so huge it would drown out the crack of a Derringer in the presidential box. “Well,” the play’s plain-spoken protagonist sneers at a shameless social climber, “I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap.”
How much has American humor changed from that time to this? The kind of joke that once made a theater full of sophisticates roar is found today, if anywhere, on reruns of Hee Haw.
So what happened? Simple—with the rise of mass culture, Jews took over the humor business. As noted Steve Allen, who many would be surprised to learn was not Jewish, in today’s America comedy is “a sort of Jewish cottage industry.”
With the rise of mass culture, Jews took over the humor business.
This is the story, or part of it, that Jeremy Dauber tells in Jewish Comedy: A Serious History. Dauber is a professor at Columbia, and in some ways it is a highly irritating book. He is at once intellectually show-offy, exhaustively seeking to root the likes of Lenny Bruce and Sid Caesar in Jewish Biblical and social tradition, and ever eager to come off as hip, “with it,” and non-judgmental. Yes, he reveres the Talmudic canon and the patriarchs, but he also loves a good dirty joke! He’s a big fan of
