Holy Hellgrammites! In ancient Greek plays, it was well known that an exceeding excess of pathos (misery, suffering, misfortune, tragedy, etc.) ended up preposterously producing blatant bathos (riotous comedy) in that things, events, people, circumstances, etc., or all comically combined at once, became then simply much too much to willingly withstand as posited, purely, pristine pathos. There can appear the cruelty of kindness and the kindness of cruelty.

Events, in early 21st century America’s economy, society and culture, are becoming exuberantly filled with bulging bathos, seemingly beyond mindless measure; some might say, moreover, almost beyond most rational psychological endurance as well. A Jonathan Swift, a hero for sane souls, is necessarily needed at such a time; Spicy Swiftian humor would caustically come to supposedly save the disastrous day from the yelping, yellow-livered Yahoos, especially the pinhead politicians and their mindless media cohorts, occupying space and time witlessly within the postmodern era.

Tremendous public idiocy, moreover, has (as an understatement) reached truly gargantuan proportions almost unprecedented, in the former modern times. People ought to be, longingly, laughing so hard as to have the real need to cry as a result of extreme degrees of laughter, of massively maddening mirth; however, intelligent spectators ought to knowingly and gladly grit their teeth in convinced contempt, as with the worldly wise wit of an Ambrose Bierce sneering knowingly.

Thus, e.g., an excess of money poured mindlessly into many mortgages that hyper-inflated real-estate values, in most parts of America, beyond any legitimate economic realities is to be matched by its kind. Against other economic realities not sustainable by a market economy, yet more money was and, no doubt, will be added to the supra-bloated economy, for the alleged sake of simply saving those very mortgages that caused the decisive disaster. If this isn’t true tawdry bathos piteously produced from an unreasoningly excessive pathos, then what is it? Can some jocular jackass provide an answer?

Postmodern American society, insanely enough, calmly calls for its perplexed people to lovingly live upside down and think inside out, when so willingly walking backwards, into the needless next Great Depression. It’s as if most people are now positioned to prefer having an unrelieved hangover rather than wanting to be deliriously drunk; the audacity of the change is such that all (ideological) masochists have turned into sadists and vice versa without, seemingly, noticing the quizzical change; the perplexed populace is to be amazingly amused as if they should be rapturously ripping at their throats with razors as asinine audiences cheering for more of the same, of having (phony) jokers who are not comics.

Today, many of those who wish to be taken seriously as “new comedians” do not realize the vital tradition that they are vilely spiting upon, meaning the ancient code and conduct of the court jester. These would-be quasi-jesters, those who are now heavy into political rhetoric as to their vain polemical cant, have contempt for their audiences without realizing how ridiculous they themselves have become as just merely absurd, loquacious jackasses (Bill Maher, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart , Steven Colbert, et al) parading in hapless humanoid form. Verily, they are just so shamelessly full of shale!

It had been once, of course, highly honorable to be a true, honest court jester, as with the eminently famous Merry Andrew [Andrew Borde, 1500-1549, physician to Henry VIII], but, now, the contextual spurious, squalid jests made are basically rants and sordid verbal vomit heaped harshly upon the nearly catatonic masses inexperienced in such things. Royal courts, as H.L. Mencken, if he were alive, would have probably remarked, are the then appropriate places for professional jackasses, not television broadcasts or, moreover, anything equivalent.

The contemporary fools plainly prove themselves much too foolish to be comically taken as genuine jesters, within the older and venerable tradition; they are vulgar impostors claiming the inflated abilities and superior talents of real fools, though they are not smart enough as to be superfluously stupid enough to properly park their inflated egos at the royal gate. Only just so much urinating humor can be, rarely, reasonably tolerated before reactive, reflective fans may get piteously pissed off themselves.

Celebrations of not-so-benign brainlessness ensue-now, all laugh on cue-as the topics become slightly concealed obnoxious diatribes disguised; these are exuded as assumed enlightened renditions of not-so-encyclopedic compilations of second and third-hand ideas regularly regurgitated into quite preposterous puerile pap and also, more than that, mere moral manure. Much unseemly scatological sermonizing, done mainly through many leaps at covert language and contemporary jargon, really does not add, so significantly, to the effects intended.

In his old age, Truman Capote, who had actually lived and prominently worked among them, finally woke up (though much too late to really do much good) and, suddenly, had realized how obnoxiously pandemic and pathetic the ignorant, shallow, and mealy-mouthed self-congratulating literati, the talking classes, really are. To his ever gloriously great credit, Capote did daringly denounce the prostitutional, pedantic, punditry produced. And, their anxious apes, appearing in broadcast entertainment, wish to gain approbation and do, thus, riotously reflect this hilarious hellishness.

They deserve much less respect, however, than honest whores and whore mongers who know, at least, what they are about with few, if any, really pretending otherwise. These above-cited, clever, caustic clowns, the faking fools, go whoring after righteous, in such a mean manner, as to heinously glorify (pretended) virtue, as they piously prostitute any value to it through crass commercial gain; this is as popularly perceived in their livelihoods. Let them and their ways be righteously rejected, for their best jest is that they never really have to pretend to be busily brainless; it comes naturally in that the joke, after all, is on them.

So, rather, let an ever brave, clarion call go fearlessly forth seeking out comedians who do genuinely possess the skills of humor and are not possessed by their taking themselves much too seriously as the jackasses they really are… and, thus, truly need to be. Holy Hellgrammites!