COMEDY REVIEW : Dangerously Funny: Mason’s Aim is Mostly True

Jackie Mason has vaulted from a struggling career as a borscht-belt comic to a trendy prime-time player, all in the past 18 months. The in crowd from the unshockable Manhattan night scene to the moneyed Rodeo Drive set just love Jackie. He’s hip. He’s hot. He’s Jackie .

He’s also very funny . . . and a little dangerous.

The freewheeling style that helped him survive the club circuit for three decades, in front of crowds that take their ethnic jokes with a chaser of Scotch or bourbon, has misfired a few times. Last year’s Grammy Awards was something of a setback for Mason’s ascending career--he was heavily criticized for cracking wise about blacks and Jews--some said the bits approached racism--and his subsequent apologies didn’t do much to appease.

Well, fans say, that’s just how Jackie is. Like all comedians who let missiles fly at human foibles, both the sweetness and light as well as the uglier parts, he takes risks. Mason’s humor (usually focusing on the differences between Jews and Gentiles) doesn’t need to be tame or gentle. It does need to hit the mark, though. It didn’t at the Grammys.

But it did most of the time at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Monday night.

Mason wasn’t tame or gentle during his two-hour benefit for the Jewish Senior Center and Geriatric Services of Orange County. The familiar targets were all set up and promptly knocked down, but it was clear that he was fulfilling the comic’s obligation to point out the absurdity of society’s divisions through an onslaught of directed, ironic humor.

With plenty of time to build on his witty and naturally provocative themes, a context develops that renders the nature of the jokes more acceptable--his proposal to turn all those racial stereotypes on their head makes sense. Some Jewish and black leaders were shocked by his four-minute Grammy routine, and even those who weren’t offended found it condescending. Given the full picture, the Center crowd seemed to enjoy The World According to Mason.

Some of the sharpest bits came from his hit Broadway and Los Angeles show, “The World According to Me,” some were new and some even seemed ad-libbed. The centerpiece, of course, was Jews and Gentiles, usually how to tell them apart.

Clothes are a giveaway. Jews, like blacks, dress well because they have to; it’s one of the ways the unwanted can impress people. Mason, his shtetl accent thickening, said Jews even put on fancy duds to take out the garbage. Gentiles don’t care: “Their clothes never match. They know it’s their country, they don’t have to impress anybody.”

Jews and Gentiles even approach vacations differently. Jackie sketched a scene of white-bread families bouncing off diving boards and churning up the pool. The Jewish family won’t have any of that. “If a Jew finds a nice place to sit, it’s a good vacation!” And what about the pool? “A Jew always has to ask, ‘When did I eat?’ If he ate any time in the last nine years, he can’t swim.”

Mason’s foray into politics revealed a genuine anger over the way things are. Unlike, say, Jay Leno (whose jabs at the government, while insightful, always seem like bluffs), Mason can’t really hide the anxiety that’s behind his satire.

When he characterized President Bush as a bumbler with not much more to do then take his glasses on and off and nervously tell the country that he’s getting the job done, it’s funny but also unsettling. Mason wonders if Bush has become what everyone feared he might. There was also an insidious tinge to his parody of a presidential speech in which Bush indulges in doublespeak so doubled up and equivocal that even George Orwell might cringe.

The biggest Administration worry, Mason noted, is the President’s health. With Vice President Quayle lurking about, keeping Bush in good shape becomes the First Commandment. “They don’t want him to balance the budget, they want him to balance his diet!”

He showed some bipartisanship as well. On the recent fall of Jim Wright: “Wright talked about all this ‘cannibalism.’ But they didn’t want to eat him, they wanted to spit him out.”

Not all of the performance clicked. Most of the Quayle gags came across as reheated and dated, as did a handful of other political lines. Mason also has this thing about toilets. Let’s see, he talked about Bush’s reliance on one during the Iran arms scandal, a “Kaopectate festival” after a visit to Mexico and what seemed like dozens of other lines about bathrooms. Pure Catskills crude.