Comedy : Facing Ourselves With Two Veteran Social Observers

Whatever else can be said about the ‘90s so far, the decade is shaping up to be one of edgy retribution for the ills and excesses of the ‘80s. Add an atmosphere of war jitters, and you can understand why the comedy clubs are jumping--humor is traditionally an oblique way of facing up.

Two of our veteran social and political observers, George Carlin and Mark Russell, were in town over the weekend to help gauge our anxiety level and to let off some steam (the satirical singing group, Capitol Steps, plays Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium Tuesday night). Carlin played Thursday and Friday nights at the Strand in Redondo Beach; Russell performed a benefit Friday night for BEST (Better Educated Students for Tomorrow) at the Wilshire Ebell.

The two venues could hardly have been more dissimilar, one a boisterous night club, the other an upscale congregation of the socially conscious but well-tended. (BEST is a pet project of Mayor Tom Bradley, and he was on hand to receive the first installment of a $500,000 challenge grant from Kaiser Permanente Foundation.)

The same could be said of the performers. Carlin is an ex-street kid with an uncanny ability to evoke every level of his emotional development (which is why, in approaching his mid-60s, he still plays so well to young people). Russell is the quintessential after-dinner political entertainer whose principal role is to amuse, to poke fun at those mystifying, dubious characters in Washington (whose company he often keeps) without getting ugly about it.

Still, they held a couple of things in common. Russell dispatched his Hussein material early (he thinks the United States should send House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) over to bore Hussein to death). Carlin saved his anger and moral passion for last.

Noting that the peace dividend made possible by the passing of the Cold War lasted “about four minutes,” Carlin asked, “Aren’t we about due to start bombing some helpless civilian population with a marginally effective Air Force? I really think we oughta be out there doing what we do best, making holes in other people’s countries.”

Both had notes on the environment. Russell wryly observed that Vermont’s environmental laws are so stringent that disposable diapers are outlawed and the highway signs on entering the state read, “Change your kid in New Hampshire.” Carlin’s view is more apocalyptic. The Earth isn’t in trouble; the species is. The planet will outlive our mortal fragility.

Carlin’s set was a deceptive build toward polemic. Sure he was there to crack people up with jokes about people he can do without (such as “guys who wear small pins in their hats” and “dentists with blood in their hair”) and some of his standards. But by the end he was asking his raucous young audience to consider why America addresses its problems in bellicose terms, such as “the war on drugs” or “the war on poverty.”

Russell, of course, has a different angle of approach.

“I never thought you’d come up with someone less exciting than George Deukmejian but, by God, you’ve done it,” is a line with a testimonial ring. So is the joke about Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz meeting Secretary of State James A. Baker III in Geneva and bringing along his family and all his financial reserves, just in case. And Russell always tailors some of his material to locale, as when he asks, “Why is Japan taking over Hollywood? So that they can change the ending of all those World War II movies.”

But some of his jokes have the resonance of true summing up. Referring to the trial of Oliver North, for example, Russell said, “They were looking for 12 people in Washington who had never heard of North. They were going to put Ronald Reagan on the jury.” The Nixon library is “a Republican Graceland, with an 18 1/2-minute tour.”

Since education was the evening’s theme, Russell closed with this note: “Go to school. Get an A, and you can become a corporate attorney. Get a C, and you can become a judge. Get a D, and you can get to be vice president.”

Both audiences reacted differently to messages that in the end pointed to appalling aspects of American life. Part of Carlin’s young crowd cheered, but a larger part sat in attentive silence--he had confronted them with their own uncertainty.

Russell’s affluent audience had already achieved much of its future, and had found it handsome. But both audiences shared this: A dark Tuesday deadline for war was approaching and each in their way knew that, for the moment at least, there was nothing they could do about the characters and forces that had called it up. Except, of course, to have a moment’s laugh.