Ex-Harvard Lampoon Staffers Hang On to Collegiate Ways

Despite the high stakes, many former Harvard Lampoon staffers say their workdays are remarkably similar to their student days.

“All these comedy writing places, it’s amazing how collegiate they are,” said Kurt Andersen, editor-in-chief of Spy magazine. “The way these guys dress, the staying up all night, the bad food. It’s like the old dining hall 20 years later.”

Unlike the humorists, the humor has evolved.

“We came along at a time when for a variety of reasons the country was extremely well prepared for a more cutting humor, more direct and sophisticated than it had been,” said Henry Beard, ‘67, one of the founders of National Lampoon. “It had a lot to do with the war, and the presence of Richard Nixon, one of the major sources of satire this country has ever produced.

“Now we have ‘The Simpsons.’ Then you could not dream of having something on television like that.”

In today’s comedy, Bearch said, “The culture is constantly being mined and re-mined. Brand names are at the center of every joke. Because of television and mass media, we have a shared mass culture. Johnny says ‘Dolly Parton’ and everybody knows. Before (World War II), few things were totally universal.”

Because of their high rate of media literacy, today’s audiences are also more tolerant of “surrealism, dream-like stuff that doesn’t make pure sense,” said Mark O’Donnell, who has written for “Saturday Night Live,” among others. “You see it on Letterman, in the works of David Lynch, on shows like ‘Northern Exposure.’ Twenty years ago, people would have said, ‘Huh?’ ”

At the same time, today’s humor is “not as rebellious as 20 years ago,” said Steve Young, who writes for “Late Night With David Letterman.”

“In the early days of Harvard’s comedic ascendancy, there was an angry edge to everything. Now, there’s more of a delight in absurdity, like ‘The Simpsons,’ pricking at stupid idiotic things of everyday life.”