the ubiquitous laugh track behind all our sitcoms provides a fitting commentary for our times—it is nothing but a great comedic cattle prod, which considerately tells the herd when it is supposed to overflow in jovial mooing. Time to laugh, says our invisible master. But the laughter is empty and the jokes necessarily hollow. Those who joke with us either don’t know the situation under the sun, in which case they are stupid, or they do know how bleak everything is, in which case they are not very funny. Humor under the sun can only keep its sense of . . . humor . . . through a blind
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