5 Feet of Fury

‘Critically, generation Ramis wasn’t making an affirmative case for the left’

Read the whole thing by Kyle Smith:

Ramis-ites didn’t say our guys would run things better than their guys. They disdained the concept of leadership. They thought no one should be running things. The Ramis vision is of a bottom-up, leaderless society with central power structures crushed and humiliated. It’s a hippie vision, sure. And it’s pure Tea Party.

Seventies comedy had a revolutionary undertone. It had a purpose. It had substance. It not only made you laugh, it put the world to rights. It was a snowball with a rock inside it. (…)

These days, they’re more at ease mocking their social inferiors than going after the high and mighty. Comfortably ensconced inside the castle that Richard Pryor and George Carlin tried to burn down, they drop water balloons on the unspeakable middle-America drones of “Parks and Recreation” and “The Office.”