With their insight on Humorists and Comedians, my friend Mac, and  
respondent Abe, got their words chopped up by the magic of the  Internet. I have 
returned them, I believe, to plain text. I believe both  had thoughts too good 
to pass by because of what I call "machine  language."  Bob S
 

  
____________________________________
 From: [log in to unmask]
Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
To:  [log in to unmask]
Sent: 11/2/2012 10:23:55 P.M. Pacific Daylight  Time
Subj: Re: The 15th Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor is . .  .


"Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by  his single 
might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets  the world in 
love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of  religion; 
with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the illinesses  and 
emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a  brainless 
and worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm; more  real and 
lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever  wrote."
_http://www.twainquotes.com/SirWalterScott.html_ 
(http://www.twainquotes.com/SirWalterScott.html) 
There  are many perspectives on Mark Twain, and there are many perspectives 
on those  who receive honors in his name. Has the work of Ellen DeGeneres 
chipped away  at a social prejudice more than the work of Jonathan Winters? 
Yes. Do I find  her as funny? No. Do any of their legacies cast half the 
shadow of the man  whose list we serve? Maybe."
All I know is Mark Twain wrote many a line  that his own daughters would 
not want read to them. President Taft should  stick to eating. What? He's 
dead? 
So much the better. 

Don't forget to vote next  Tuesday!

Sincerely yours,
ABE  
________________________________________
From: Mark Twain Forum  [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of McAvoy Layne  
[mcavoy=
[log in to unmask]]=0A=
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2012 1:44  PM=0A=
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The 15th Annual Mark Twain  Prize for American Humor is . . .
        My wife chided me for not  pronouncing her name correctly, 
DeGeneres, not Dee-Jen-Heiress. But I think I've  got it right now, and am in love 
with her humor.
For the first time in the 15  year history of the Mark Twain Prize for 
American Humor I was able to watch the  90-minute event as it aired on PBS.  In 
thanking PBS Ellen teased, I'm so  glad to be a part of your farewell 
season." 
Even Oscar the Grouch had to guffaw.
Finally, this year for the  first time, the Mark Twain Prize goes to a 
humorist instead of a comedian.   We've had hundreds of comedians in this great 
land of ours but very few  humorists, Ben Franklin, Twain (portrayed today 
by Hal Holbrook), Will Rogers,  Garrison Keillor...and the difference between 
a comedian and a humorist is ever  so vast. 
The comedian's job is to make us laugh, and laughter is good for  us, it 
like massage on the inside, cuts down on the doctor bills, keeps us from  
souring.  But the comedian oftentimes bestows this favor upon us at the  expense 
of somebody else, or at the expense of decency, and leaves feeling  guilty 
for laughing at Pejorative humor.
President Taft once said, "Mark  Twain never wrote a line that a father 
could not read to his daughter."   Yet George Carlin, a previous winner of the 
Twain Prize, was famous for his  "Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say on 
Television."
The humorist's job is  merely to show us the good natured side of the 
truth.  The humorist is not  looking for a laugh, the humorist is looking for a 
nod of acknowledgement or  perhaps the hint of a smile. 
Twain reminds us that 'Laughter without a tinge of philosophy is but  a 
sneeze of humor.  Genuine humor is replete with wisdom.  Humor must  not 
professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both  if it 
would live forever -- which is thirty years."
As she took the stage to  accept the prize, Ellen lamented the fact that 
she had to follow so many funny  people, and how she had hoped to follow Ken 
Burns, thus making light of a truism  that Sam illuminated so long ago.  Set 
a diamond upon a pall of black if  you'd have it glisten. 
She went on to say, "I have not read Twain, but then he has not  seen my 
HBO special. To whitch an admirer of both responded, "It would be  impossible 
to give the faintest idea of her talk on paper.  Written or  spoken by 
another it would lose half its points of value.  We can only  congratulate those 
who heard her and pity those who did not.
Lilly Tomlin  stole my heart when she called Ellen, "Our Huckleberry 
Friend."  Ellen,  like Huck, stuck by her friend to confront society and challenge 
conventional  thinking, conventional notions.
Twain railed against human foibles and  humbuggery, yes, but he did it with 
a scalpel, not a switch-blade.  Twain's  discriminating irreverence was 
drawn not from the warrior's quiver, but from the  artist's pallet.  He would 
not kick a humbug in the shin, but would place a  bench strategically in his 
path so that he might bark his own shin. Its one  thing to have a sense of 
humor, it is something more to have a humorous outlook  on life.  Ellen 
DeGeneres has a health-giving outlook on life, and is a  humorist of the blood 
royal.  To my mind she is the very first to truly  deserve the Mark Twain 
Prize for American Humor.  We might go another  generation to find another of 
her rank, or perhaps another generation for her to  find us... 
McAvoy 
McAvoy Layne
ghostoftwain.org
Chautauqua-Central.org
Email: [log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask]) 
PO Box  4522
Incline Village, NV 89450
775-833-1835

"Diligently train your  ideals upward toward a summit where you will find 
your chiefest pleasure in  conduct, which while contenting you, will be sure 
to confer benefits upon your  neighbor and the community." --Mark Twain