[mbg721]

I'm not sure if it's related to or orthogonal to everything actually being absurd, but there has been a decades-long trend of America/the West taking longstanding elements of culture less and less seriously, just as a matter of fashion. That removes a lot of the low-hanging fruit for comedians.

Decades ago, acts like Monty Python or Allan Sherman were subversive; now they might still be kind of funny, but certainly not shocking. When you have generations that grew up on self-conscious irony, where the way to be cool was not to be seen caring about anything, it's harder to make comedy stick.

Politicians and religious figures may not be any more or less corrupt and out-of-touch than they always were, but now they can gain enough support to keep their jobs without anyone actually taking them seriously, and that's where the self-parody comes in.

I wouldn't say comedy is failing because the source material is too ridiculous, I would say it's failing because the audience is a tough crowd.

[germinalphrase]

“I wouldn't say comedy is failing because the source material is too ridiculous, I would say it's failing because the audience is a tough crowd”

We are certainly a more ‘educated’ crowd living completely awash in content.