With his attacks on Jews and Israel and his effortless switch from the far left to the far right, French comedy star Dieudonné has probably done more to expose the faux distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism than any true defender of Israel. The comedian has a strong fan base among Muslim immigrants in the banlieues, but his audience has been mostly white middle class. Of African background (his father is from Cameroon) and politically left, he couldn't possibly be a racist in the e... [Read More]

"What has six legs and is way cooler than a spider?" asks a riddle on the cover of a birthday card sent to Stephen Colbert by entomologists Quentin Wheeler at Arizona State University and Kelly Miller at the University of New Mexico. The answer - Agaporomorphus colberti - is a diving beetle from Venezuela named by Wheeler and Miller to honor Colbert, the satirical host and executive producer of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." Knowing Colbert's fondness for recognition (there's his popular... [Read More]

Tribune stations have picked up the rights to syndicate the HBO comedy series "Entourage" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" starting next year. The agreement means Tribune's stations in 17 markets (including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago) will have the rights to air the Emmy-winning comedy series, including all seven seasons of "Curb" and all six seasons of "Entourage." [Read More]

British comedy transplant Tracey Ullman says it's been only since she became a US citizen in 2006 that she has really felt free to lampoon American culture. "It freed me psychologically," Ullman said. "I committed to living here and I got to understand the politics and the culture. You can't comment on a society unless you've lived it." Some 20 years and seven Emmys after moving to Hollywood, Ullman is getting a lifetime achievement award on Friday that reflects the American-English hybrid she s... [Read More]

About two years ago, the comedian and filmmaker David Wain was approached by Rob Barnett, the founder of the Web video site My Damn Channel, with a proposition. The terms of the deal, as Mr. Wain recalled them, were these: "He said, ‘I'm going to finance your idea and I don't even need to know what the idea is. You deliver it, I'll pay for it.' I was like, ‘That sounds real good.'" [Read More]

Steven Ray holds bachelor's and master's degrees and had been accepted to both law school and the Fashion Institute of Technology before becoming an adjunct professor at Northern Oklahoma College and OSU for years. During his six years of employment, he has taught remedial composition and speech. Expecting to be offered tenure, Ray said, instead last Friday turned out to be his last day in the employ of aforementioned schools of higher education. Now employed by the school of hard knocks, he wan... [Read More]

"The channels for black, female, political humor on American television are blocked. This dearth is fostered, in part, by limiting, age-old notions of femaleness and the funny which have been examined by such scholars like Regina Barreca and others. Juxtaposed against perceptions of race and class in American life, these views intersect to create an atmosphere uniquely ghettoizing of African American women comics." [Read More]

Laughing Skull Lounge, a new comedy club in Atlanta, provides a unique stand-up experience to its performers and crowds alike. Billing itself as "the smallest full-time comedy club in the world," - they've submitted itself for that exact distinction to the Guinness Book of World Records - the room, seats 74 people at its maximum, operates full-time and brings in national headliners to perform sometimes in front of crowds no bigger than a dozen people. [Read More]

"How did we get to a place where, rather than just riffing on the news, comedy actually had the power to, in many ways, supplant it? The mainstream media was always supposed to be unbiased, which we recently seem to have figured out is kind of a big fat lie. Journalists traded integrity for access and we suffered. Comedians present a more honest proposition: they're obviously biased, bred to say what others dare not and willing to exploit anything for a laugh. In fact, it's the comic's tendency ... [Read More]

Cleese recalls a convivial restaurant meeting with the BBC's head of light entertainment, Jimmy Gilbert, in 1974, in which he explained he wanted to make a show with his wife of the time, Connie Booth, even though he had no idea what. ‘Go away and think about it,' Gilbert told him. ‘I will commission whatever you do.' These were, indeed, simpler times. Cleese reveals: ‘It's hard to believe these days, but when we were doing Monty Python we didn't know what the audience figures were, and we... [Read More]