"On social media, Mr. Macron’s sunglasses were seen as a political statement, projecting a tough image in the face of Mr. Trump’s threats to..."

"... impose tariffs on French wine and champagne and to annex Greenland. He has previously used his clothing to send a message, donning a turtleneck in the winter of 2022 as Europe contended with an energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some people likened the bespectacled Mr. Macron to the naval aviator played by Tom Cruise in 'Top Gun.' Others recalled former President Joe Biden’s penchant for aviators, though Mr. Biden was not known to wear his sunglasses while addressing world leaders...."

From "Why Was Macron Wearing Sunglasses at Davos? An eye condition, not a style choice, prompted President Emmanuel Macron of France to don aviators to address the World Economic Forum" (NYT).

I've written about aviator sunglasses before. Let me find that. Here, from March 2017, "And gold aviator eyeglasses are one of the sexiest shapes you could possibly wear." I wrote:

For the annals of sexiest shapes imaginable. Aviator glasses are back in style, we're told in the NYT.

I'm not buying that these glasses are obviously sexy. There's also... 

"One of my style icons is Gloria Steinem, and she’s worn that look forever."...

Aviator glasses were adopted by stylish people in the 60s. I'll never forget seeing Mort Sahl — the political satirist — on "The Tonight Show" holding up a picture of Gloria Steinem and railing against her, harping specifically on her glasses. As I remember it, he took the position that it was ludicrous to wear aviator glasses unless you were an aviator.

"It was after Kennedy’s victory in the 1960 election that Mr. Sahl’s career first veered off track. He wrote barbed political one-liners for Kennedy the candidate, but..."

"... when he turned his wit on the president-elect, tweaking him for his youth and for his family’s money and power, liberals who had loved his criticism of conservatism became notably cool.... Whether Mr. Sahl was the victim of Kennedy family wrath or a blackball from liberal Hollywood, as he sometimes claimed, or whether his own thorniness was to blame... gigs were fewer and farther between in the 1960s... 'My so-called liberal supporters have all moved in with the establishment,' he said from the stage at one preview. 'The same people who like jokes about John Foster Dulles and Goldwater suddenly freeze when they hear satirical humor about Vietnam or the war on poverty.'... His performances began to include reading scornfully from the Warren Commission report. And he worked as an unpaid investigator for Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney, who claimed to have uncovered secret evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin.... 'I spent years talking with people, Garrison notably, about the Kennedy assassination,' Mr. Sahl wrote in 'Heartland,' a score-settling, dyspeptic memoir published in 1976, “and I was said to have hurt my career by being in bad company... I learned something, though. The people that I went to Hollywood parties with are not my comrades. The men I was in the trenches with in New Orleans are my comrades.... I think Jack Kennedy cries from the grave for justice."

From "Mort Sahl, Whose Biting Commentary Redefined Stand-Up, Dies at 94/A self-appointed warrior against hypocrisy, he revolutionized comedy in the 1950s by addressing political and social issues" (NYT).

1. Mort Sahl is before my time, really, so what I'm going to do is listen to at least one of his comedy albums, which I see are streamable on Spotify.

2. I remember Mort Sahl as he was on TV in the 1970s, as in this TV appearance where he goes on and on about how women are never intellectuals, which I assure you seemed creepy and out-of-it at that time:

3. He obsessed about the Kennedy assassination, and we are still waiting for the release of the files that have been held secret all these years. Here's an Intercept article from a few days ago about the current issue, whether to take the 1992 JFK Records Act seriously. Trump could have released these documents but "acquiesced to the demand of CIA Director Mike Pompeo to keep portions of thousands more secret until October 2021," and now here we are in October 2021, and here comes Biden, pushing the deadline out to December 2022. What's going on?

4. [ADDED] I listened to the album “The Future Lies Ahead.” I enjoyed his very fast, smart talking, though I couldn’t experience it as very funny because it was all tied to the politics of the late 50s. It’s hard to see anything funny about Eisenhower! 

"And gold aviator eyeglasses are one of the sexiest shapes you could possibly wear."

For the annals of sexiest shapes imaginable. Aviator glasses are back in style, we're told in the NYT.

I'm not buying that these glasses are obviously sexy. There's also:

"I think part of the aviator returning is a result of old shows from the 1980s and 1990s that we get to watch on Netflix. It’s fun to look back at ‘Friends’ episodes and ‘Beverly Hills 90210.’ The eyewear of that time is definitely influencing our designers.

There's also:

"One of my style icons is Gloria Steinem, and she’s worn that look forever."

I think it's more like: Once an old style has been abandoned even by old people, it can be reinstalled as new and retro. You put the old style on young models, and it looks cute, the way nerd glasses once did. Then the long process begins: Less stylish people adopt it, even completely out-of-style people are choosing it, and eventually, it will be pushed out by something else seeping slowly into the culture, and it can be picked up again as retro. I think the cycle takes about 50 years.

I don't know why that one quote talks about the 80s and the 90s. Aviator glasses were adopted by stylish people in the 60s. I'll never forget seeing Mort Sahl — the political satirist — on "The Tonight Show" holding up a picture of Gloria Steinem and railing against her, harping specifically on her glasses. As I remember it, he took the position that it was ludicrous to wear aviator glasses unless you were an aviator.

"Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they’ve stolen."

An old Mort Sahl joke, quoted in a NYT piece by Lee Siegel titled "Welcome to the Age of the Unfunny Joke."

Siegel, who's about to publish a biography of Groucho Marx, has observations like: "The laughter, if it comes, is a new kind of laughter: a satisfying release, but also distracted by an undercurrent of hard fact. In that sense, humor today is a continuing assault, or insurrection."

How far into the past do we need to go to find humor that wasn't interwoven with real-life things thing disturb us? Freud had that figured out in 1905.

Siegel ought to have to give us evidence that there was an earlier era when jokes had no "undercurrent of hard fact," when people giggled over jokes that did not relate to the troubles of real life. To the extent that Siegel is saying that many of today's real-life-related jokes aren't funny, there have always been unfunny jokes.

Maybe his point is: These days, we feel social pressure to accept and act appreciative of unfunny comedy that makes reference to subject matter that we believe we're supposed to take seriously. In the older era, the jokes about disturbing subjects gave us release, and that's why we laughed. In the new era, there's no release from anxiety. The laughter is the manifestation of anxiety about being seen as good people who care about the serious things we understand we're supposed to care about.

Happy birthday to Professor Irwin Corey. He's 100 years old today.

Here's video of him performing in 2011, when he was 97:



And the video below comes from way back in 2007, when the President of the United States was George Bush, and Professor Irwin Corey looked much more than 5 years younger. He criticizes the President in both videos, and perhaps the years weigh very heavily as you approach 100 — I'm saying "you," but do you really think you'll have the opportunity to feel the increasing weight of the years leading up to 100? — but perhaps for a true left-winger like Professor Irwin Corey, the experience of disappointment in Obama hurts far more than getting what you knew you were going to hate from George Bush.



From Wikipedia:

"Mort Sahl is the guy who inspired me to go on stage for the first time in my life, and when I saw him the other night..."

"... I had that feeling again of, 'I can do this,'" said Woody Allen, contemplating doing standup again.

“He was as great as I remembered... So I thought, ‘Gee, it would be nice to get up there and do that again.’... It’s a lot of work....You have to put together an hour of laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh. You can’t dawdle. In a film script, if there’s a laugh here and there, but people interacting in a meaningful way, it’s good. But on stage, you come out and you’ve got to get a laugh, and then another and another.”

Allen is 78. Can you picture him doing standup now? Did you picture Mort Sahl? I didn't know Mort Sahl was still alive. He's 86. Here he is in 1967, opening with a shot at that actor who wants to be Governor of California and proceeding to explain, using a blackboard, the difference between left, right, and middle (which includes a left, right, and middle, to the left, right, and middle, respectively):