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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
5. David Cross
One-half of the team behind HBO's "Mr. Show" and a cast member on FOX's "Arrested Development," Cross brings to his stand-up a jittery energy and an impatience with hypocrisy that easily call Bruce to mind. A 1999 bit in which he railed against airlines' Miles for Kids program -- in which customers donate their frequent-flier miles so that sick children can take one last trip -- is Brucean in its fury. Cross imagines a holding pen of terminally ill children inside the airport and plays a smiling idiot of a gate agent who refuses to board most of them: "Oh, there are empty seats on the plane, but you'd have to pay for those tickets, because nobody donated his miles. I'm sorry. Airline policy." ("Arrested Development" airs Sundays at 9:30 p.m. on Fox. For Cross' schedule and information on his comedy recordings, including the recent "It's Not Funny," click here.)
4. Sarah Silverman
"Relations between black and white would be greatly improved if we were more accepting of our fears and our feelings and more vocal about it," Silverman said in interview in the Forward last year. "When my comic friends who are black [and I] joke about race and say racist shit to each other, it makes it silly, and easy to laugh at." To that end, Silverman -- one of the creators and stars of Trio's new "Pilot Season" -- wryly spouts material that, in the hands of a less sure comic, would seem truly offensive. No, screw that -- even in Silverman's hands, her jokes are truly offensive, and that's what would make Lenny Bruce proud. Among her many Brucean moments was the one that earned her the ire of Asian-American media watchdog groups in 2001. Called to jury duty, Silverman asks a friend how to get out of it. "My friend said, 'Why don't you write something inappropriate on the form, like 'I hate chinks'? But I don't want people to think I was racist, so I just filled out the form and I wrote 'I love chinks.'" ("Pilot Season" will rerun in its entirety Sept. 25 and 26 on Trio.)
3. Aaron McGruder
McGruder's comic strip, "The Boondocks," appears in about 300 newspapers every day, and as Bruce did with stand-up comedy, McGruder is reinventing a staid pop-culture medium as a forum for rabble rousing. And just as Bruce's anger eventually took over his act, so has McGruder's taken over the strip; in recent months, "The Boondocks" has been so vitriolic toward the current administration as to barely qualify as entertainment. When McGruder is funny, he's hilarious, but even when he isn't, he's mad as hell. Particularly reminiscent of Bruce in its mixture of the personal and the political was last October's series in which Caesar and Huey developed a plan to save the world: Get Condoleezza Rice a boyfriend. "Maybe if there was a man in the world who Condoleezza truly loved, she wouldn't be so hell-bent to destroy it." (Read "The Boondocks" here.)
2. Rick Shapiro
Of all the comics on this list, Shapiro is the one whose style most overtly apes Bruce's; the wiry, black-clad New York comedian/performance artist unleashes stream-of-consciousness rants reminiscent of Bruce's most wired gigs. A former junkie and prostitute -- he sells bumper stickers at his shows that read "I Sucked Dick for Heroin" -- Shapiro is as famous for his breakdowns on the doorstep of fame as he is for his years of success at some of the best comedy clubs in L.A. and New York. In his latest brush with fame, a plan to reenact Lenny Bruce's 1961 Carnegie Hall show off-Broadway fell apart due to lack of financing; his manager quit the business the same week. Like Lenny Bruce, Rick Shapiro knows what it feels like when it all falls to shit. (For performance schedules click here.)
1. Howard Stern
Sure, Stern hardly makes the pop-culture meter move these days. Sure, his show has become a parody of itself, with a constant parade of saline-enhanced dim bulbs lining up for a cheap Web site plug in exchange for a few slaps on the ass from the King of All Media. Sure, Stern's barely even funny. But remember what Lenny Bruce said: "I'm not a comedian. I'm Lenny Bruce." Similarly, Howard Stern is no longer a shock jock. He's Howard Stern. Howard Stern, the man who cost Clear Channel $1.75 million this spring; Howard Stern, the man who openly rips both George W. Bush and Oprah Winfrey on the air; Howard Stern, just about the only celebrity actively fighting the FCC's new indecency rules, the contemporary equivalent of those New York vice cops furiously scribbling in their notebooks at Lenny Bruce's Cafe Au Go-Go shows more than 40 years ago. Like him or hate him -- and I myself can't stand to listen to more than three minutes of his show -- you have to admit that, more than any other public figure out there, Stern is following in the footsteps of Lenny Bruce. Like Bruce, he's furious about the hypocrisy of those attacking him; like Bruce, he's obsessed with finding justice; and like Bruce, his career is coming to a flaming end before our eyes. (You can hear him here.)
