"It really short shrifts humor, which is critically important to a healthy democracy, I think."

UPDATE:

Louis C.K. has bowed out, perhaps yielding to pressure from people like Ms. Haag and Greta Van Susteren.

ORIGINAL POST:

Louis C.K. will be performing at the White House Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner this year. Mr. C.K. is known for pushing the boundaries of taste in his humor. The boundaries of taste have been on my mind given the recent controversy surrounding a filthy joke forwarded by federal judge Richard Cebull.

Over at the Big Think blog, tasteless jokes are also on Pamela Haag's mind. She criticizes Louis C.K. for his filthy jokes about Sarah Palin (and others) and concludes with the quote in the title above, including her assertion that humor "is critically important to a healthy democracy."

I will just say this: anything that is critically important to a healthy democracy is, by definition, not funny.

Albert Brooks is funny and also handles disappointment well.

As Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times notes, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences snubbed a fair number of people this year when picking the nominees for the Academy Awards. Albert Brooks was one of the actors who didn't get nominated. As his Twitter feed shows, Mr. Brooks is handling his disappointment with aplomb. Read his tweets here.