The Al Franken scandal is simply a situation of the chickens coming home to roost. If said chickens could live for 30 years, then aforesaid home, society, is setting some new, roosting boundaries. Perhaps comedy and the comedians it spawns have been walking the razor's edge for far too long.

Saturday Night Live (SNL) has been a long-running, series for many decades now. It produced such comedic greats as Dan Akroyd, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Jim Belushi, Bill Murray, and even Eddie Murphy. All of these comedians went on to have great careers — if only short-lived in the case of Radner and Belushi — in the form of some of the all-time greatest movies.

Movies which made us laugh.

SNL of the 1980s

It may surprise many that Al Franken was a well-established writer for SNL back during the 1979-1980 season. He must have been well thought of by the producer/creator Lorne Michaels, for him to consider Franken as an ad-hoc replacement — if only for a spell — during that same season.

Indeed, the Al Frankens and frankly for that matter, Conan O'Briens of the comedy world, toiled away at the less glamorous task of putting comedy routines together. Many of these so-called comedians were simply writers prior to getting their big break.

SNL of the 1990s & 2000s

In this author's opinion, the golden age for SNL was a ten to twelve-year stretch. It started on the cusp of the 1990s when the late, great Phil Hartman performed impersonations as President Reagan.

Some of the most memorable characters were created during this timeline.

Names like Dennis Miller, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, the aforesaid late, great Phil Hartman & Chris Farley, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, and Tina Fey, all conjure up some fantastic memories. The one aspect they all had in common was respect for both real and original character situations.

All of the previously mentioned comics went on to make many movies post-SNL. Not all were necessarily as remarkable when contrasted against their SNL career. However, the one thing they had in common was that marginalizing of women was never a funny premise beyond certain stereotypes which were somewhat tolerable.

Edgy comedy pushing the new normal

When one looks up the origin of sketch-comedy, they find that it was never intended to be over-the-top in terms of art imitating life. The modern comedy paradigm is one that seems to be all about inappropriate subject-matter being made appropriate and thus, acceptable and approachable. A typical justification for such an act is that they're just being "real" or "edgy".

Sara Silverman and her female colleagues are somewhat to blame for this new era of comedy running amok. when comediennes began pushing the envelope of the new normal with regard to romantic relations, relationships in general, and physiological conditions unique to either gender. A reasonable argument can be made that this is when the decency meter lowered.

While Al Franken is not a comedian who one could imagine coming from that school of thought, given his long profession at SNL when it was a classy comedy show, a second accuser, and perhaps more to come, makes one take pause because his earlier work stood no chance against the new brand of edgy comedy.
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