In the News: Comedy Cleans Up

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Comedy Cleans Up

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Comedians and the crowds they play to are looking for cleaner acts. A poll by Zogby International released on Nov. 30, 2006, found that 72 percent of those polled wanted television programming to have positive, anti promiscuity and antiviolence messages.

Longtime comic Auggie Cook advises young comedians: "What I tell a lot of guys is you can always make a clean act dirty. If you have only a dirty act, you're limited in the places you can work."

The shift to cleaner comedy comes at a time when the latest in movie and television comedies such as Borat, Jackass II and South Park feature crass, offensive humor (Timothy McNulty, "‘Edgy' Losing Its Luster; Clean Acts Gain Popularity," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 27, 2006).

Clean humor is uplifting and rejuvenating, while offensive and perverse humor is destructive and often immoral. The new trend toward positive humor may provide young people of God with a greater choice of viewing material.