{"id":189282,"date":"2026-05-24T16:02:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T00:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=189282"},"modified":"2026-05-24T16:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T00:04:11","slug":"how-jewish-is-american-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=189282","title":{"rendered":"‘How Jewish Is American Comedy?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Sailer writes<\/a>: <\/p>\n

I\u2019d say that with Wilder, Allen, and the Coens, Jewish comic film writers tended to have the longest runs near the top. This is not to say that they were necessarily the most brilliant at one point in time, just that they could keep up being funny at a high level for decades.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that gentiles tend to achieve more originality, but burn out faster. E.g., in American book writing, perhaps the two funniest books of a generation or two ago were Hunter S. Thompson\u2019s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and John Kennedy Toole\u2019s A Confederacy of Dunces.<\/p>\n

But neither man could keep it up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sailer separates the categories that matter: business roles, writers, stand-ups, comic leading men. Jews cluster heaviest at the business end and thin out toward the screen. That sounds right. The longevity claim also sounds right. Woody Allen (b. 1935), Billy Wilder (1906-2002), and the Coens stayed funny at a high level for decades, while gentile originals like Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) and John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969) wrote one or two brilliant books and could not repeat it. That is a testable claim about sustained output versus early peak.<\/p>\n

The NBA framing in the title is clickbait and a category mistake. Basketball has a fixed roster, a scoreboard, and one league. Comedy has gatekeepers, taste, and no objective ranking. Sailer half-concedes this by the end when he lands on “over-represented but seldom a majority,” which is the honest answer and undercuts his own headline.<\/p>\n

Raw script credits understate who controlled the room. Simon built the rewrite system, and Swartzwelder’s 59 credits passed through it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Sailer writes: I\u2019d say that with Wilder, Allen, and the Coens, Jewish comic film writers tended to have the longest runs near the top. This is not to say that they were necessarily the most brilliant at one point … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[580,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-jews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t