Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now — to quote myself at my most pretentious — is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste. For example, the freedom (hooray!) to say almost anything you want on television about society's problems has been co-opted (alas!) by the freedom to talk instead about flatulence, orgasms, genitalia, masturbation, etc., etc., and to replace real comment with pop-culture references and so-called adult language. Irreverence is easy — what's hard is wit.
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About Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer was a 20th-century American musician and mathematician. Thomas Andrew Lehrer was an American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist and mathematician, who later taught mathematics and musical theater. He recorded pithy, humorous, and often political songs that became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Read more on Wikipedia →