American comedy’s sad state

Quick, off the top of your head: Who’s the funniest person in the country right now?

Ask me — or any other baby boomer — that question at any time over the past 40 or 50 years, and you’d likely get a half-dozen names, at least, and a reasonably persuasive argument or two one way or another.

1969? How about Johnny Carson. No, wait: Bill Cosby. 1973? Woody Allen. Or maybe George Carlin. 1975? Richard Pryor, undoubtedly. 1979? It’s got to be Steve Martin. The ’80s? Take your pick: Robin Williams. Eddie Murphy. Billy Crystal. Bill Cosby again. The ’90s? Jerry Seinfeld. Mike Myers. Jay Leno.

Any comedy connoisseur could make a legitimate case that dozens of other funnymen and a few women could be included on such a list. But the question at the top of the column is who’s funny now.

And it’s not an easy question to answer.

I mean, who is it? Jon Stewart, for crying out loud?

That’s what it’s come to, folks. Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart is the funniest person in the country now.

Think about that too long, and it’s really sort of depressing. It’s like the year Clemson — Clemson — finished as national champion in college football. Jon Stewart is charming and, yes, quick-witted and amusing, but … the funniest guy in the country?

The market’s up. Comedy is down. Comedy is in a recession. Comedy is trading at a third of its pre-crash highs.

Comedy got downsized in 2001 and now is selling cars down at the Toyota dealership.

It’s 2004 already. We’re almost halfway through the decade. The funniest television show of the double-zeroes, so far, if you buy the hype, is “Friends.”

Now, again, “Friends” is a pleasant enough way to kill a half-hour, but does anyone really think this show compares favorably in any way to, say, the funniest television show of the ’70s, “M*A*S*H”? Or the ’80s “Cosby Show”? Or the ’90s champ, “Seinfeld”?

You want funny? You want hilarious? Here’s a pie in the face: Adam Sandler is the highest-paid comic actor in Hollywood. .

It’s not like this dearth of delirium jumps out at you. It’s a slow leak, like helium escaping from a balloon.

David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and the others — what is it about them today? Mr. Letterman was so subversive once. He’s a dad now. You flip on the show; he’s reading a Top Ten list, just like he did back in the ’80s. It seems like it should still be funny. But it isn’t. He’s still grumpy. But instead of wishing you were him, now you wish someone would give him some aspirin.

The late night hosts all look like they’re working at a job. A real job. A tiring job. As soon as the credits roll and the camera goes off, I imagine them all racing out to the parking lot to escape.

It’s no better at “Saturday Night Live,” the NBC show that has been manufacturing national comedy sensations for almost three decades now.

The show lost the genuinely funny Will Ferrell over the summer, and six episodes into the 29th season, SNL is sloppy, dumb and — most unforgivably — consistently not funny.

In the season premiere, SNL wasted gifted comic actor Jack Black over and over again in inexplicably tedious skits. We got Mr. Black as a connoisseur of fine wines, repeatedly spitting the proffered wines directly into the face of cast member Seth Meyers. We saw the host, in a boring parody of overblown musical numbers, leading the cast as a nostalgic singing telemarketer. And Mr. Black, his eyes glued to the TelePrompTer, stumbling through a bit as a wounded folk singer fighting off his heckler dad in the audience.

As I watched that episode, I couldn’t help but think, “They had all summer … to come up with this?”

SNL producer Lorne Michaels has been doing this for a long time, and he’s seen the show’s relevance and popularity cycle up and down before. But it can’t be a good sign that SNL, which has always made its mark with political satire (Remember Mr. Ferrell’s devastating caricature of President Bush and Darrell Hammond’s equally amazing send-up of Al Gore?), is going into an election year still undecided over which current cast member does the best Bush spoof. Mr. Hammond took over the Bush role a few weeks ago from Chris Parnell, and though he’s got the mannerisms and the voice down, the monologues he’s given as President Bush are maddeningly flat.

Who is writing this stuff? Is Tina Fey the first woman to serve as the show’s head writer? Is anyone reading this stuff aloud? Doesn’t the awkward silence during rehearsal send up any red flags?

Miss Fey, who in addition to her writing chores serves as a cast member and “Weekend Update” anchor, was the subject of a flattering profile in the New Yorker in November. In the article, she talks about how the terror attacks of September 11 darkened the way she looked at her life in Manhattan.

We expect the funny people in our lives to do what they’ve always done. Especially the smart funny ones. Make us laugh. Make us laugh over and over again; keep us laughing so hard that the milk we’re drinking comes out our noses.

Miss Fey is right, though: September 11 changed us all. It changed newspapermen and postal workers, politicians and airline pilots, New Yorkers and Washingtonians and all the rest, Americans all. Why would someone writing jokes in Hollywood or doing stand-up comedy in Cleveland or drawing a comic strip in Miami be exempt? They aren’t, of course.

It’s been 28 months since September 11, but the funny business is still in a funk.