Worse yet, when your time does arrive, you're engulfed in the multitude. The ideas and expressions that defined you, gave you unique access to the meaning of the moment and with it the right to be heard, are now in everybody's mind. The things you identified and perceived through an act of creative intuition have progressed to the point where everyone can perceive and understand them. And you become just another purveyor of the commonplace.
In the old days when I was writing satire, comedy and politics weren't supposed to mix. At least not in anything but tepid one-liners, which took the world at face value, inserted a couple of laughs, and left the sheets unruffled. Using humor to strip the news and the media creating it down to their absurd undergarments was off-limits -- too heavy or too frivolous depending on which side of the divide you fell on. It's taken fifteen years of Stewart/Colbert to bring people to the point of accepting without question that the demolition of a politically programmed reality is the highest form of comedy.
Back in those days, there was no solidarity in satire. Sure, there were a few comedy clubs and irony-tinged theater groups (respectively beset by showbiz and avant-gardism). But nothing like today's New York, with standup venues and improv theaters on nearly every block, and an entertainment industry insatiable for new stars, scripts and realities to fill the infinite space of cable, internet, and cellular programming. It seems like we are in a comedy renaissance in this city, having achieved that synergy of underground creativity and mainstream success on which such moments thrive. Or perhaps, and better yet for my purposes, we have already passed the peak of this renaissance:
For I have decided to make my comeback, and this time I will strive to be Behind the Times instead of Before them.
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