Hopefully people will come to their senses and realize that humor doesn’t need to be shocking to be good. I think sometime in the late 70’s a few people came around, that weren’t particularly funny, or they just didn’t have the chops or the imagination or talent to be a funny comedian, so they started using foul language and shock techniques. Then other people latched on because they thought it was cool and edgy. It’s still mostly just a lot of angry people trying to show off, because they don’t have any particular talent. A lot of the shocking stuff that you hear, with today’s comedians, is and was considered to be in bad taste, racist and mean, but because they’re comedians (often non-white) comedians, they feel like it’s OK for them to say those kinds of things. If some some white comedian got up there and started spouting off the N word, they’d get booed off the stage. That’s what happened to Michael Richards.
I’m just hoping that some day, soon, people will learn to appreciate talented comedians who don’t use shock humor. You really have to have talent when you don’t use shock humor, so the comedians ought to rise to a new level of talent if they have to compete to be humorous in a non shock era.
My favorite comedian of all time is Bill Engvall. He’s so funny that I’ve spit milk out of my nose. He just talks about the human condition, the funny differences between the sexes, and just silly or odd situations that you see every day and it works. I like Louie Andersen for the same reason and Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres.