Do you remember how comedy died after the 9/11 attacks? It just wasn’t in good taste to be telling jokes for a while. Well, some comedy never came back. Seinfeld, for example, was never quite as funny afterwards. It was a frivolous show for a very frivolous time: a show about nothing. Even before 9/11, reality shows had replaced Seinfeld in the competition to occupy the empty spaces in our heads. At some point, the New York Times needs to realize that Maureen Dowd is about as topical as a Season Three rerun of Sex in the City, and about as appropriate to the times we live in.
