I know we’re in the midst of a seismic change in the Trump administration. I’m aware of cruise missile strikes in Syria and the continuing soap opera on Capitol Hill about whom was spying on whom.
But there was a bit of news this week that kind of got overshadowed in the mix.
Don Rickles died Thursday. He never died in a theatre, on television, in movies or in the living rooms of the millions of people who loved to watch this funniest of men.
Rickles could not be considered a great star. His movie performances, though very good and far more varied than you might imagine, were sporadic over the years. He had limited success carrying a television show and really never enjoyed the network hit that he probably should have or could have if he had found the right vehicle.
But in his arena, he was not only funny, he was devestatingly so. Anybody who saw Rickles perform at the classic Dean Martin Roasts has witnessed comedic excellence. Everybody had a good time on these shows, none more so than Rickles who had people falling out of their seats. I remember the time Muhammad Ali was the guest of honor. Rickles got so far under his skin that Ali left his chair and chased Don around the room. One of the most hilarious moments occurred when Foster Brookes, who had the perpetually drunk act down to perfection, roasted Rickles. The joke was that Foster Brookes had been having an affair with Mrs. Rickles and he was on the show to come clean about it all.
“Don, you’re out of Scotch,” was how it all began.
Rickles knew everybody in Old Hollywood and was close to people like Frank Sinatra. Only he could make the cracks about Sinatra and the mob and get away with it. When Sinatra died — 19 years ago next month — Rickles was a guest on Larry King’s evening talk show for a couple of nights to just sit around and tell stories of the Rat Pack. King noted that Rickles got away with kidding Frank in ways that other comics didn’t dare. Rickles responded, “Sure I’d come home and my stove was on fire.”
It’s a hackneyed cliche to say that it’s the end of an era whenever one of our favourite celebrities passses on. The era had really ended before Rickles did but that didn’t stop him from ignoring that reality. He continued to promote a brand of humor that was not just politically incorrect — the crazy age we live would brand it hate speech.
Never mind microaggressions — Rickles was king of he macroaggressions.
But you know, I miss the freedom to offend that Rickles represented. The guys that Rickles palled around with — Sinatra and Dean Martin — always told the same sort of jokes and there was a freedom to this kind of humour that we might never see or feel again in our easily offended society.
If he was hectoring a black friend, he invariably made a remark about how he was at the event “to clean.” He made that crack when President Barack Obama was present and joke was excised from the broadcast. Obama was apparently quite put out about it all.
Humor today is certainly no gentler, just less inventive. It focuses almost entirely on the quick sexual hit that insists we laugh or risk having our hipness factor questioned.
If it can be said of a man that he was always good for a laugh, then that could certainly be said of Rickles. There are few people funny enough to illicit laughter from people on the basis of what they anticipate the comic is going to say or do. Don had that in spades.
Whenever, an aging star was the willing victim of a roast, Rickles would invariably inquire about the state of affairs “at the home.” Rickles never retired and never left the public forum. He loved it there.
And we loved him for it.