The Southern Male Democrat

When I was a kid, Saturday nights with the family meant three things - hamburgers on the grill, Hee Haw and The Carol Burnett Show. I vividly remember the laughs from both casts of characters. The best of course, was watching Harvey Korman and Tim Conway on The Carol Burnett Show. It was the golden age of sketch comedy and taping before an audience with little, if any, editing. In nearly every sketch, Tim would do his best to make Harvey crack up on camera, and he was often successful.

Check out this gem -

There is just one word to describe this; CLASSIC. When I first heard the news of Harvey Korman’s passing, my first thought was to do a tribute blog and throw in all the great clips I could find on Youtube. But I think there’s a larger point to be made about the value of shared experiences. Mrs. SMD always remarks that there are no entertainers coming up to replace the iconic ones that are loved by nearly everyone. She’s right. With each year, we lose a Harvey Korman, a Dean Martin, a Don Knotts - and there’s no one to replace them. Why is that?

I think it stems from the technological revolution we’ve lived through for the last 30 years. For all the wonders that cable tv and the internet bring into our lives, these things also segment our society into a million little pieces. We now have multitudes of channels of information that cater to every specific interest under the rainbow. Why, a person could surf the internet all day just looking at information about Democratic politics and NC State athletics! But what we’ve lost is the shared experience. When The Carol Burnett Show was in its heyday, there were only three television networks. The pie of viewers gives much larger slices when it is split three ways as opposed to hundreds of ways.

Millions of us watched Harvey Korman cracking up at Tim Conway’s antics and shared that experience. That is why we treasure the clips and the entertainers. There’s no putting the technological genie back in the bottle. We’ll never have a time like that again, nor will we have entertainers that are beloved across wide segments of the population. It is what it is.

But as Carol used to always sing, “I’m so glad we had this time together.”

A Friday Bonus: Most people don’t know that Harvey Korman was the voice of The Great Gazoo on The Flintstones. (Shame on anyone who has to ask who the Great Gazoo is.) Check out this clip -