Hidden Injustice

The injustice is not that it took almost 20 years to award Bill Murray the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Although that could be seen an irresponsible and inexcusable delay, the names of some of the people who have already been honored -- Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters, George Carlin, Carol Burnett, among others -- are quite obviously worthy, with one glaring exception.

And that exception is the injustice -- in 2011, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts elected to give the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to Will Ferrell, a full five years before honoring a man whose eyeblinks are funnier than Ferrell's whole career. I personally think the Center was playing a very mean joke on Ferrell and the whole thing was an elaborate prank that went wrong when Ashton Kutcher's car got stuck in traffic before he could show up and tell Ferrell that he had been "punk'd."