Comedy in Ruins

Many of the aforementioned Classic Comedians got their start in the "Borscht Belt", which was their name for the Catskill Resort Circuit. At one time these mostly Jewish establishments had huge ballrooms and great floor shows and always a comic featured. This was a Jewish tradition going all the way back to Medieval Days..The "Story-Teller", Funny Man, and Sage all rolled into one. Myron Cohen was perhaps the most traditional of this type of Comic, but Mort Sahl, Jackie Mason, Milton Berle, made the transition to television easily because they were used to handling large audiences, and had been honing their craft for years. Jerry Seinfeld and Gary Shandling(RIP 2016) were very much cast in the mold of these Classic Comedians.

Along with the "Death of Comedy" came the death of these resort properties. Google "Ruins of Catskill Resorts Images", and you will be met with pages and pages of pictures that look like a bomb exploded in Upstate New York.

While it is a good thing that Jewish People no longer have to establish their own places to vacation, as they are no longer banned from other resorts, it is kind of sad that this world no longer exists. It was a huge part of American Culture which is rapidly disappearing into a morass of Political Correctness and "Newspeak".