Last Sunday was the ceremony in Washington at which Will Ferrell was presented with this year's Mark Twain Prize. It airs next Sunday on PBS. This article at Salon by Mary Elizabeth Williams vigorously defends the selection…and it seems to me Ms. Williams is missing the point of those whose objections have made a defense necessary. As I read it, "they" (those whose eyebrows shot up higher than Groucho's during a particularly lascivious one-liner) aren't objecting to the choice so much as the timing. And they are perhaps uncomfy with the Kennedy Center surrendering to economic concerns, picking the guy who'll sell tickets to the award ceremony over someone who has been around long enough to see his or her work endure for a few generations.
I started to write a long piece explaining how I feel about this. Got three sentences into it when I suddenly experienced a jolt of déjà vu and said to myself, "Wait a sec, Evanier. You've written this before." So I searched this blog and found out that, sure enough, I had. Here it is. (And where was that jolt all those years when I wrote Scooby Doo? Hmm?)