the nerves and viscera of the young. To live and experience 
anything is to translate its direct impact into many indirect 
forms of awareness. We provided the young with a shrill and 
raucous asphalt jungle, beside which any tropical animal jungle 
was as quiet and tame as a rabbit hutch. We called this 
normal. We paid people to keep it at the highest pitch of 
intensity because it paid well. When the entertainment 
industries tried to provide a reasonable facsimile of the ordinary 
city vehemence, eyebrows were raised.

     It was Al Capp who discovered that until TV, at least, any 
degree of Scragg mayhem or Phogbound morality was accepted 
as funny. He  didn’t think it was funny. He put in his strip just 
exactly what he saw around him. But our trained incapacity to 
relate one situation to another enabled his sardonic realism to 
be mistaken for humor. The more he showed the capacity of