Critics chided Pearl Jam for humourlessness, but their most explicitly political track was an act of darkly brilliant wit, which continues to be a highlight in their live set.
In other words, the audience response is not so much a reflexive, gut-wrenching surrender to brilliant wit as it is a communal signal of understood references.
Newman lightens the rhetoric with some good gags - there should be asbos for people who fly short haul, and community service for eating fruit out of season - but his brilliant wit and mimicry is a means and not an end.
In her 2000 memoir My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy, Cartwright wrote: "with the brilliant wit of the writers and the wry, in-your-eye, honest-to-a-fault interpretation, Yeardley Smith has made Lisa a bright light of leadership, full of compassion and competence beyond her years.
But generations of women, and even a few intelligent men, have recognized her brilliant wit and perceptive social satire.
Inspector Reg Wexford wasn't an aristocrat or a brilliant Oxbridge wit.
She was an avid reader and critical thinker, with a brilliant, irreverent wit.
Sarah Ruden's superb translation of Apuleius's The Golden Ass (Yale University Press) illuminates this wonderful story with a brilliant modern wit.
Don't let the sci-fi backdrop fool you, this film based on the Douglas Adams novels is a brilliant British wit at its best.
The combination of brilliant wit and beautiful bluegrass and country rock that I witnessed that night forever changed my sensibilities.
(Dargis) 'The Iron Lady' (PG-13, 1 45) Meryl Streep won an Oscar playing Margaret Thatcher, in power and in retirement, with brilliant wit and sly sympathy, but the film, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, falls back on biopic clichés and leaves us with a soft and vague picture of a woman who was surely the opposite.
