The Comic Genius of Craig Ferguson
Teaching freshman-level courses at a community college has—from time to time, at least—provided me ample time and creative energy to think about other things. One topic of my reflections lately [1] has been Craig Ferguson, host of "the Late Late Show" on CBS. After some time, I have decided that Ferguson is a genius, if not a prophet (the latter being a subcategory of the former). My realization of this began when Ferguson had philosopher Cornel West on his show, and West commented to Ferguson on the topic of spirituality, "You have a spirituality in your honesty." This, I realized, is the nature of Ferguson's genius, the genius of honesty to be found in any good satirist. However, before considering that, we should consider another element of Ferguson's greatness, one not unrelated to his honesty: his talent as an entertainer. Once upon a time, in the era of Johnny Carson, late night television was abo