He was a perfect foil for any clever and mean-spirited mainstream comedian, whether it was Letterman or Jerry Lewis. It’s the same reason he was embraced by the Greenwich Village hipsters. Did he know that he was the one being laughed at? If he did, did he like it? Were his rants sincere? Did any of it really matter to anyone as long as the laughs kept coming?
He’s one of those amazing and compelling weirdos who could have only made a living in show business during that brief period between approx. 1950 and 1990. The only performer I can even roughly compare him to is Andy Kaufman, but (probably due to my age) I could come close to “getting” Kaufman in a way I never could with Brother Theodore.
