the 80s were such a terrible time for pretty much everything, but the result is that the counterculture was more substantial than at any other time in the 20th century. and, comedians are necessarily counterculture. until it was stamped out in the 90s and the dictatorship of capital took hold under the clinton administration - a dictatorship that is going to require a revolution to overturn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ-6TCPdbl0

there were more top notch comedians in this film than i think even exist at all nowadays...