No Sense of Humor?

So, as I was saying earlier, this Sunday's Times Book Review was not very good. Probably the worst piece was the review by Virginia Heffernan of a new book on the origins of National Lampoon. The book's title: A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever. Some excerpts:

So what did Kenney and National Lampoon change? Well, for one, Kenney and his jerky clowns--in creating a magazine that begat a stage show, a television show ("Saturday Night Live")[,] and a movie franchise--staple-gunned a certain kind of absurdist conceptual humor to gross-out jokes about puking, violence[,] and masturbation. That worked well.

To quote a great comedian, Well, excu-u-u-use me.

But even worse, the piece ends by praising . . . P.J. O'Rourke. (#@*!!%$#@?) This alone made me want to puke, commit an act of futile and stupid violence, and . . . well, not masturbate. Last sentence: "If anyone 'changed comedy forever,' it was P.J. O'Rourke." Um, I don't know. Has anyone heard from O'Rourke lately? I'm waiting for his hilarious send-up of the Iraq war, any day now. Any day . . . now . . . because that worked well. Heffernan, the television credit without a sense of humor?