Jim Gaffigan: This 'the Best Time That Standup Comedy Has Ever Had'

If Tom Hanks is known as the “everyman” of movies — you know, the ordinary guys, so approachable and unpretentious that just about everybody can relate to him in one way or another — then Jim Gaffigan is the “everyman” of comedy. He focuses his humor on everyday observations about universal experiences. And although most outsiders see the divisive political climate at this time in history as putting humor on trial, Gaffigan looks at it differently.

“I think this will go down in history — and it may be ending as we speak — but like, this is the best time that standup comedy has ever had,” he says. “When I started — versus even in the time of Lenny Bruce or George Carlin — comedy was a much more middle-class/lower middle-class occupation, meaning, there was not an expectation of an upper