A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it.
I've never felt that I was less of an athlete or not accomplished athletically because I didn't win an Olympic medal. It's definitely something I would have liked to have added to my resume, but at the same time I think I can look back at my athletic career and feel that I was one of the best.
Many people on the political left found my work psychologically liberating. They began to say: once you realize that standards emerge historically, then you can see through and discard all the norms to which we have been falsely enslaved.

