[The Pythons] have a singular genius for making nonsensical fun of all who are pompous, pretentious, humorless, or boring, or who take themselves too seriously. In short, people like me…. Since having watched Monty Python's TV election returns, I haven't been able to watch American TV election returns … without having to suppress a slight case of the giggles. They do that to you, the Pythons—so hilariously lampoon something like TV election returns that the real thing forever after seems strangely ludicrous.

Unlike almost all other comedians these days, on TV or elsewhere, the Pythons are shamelessly willing to go in for absolute nonsense—to dress up in women's clothes, to talk in non sequiturs, and to be not only utterly silly but also often in outrageously bad taste…. "Undergraduate humor," scornfully say the Pythons' critics, but there is such off-the-wall originality and intelligence in most of what...