Lily Tomlin's career, thus far, straddles a decade. It is not a specific, chronological decade like the fifties or sixties, but rather an amorphous period of cultural shifts that began with Laugh-In taking pot shots at the Establishment; paused with Saturday Night inviting Ron Nessen to guest-host a show; and segued into Barry Manilow, who, on his recent TV special (backed up by three black females with upraised fists), performed a medley of his commercial jingles while the prepubescents in the audience stood on their seats and screamed.

In a culture capable of such casually bizarre transitions, it probably is fitting that in 1969 Lily Tomlin was a prime-time Laugh-In regular, but was nonetheless regarded as an underground cult figure, one who received minimal coverage in the Establishment press. (p. 50)

Andre Malraux chose "blood, sex and banality" to describe the "terrible world in which we are living." Television celebrates...