[Tomlin's] more than a comedienne, she's a clown….

A carefully constructed pyramid of wit and wisdom, [Tomlin's humor is] by and for the people, a contemporary phenomenon that shouldn't be examined and dissected in some academic exercise; but it certainly can be admired as a reflection of the seventies, for she is one of our spokes-persons, clowning it all the way to tomorrow. After all, we live in a fairly schizoid society, and amidst this relatively safe, healthy world there is a great and growing fear of the unknown, the uncontrollable; if we can't laugh at it, we're in much worse shape than we think. (p. 46)

You gotta laugh. And that, of course, is why we have clowns—to soothe our pains, prop up our inadequacies, and puncture our pretensions. And maybe that's why Lily Tomlin is so right for today.

To conclude that Tomlin had a "message" would be to fall into that same old pretentious posture that so needs puncturing, but to dismiss it as a series of good gags is even wider off the mark. True, there are a lot of wry barbs that skid out directly from Lily the Confidante ("I bought a wastepaper basket the other day. The salesperson put the basket in a paper bag. I carried it home, took the basket out of the bag and put the bag into the basket"; or, "Ever wonder why someone doesn't try softer?"), but most come from the Tomlin cast of characters. She seems to have more of them than MGM had in its heyday, and they all have certain traits in common: they are loners, outsiders, fighters of, and often losers to, the system, but all are survivors.

Her two most familiar creations are probably Edith Ann, the true Tiny Terror ("Edith Ann, did you eat up this box of animal crackers?" "No, I did not. When I opened up the box it was empty. They had already eaten themselves up"), and Ernestine, the czarina of the switchboard ("We are omnipotent. Here at the telephone company we handle eighty-four billion calls a year, serving everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth"), a pair that we love as long as they remain in Tomlin's world and don't enter ours.

But of course they are with us everywhere, every day—and that's Tomlin's not-so-secret secret. She doesn't invent people. They're already there, all around us. She merely recreates them and gives them all the best lines. (pp. 46, 48)

[Tomlin's character] Glenna comes from within the most average, the most ordinary among us, for Glenna is a child of the sixties, and we've all been through that; maybe not as a child, but as a father, mother, relative or friend. In a twenty-minute skit, Glenna grows from a high school senior to a middle-class mom with kids of her own. Along the way she encounters every establishment and anti-establishment influence and barrier of the past ten years, the post-Sgt. Pepper decade: drugs, sex, demonstrations, riots, assassination, alienation, meditation, communes, disillusionment, and on into respectability. The only common denominator in Glenna's life appears to be "I Love Lucy"; that at least goes on, unchanged, forever.

During the mesmeric monologue, Tomlin/Glenna tells us more about ourselves, our children, and the past ten years than any solemn anthology could possibly do, and she does it all by re-creating that world and letting us relive it—for good, for bad, but always with laughter, hearty, truthful laughter at ourselves and our own blessed foolishness. Glenna survives, of course; we all survive, because no matter what we fear, if we make it through, we can laugh at it. That's what clowns are for, that's what they have always been for: to help us make it through. (p. 48)