Goodbye Bob Newhart
Posted: July 18, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized 6 CommentsThe funnier someone is the smarter they are. There can be smart people who are not funny, but there rarely are funny people who are not smart. Of course there are lots of kinds of funny. My favorite is dry, droll, ironic funny. Bob Newhart was that kind of funny.
He never raised his voice. He did sometime make fun of someone less brilliant, but often in a way that the person did not understand was a slight, because they just weren’t smart enough.
As a child I never missed an episode of the Bob Newhart show as I certainly was always home on Saturday nights, either with a babysitter or being the baby sitter. My sister’s were a little too young to “get” Bob’s sense of humor, which is sad, because they certainly would have loved it.
Most people think of themselves as funny. Actually most of them aren’t. There is hardly anyone as funny as Bob Newhart. He will be greatly missed.
Less Dana, More Good 
I had the great privilege of attending a live performance by Bob at Massey Hall in Toronto in the early 90s. He was fabulous. His delivery of the wonderful material was flawless. My earliest memory of Bob was my purchase of his LP, The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart which covered; the driving instructor, the invention of baseball and the Wright brothers trying to start a passenger flying business.
What a brilliant talent.
A correction to my previous note – I saw Bob at Roy Thompson Hall not Massey Hall.
Was he great?
brilliant and so funny
I loved him, too!
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Definitely the passing of an era. [I asked my 8 colleagues — all younger than I — if they knew of Bob Newhart. Nope.]