The funny thing about American comedy

A lot of things are going wrong in the US nowadays. Washington does not work and Wall Street can't change. The seas are rising and the roads are crumbling. Foreign investors are gaining control of our supplies of tomato ketchup, processed American cheese and other foodstuffs essential to the life of the republic.

So it was easy to think the worst this week when word arrived that an obscure South African comic called Trevor Noah, 31, would succeed Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central.

The appointment came a week after James Corden, a British actor, debuted as host of The Late, Late Show on CBS and less than a year after England's John Oliver was given his own programme on HBO. It was hard to avoid the idea that the US had run out of funny people of its own and now needed to import them for its cable television networks.

But Americans need not fear Mr Noah or his fellow foreign comics. Their rise is no sign of national decline. It is evidence of the triumph of American soft power. Thanks to social media, television networks and the enduring power of the traditional Hollywood dream machines, the American style in comedy has grown so pervasive that our television producers can find people suitable for our entertainment formats all over the planet.

The funny thing about American comedy is that it is growing more like other businesses in this interconnected world of ours. It is becoming global - with a capacity to obtain labour, material and other inputs from around the world. No Bric - by which I mean Brazil, Russia, India or China - can yet pull off that trick, and I doubt that one ever will.

Indeed, I would argue that the US still enjoys a natural comparative advantage when it comes to the production of laughs. At any given time in our history, much of our population has existed in a state of disorientation, trying to make sense of their new lives as pioneers, immigrants, slaves, migrant workers or wanderers. They have become strangers in a strange land - and humour is the natural ally of folks who find themselves in a minority of some sort, on the outside looking in.

By way of example, I would point to the vastly different comic outputs of the Jews who form a majority in Israel and a minority in the US (both groups are roughly the same size). I can't think of many funny Jewish Israelis; like any ruling faction, they are consumed by affairs of state, which are famously serious. But American Jews still make 'em laugh. US comedy stars with roots in the Jewish communities of eastern Europe have included everyone from the Marx Brothers to Jack Benny, George Burns, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld and Mr Stewart himself.

The US has also provided fertile ground for the funnier English-speaking peoples. UK arrivals who have hit the US comic scene big time range from Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel to the quintessential American wiseacre Bob Hope, who was born in Eltham, southeast London, and our national king of the one-liners, Henny ("take my wife, please") Youngman, who made his biological debut in Liverpool.

Canadian comedians in our midst include Jim Carrey, Mike Myers and Seth Rogen. Australia gave us Dame Edna Everage and Paul Hogan (which is not much, really, but I did not want to leave them out and hurt their feelings).

Mr Noah, who began appearing on The Daily Show as a contributor late last year, is cut from traditional American comedy cloth. He is from somewhere else and he is somewhat different. Born to a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father in 1984, when interracial marriages were banned in South Africa, he has said he "grew up in a world where my existence in itself was a crime".

What sets Mr Noah apart is that he hails from such an unlikely corner of the global comedy supply chain. When he was growing up, South Africa was in a state of tumult. It was possible its disaffected youth might turn away from US pop culture.

But that did not happen. Instead, we wound up with a proper replacement for Mr Stewart, a 52-year-old New Jersey product. Indeed, if there is one thing that is suspect about Mr Noah at this point it is that he seems such a natural fit for The Daily Show - a central-casting millennial.

Almost immediately after securing his new gig, Mr Noah ran afoul of his fellow travellers in social media for the usual reason: his tweets. One poked fun at "fat chicks everywhere", which more or less speaks for itself. Another went: "Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn't look b4 crossing but I still would hav felt so bad in my german car!" As Comedy Central issued a statement standing by their man, Mr Noah was stirring things up on Twitter, which is pretty much what media owners want from their minions these days.

I did not laugh at either tweet, and I might not laugh at Mr Noah on The Daily Show, either. We'll see. But I already find myself smiling at the prospect of this Xhosa-Swiss hybrid from Africa replacing the Jersey boy at the pinnacle of US television comedy. Only in America, as people used to say, only in America.

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