Without Further Comment

--just a slight reformat because it's one of those marzipan-blocks of rhetorical parallelism if you leave it all in one graf. Pardon the fact that it looks like free verse.

"The truly insane (because utterly unsound) theory is that

what is amusing
must be less significant
than what is ponderous or grim;

or

that what is witty
must be more superficial
than what is sententious or sober;

or

that what is fanciful
contains less truth
than what is factual --

-- all this is part of an age-old conspiracy whereby

those who plod
rather than leap,

who ponder
instead of react,

seek to discredit their betters.

It was one such plodder, I feel perfectly sure, who first circulated the fable of the hare and the tortoise. "

-- Louis Kronenberger, from the introduction of Cavalcade of Comedy, as quoted by Bernice Fitz-Gibbon, in Macy's, Gimbels, and Me.