The story first came to public attention in early December, when David Corn and Andy Kroll at Mother Jones magazine reported that “former Rep. Dick Armey, the folksy conservative leader, has resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, one of the main political outfits of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the Tea Party.

“Armey, the former House majority leader who helped develop and promote the GOP’s Contract with America in the 1990s, tendered his resignation in a memo sent to Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, on Nov. 30. Mother Jones obtained the email on Monday, and Armey has confirmed he sent it. The tone of the memo suggests that this was not an amicable separation … Armey demanded that he be paid until his contract ended on Dec. 31; that FreedomWorks remove his name, image or signature ‘from all its letters, print media, postings, web sites, videos, testimonials, endorsements, fund raising materials, and social media, including but not limited to Facebook and Twitter’; and that FreedomWorks deliver the copy of his official congressional portrait to his home in Texas.”

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“First … get a million dollars,” he said. “What do [you] say to the tax man when he comes to [your] door and says, ‘You have never paid taxes?’ Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: ‘I forgot!’”

Porter Stansberry, an “investment advisor” with a knack for lining his own pockets, used a slightly different strategy in 2003. When the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) came to his door and accused him of making over a million dollars selling false “inside tips,” the self-aggrandizing financial guru claimed that it was his First Amendment right to tell his subscribers whatever he wanted — even if what he wanted to tell them was, as the SEC put it, “baseless speculation and outright lies.”

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Actually, better business than usual.

SNL brought the winning combo of having a beloved alum Martin Short host the year's penultimate "SNL" (or the last one ever, if the Mayans are to be believed), and a Beatle! And the writers and cast really brought it. Alum shows tend to have a gaggle of surprise guests anyway, but with every celebrity on Earth in New York for the 12-12-12 Sandy relief concert, this one packed heavier than usual star power.

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"On Thursday, this man, this grown man was pushed into the Congressional ladies washroom. Naked from the waist down," Obama said, adding: "You leave this poor orange man alone."

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Gilda's Club -- created in honor of the "Saturday Night Live" star who died in 1989 of ovarian cancer -- doesn't just take inspiration from the big-mouthed cartoon figure on its logo. It embodies Radner's open, playful spirit  in a clubhouse environment where parties are a regular occurrence and junior members are called Noogies. Yet Lannia Syren Stenz, the Madison club's executive director, told the Wisconsin State Journal Tuesday that "One of the realizations we had this year is that our college students were born after Gilda Radner passed, as we are seeing younger and younger adults who are dealing with a cancer diagnosis. We want to make sure that what we are is clear to them and that there’s not a lot of confusion that would cause people not to come in our doors."

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Watch:

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There were no surprise guests on this edition of "SNL:" not Mitt, nor Paul. No Barry or Joe. Not even Chris Christie or Mike Bloomberg. This was Sandy's week, and just as the hurricane gave us a kind of reprieve from tedious 24-7 candidate-stumping coverage, so too did "SNL" keep it a lot lighter on political fare than you'd expect. This isn't to say the episode ignored the fact of Tuesday; it just didn't have that special edition feeling. It relied instead on its wonderfully droll host, Louis C.K., and Sandy, to set the tone.

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Over the course of an hour or so, Chris and I discussed topics including but not limited to his groundbreaking work with Letterman, "Get a Life" (the greatest television show of all time), "Cabin Boy" (the greatest movie of all time), his time at "SNL," his Adult Swim series "Eagleheart," and, of course, his excellent new book "The Guy Under the Sheets: The Unauthorized Biography," a hilarious and at times chilling tell-all that chronicles not only his show business exploits but also surprising encounters with John Gotti, the Beales of Grey Gardens, Aileen Wuornos and several others I just never saw coming. Chris is a comedic genius and I have incredible hair. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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Say it with me: Are women funny? Since this question was first answered in the negative in the pages of Vanity Fair by the late, redoubtable Christopher Hitchens, it seems to have been designated by the chattering classes as one of the great unanswerables of the universe, destined to be dredged up every time someone’s looking for page hits by pissing off the wrong person at some heavily trafficked and influential ladyblog (#sorryfeminists!). To everyone else, this may seem like a settled a matter of simple logic: Women are human beings (no matter what some Republican members of Congress might believe); some human beings are endowed with an innate talent to make others laugh; ergo, some women are funny. The end.

And yet, it is with this specious query (if there is a God, then surely the fact that this piece of lazily reasoned hackwork seems destined to be the most quoted of all the Quotable Hitchens is His karmic revenge) that Yael Kohen chooses to open “We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy,” forcing from the beginning what could have been a transcendent and inspiring work of oral history into an oddly defensive crouch. What was almost certainly meant as a topical gambit — the book was born out of an article the author wrote for Marie Claire — feels a bit like reading a novel with a prologue like: “I know you’re probably wondering why you should care about anything I’m about to tell you since I just made it all up in my head, but please let me spend the next 300-plus pages trying to convince you!”

Also strange is Kohen’s emphasis of focusing on her subjects’ relative shortcomings. Under this surely unconscious lens, a fanatically hardworking trailblazer like Joan Rivers is a frustrated actress who failed to take over the desk at “The Tonight Show” and curdled into a bitter insult comic; Carol Burnett, an unchallenging sketch comic; Lily Tomlin, an underground weirdo that nobody knew what to do with. Talents like Sandra Bernhard and Whoopi Goldberg are mostly heard complaining about getting stuck performing in the Belly Room, the all-female performance venue inside L.A’s former Comedy Store (which, in their descriptions of the narrow space and rickety staircase you had to take to get there, sounds like the world’s most hilarious mechitza), but little attention is paid to Goldberg’s subsequent blockbuster film career apart from her briefly noting a sleazy studio executive commenting distastefully on her inherent “unfuckability.” The hilarious Rachel Dratch is encouraged to talk about how affinity for playing unglamorous characters may have hurt her career. Others pontificate — not uncattily, may I add — on how a young Sarah Silverman got stage time because everyone wanted to sleep with her. Why talk to these extraordinary, successful, brilliant women, only to dwell disproportionately on their disappointments? Why treat them as a race apart, or explore their stories mainly relation to men? As Tina Fey, whose voice is notably absent here, said in her memoir “Bossypants” on what she says to young women who come looking to her for advice: “Remember: Don’t be fooled. You’re not in competition with other women. You’re in competition with everyone.”

That’s not to say there’s not some great stuff here. “We Killed” is a well-meaning effort, at times even a noble one. Kohen clearly has a gift for drawing her subjects out: Merrill Markoe’s four-page, stunningly clear-eyed testimony on the rise and fall of her relationship with David Letterman is like a three-act play. Considering how she wound up making her fortune, all the snide comments about the young Kathy Griffin are good for cackle. And the ambitious chronology of the chapters deftly illustrate how the rise of women in comedy mirrored the rise of the women itself, from frustrated housewives to ambitious power-suited baby boomers to sexually frank post-feminists in heels and Spanx. The recurring theme of Johnny Carson’s appalling treatment of female comedians who broke his stringent rules of acceptability speaks a cathartic truth to power, even when the power in question is moldering in the grave.

But for all the dazzling breadth of Kohen’s sources, “We Killed” remains notable for what it leaves out. In her telling, the story of women in American comedy began with Phyllis Diller and Elaine May sometime in the early 1960s. There’s no Fanny Brice or Sophie Tucker; no Dorothy Parker or Frances Marion or Anita Loos; no 1930s screwball heroines that put paid to the former Apatovian notion of the female as eternal straight man. Hollywood scarcely exists at all; the realms of theater and print are totally absent. The name “Nora Ephron” is not mentioned once. Lena Dunham, like robot maids or clothes that change color with your mood, is merely a shadow of a faraway and unknowable future.

Of course, that’s the difficulty of the oral history: You can only talk to people who are alive, or about people who are in living memory, or are willing to talk to you. But if you’re trying to make a definitive case on the potential for hilarity of the double X chromosome, that seems like an awful lot to leave out.

Which brings us to the second problem of writing only about what people want to tell you: It doesn’t leave a lot of room for outside analysis. We hear that Johnny Carson hated female comics and John Belushi refused to perform in anything he knew a woman had written. But neither Kohen nor anybody else tries very hard to explain why. Because ultimately, the question to ask isn’t whether women are funny; the question is why it’s so important to some men that they not be.

Interestingly enough, it’s Christopher Hitchens himself who gives the game away in his essay that started a cottage industry, saying: “Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and supplicants. Women, cunning minxes that they are, have to affect not to be the potentates … People in this precarious position do not enjoy being laughed at, and it would not have taken women long to work out that female humor would be the most upsetting of all.” Humor is power. We kill, and something inside them dies.

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"Liz Lemon is Kermit," I said to Dustin. "The Muppet Show" is "30 Rock"!

I tested my theory on a Facebook thread: Jenna is Miss Piggy. Kenneth is Scooter. Tracy is … possibly Gonzo? That was a tougher one to cast. On the thread, a friend led me to a blog post by comic-book writer Brian Lynch, from 2009. It turns out I was not the first person to have this revelation. Brian had some tough words for "30 Rock" — perhaps in jest (tone on the Internet can be hard to parse). He wrote, “Tina Fey's ‘30 Rock’ is currently the most acclaimed comedy series on television. It's won numerous Emmys and Golden Globes and I think Pulitzers. Critics and audiences alike love the show and its lovable zany characters, and consider it one of the most original comedies in years. And I guess it is original … if you've never seen ‘The Muppet Show.’ Because, my ‘friends’ (in quotes because I don't know or trust you, please don't be offended), Tina Fey's ‘30 Rock’ is quite obviously ripping off Jim Henson's beloved TV show.”

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After seven years on "SNL," Wiig said goodbye on Saturday night's season finale that will go down as one of the sweetest, most choked-up moments on the show since Steve Martin said goodbye to Gilda Radner on the day of her death almost exactly 23 years earlier.

Even without an official announcement, Wiig's twirly, teary departure is enough to make even the most casual fans of the show crank up the Adele and mainline a tub of Edy's Grand. It doesn't matter that fellow castmates Andy Samberg and Jason Sudeikis have reportedly moved on from the show as well. They leave behind established male cast members like Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen and Bill Hader. Wiig, on the other hand, blows a gaping hole in the show's female lineup. The 24-year-old Abby Elliott, who moves up the rung to the show's senior lady cast member, is now its biggest female star. But she's yet to display that versatility or command the clout that Wiig has. Kate McKinnon may yet bust out into full-blown "SNL" stardom, but she's only been on the show for five minutes.

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How many times have we asked that question across nearly four decades?

"Impossible!" said some in 2006 when Tina Fey, Chris Parnell, Horatio Sanz and Rachel Dratch headed for the door, only to be followed two years later by her friend and "Weekend Update" co-host Amy Poehler.

But in their wake grew one of the most versatile, multi-threat casts in "SNL" history, one that firmly established its own "SNL" era. Kristen Wiig, Andy Samberg, Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis all became cast members in the 2005-2006 season, joining a group that already included Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen and Kenan Thompson.

At the time, "SNL" creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels pronounced them "the wave of the future" and Fey likened herself to a senior seeing "exciting freshmen" arrive. But as this latest season of the sketch institution comes to a close this Saturday night (with host Mick Jagger, and musical guests Arcade Fire and the Foo Fighters), there's a growing sense that another "SNL" class is nearing graduation.

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It took just moments for a scorching hot career to take an unexpected detour into the ditch of public scorn. Del Rey opened up her mouth and a collective "WTF?" went up across the land. Standing onstage with her glossy hair, dragon nails and slinky gown, she droned her way through "Video Games," swaying awkwardly, fiddling with her hair, and rubbing her hands on her thighs in a manner that seemed more "I'm just wiping off the palm sweat" than "Come over and feel me up, Big Boy." How bad was her performance? At one point she did a full 360 twirl. During a ballad.

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