I checked CNN's site this morning, and there—just above the latest helping of Michael Jackson schadenfreude—was a video clip of Kelsey Grammer falling off the stage at some performance. 'Hmm,' I said to myself, 'this is news?' Of course it is! Because if there's anything we Americans love, it's watching people fall down. Deep down, we're a nation of six-year-old kids. How else to explain The Three Stooges? How else to explain America's Funniest Home Videos? How else to explain Jim Carrey, Mary Catherine Gallagher, and Gerald Ford? We love it when people fall down. We eat it up. But the pratfalls of people like Kelsey Grammer also appeal to our more sophisticated sense of irony because they form such a sharp contrast to his prim-n-proper persona. It'd be like if you saw Sir Ian McKellen blowing bubbles in his milk.

Here's what I imagine is going through people's minds while watching that video of Kelsey Grammar:

He's walking, he's walking, he's walking, I wonder if he's really as pompous as Frasier Crane, he's so smart I wish I were that smart I need to subscribe to one of those 'word of the day' things, then I can impress everyone at my class reunion and maybe I'll wear a top hat for extra effect and OH MY GOD HE'S FALLING KELSEY GRAMMER IS FALLING WORLD-RENOWNED ACTOR KELSEY GRAMMER IS FALLING I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT AN ACTOR OF SUCH FLAWLESS ELOCUTION AND DIGNITY IS ACTUALLY FALLING, I have fallen a bunch of times like at my wedding and that time I got drunk and wandered into Disneyland and now I'm laughing because I remember how upleasant it was and how the Mickey Mouse bouncers really roughed me up and I'm glad it happens to other people especially famous people because bad things should happen to them to compensate for their being famous and getting all that free stuff and I'm glad it's not happening to me, look at me not falling while Kelsey Grammer is falling, it's hilarious I'm better at walking than Kelsey Grammer which means I could be on television, too, and maybe get married to that hottie he's married to, what's her name I don't remember, but you know what would be even better, if Denis Leary or Eminem or Tom Cruise fell down (but really he's hard to hate since that movie with the robots) or that arrogant effete Dennis Miller who is too smart for his own good and indulges in obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation, yeah I'd love to see Dennis Miller fall off the stage maybe fracture a femur or something not anything fatal but something I could feel good laughing at and say yeah Dennis you're really smart but gravity is the great equalizer isn't it! Yeah, that'd be good, that'd make me happy.

What is it with Americans and our taking pleasure in the clumsiness of others? It's really kind of twisted—a comedic-pseudosadism. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to finish watching this Chris Farley movie. It's almost at that part where he trips and crashes through the coffee table for the fifteenth time.