Comic Postcards

Found a funny book about British comic cards, last week.

I think they show pretty well the difference between naughty and dirty: it all goes with the intention behind the two categories.
From the intro:

Naughty postcards are like party blowers that unroll with a squeak and a feather- few people could take offence at them. Ditry postcards, however mild, take themselves seriously. The comic postcard's strength lies in its ambiguity. Most of the jokes are as old as civilization, but it's the difference between what you expect and what you get that still has the power to make you laugh. It's a point that was illustrated by Charlie Chaplin when an interviewer asked, 'How do you make an old chestnut funny again? For instance, the one about the pedestrian and the open manhole?' and he replied, 'There's an open manhole, and a man in a top hat. He walks along the road reading a newspaper, steps neatly over the manhole- and slips on a banana skin.'

Certain themes to be found in the book are of recurring interest: Kids, Nudist Camps, etc.



Conclusion:

Vulgarity and bawdiness have always been close to the hearts of English speaking people, emerging in the early minstrel's songs and the music hall, in drinking songs and fourteenth-century limericks, in Shakespeare and the lines of stand-up television comedians [...] If comics cards should die out, the humor would surface again in some other form.

This makes me wonder: I used to see gags almost everywhere some 20, 30 years ago - now, where they have all gone?
It seems readers are not interested in a cheap laugh anymore...blame on telly, I guess; or it's just the ridiculous money they pay for this kind of artwork? / '_' \