Thanks! I did not know about Bill Burr. The two clips from Conan were funny, but his stuff on YouTube was not so clever. On the deeper question, comedians are just critics, but unlike the cynics, they make us laugh. Ayn Rand completely denied the validity of laughing at yourself. She called it spitting in your own face. (Prof. Irwin Corey was her idea of funny.) I see it as a catharsis to distance myself from a problem of my own and thereby resolve it. When my wife makes me laugh at myself, I know that she is right. There is no arguing at that point. I have no defense.

So, too, with a comedian as a social critic. I agree with Mike Adams of Natural News that George Carlin also was insightful, even for the basic divide caused by Carlin's leftwing prejudices.

But I never perceived Robin Williams as a social critic. His humor was based on improv. Of course, in the movies and on television, it was the writers who are funny. The actor just delivers the line, but there's acting ... and there's acting... and Williams was always very present. Years ago, I watched some of his stand-up via YouTube and the underneath the lines, the sadness was there, even then. Once he staged himself as an old man looking back on his career.
This is some recent 2008 political commentary from his "Weapons of Self-Destruction" routine. But the title, of course, ultimately said more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GytluXBE...

From the article: "We don't live in the real world, you see. We live in a social construct of delusional myths crafted by institutions, governments and high-level storytellers sometimes called "experts." This is the world pulled over your eyes to make sure you never see the truth."

The Matrix!!!