A TV producer friend of mine recently had an idea that I found funny and very odd: he wanted to make a kind of avant-garde late-night music-and-comedy show starring a dancing hand puppet. At least one network executive was interested, but my friend has, for now, abandoned it in favor of non-puppet entertainment projects.

But then I noticed: puppets are suddenly looming HUGE in the culture. They're everywhere.

CLIP: (Gonzo riding a motorcycle.)

Which is strange, because for most of my adult life puppetry has not been boffo.

CLIP: (Kermit the frog.)

In its early years, Saturday Night Live tried sketches featuring Muppets, but it never really caught on.

CLIP: "Saturday Night Live" puppets.

But the culture shifted a few years ago. Maybe it was because the first Sesame Street generations reached their 20s and 30s. Maybe also because for a decade, animated shows like "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill" had proven that a stylized, "kiddy" form could, in the hands of ambitious creators, achieve real greatness.

Now one of the most successful new shows on Comedy Central is called "Crank Yankers." Its stars are all puppets, mainly voiced by well-known comedians. The puppets are shown making actual prank telephone calls to unsuspecting regular people.

CLIP: "Crank Yankers."

(Phone rings)
Salesman: Computers?
Caller: I got mail! Yeah! I got mail! Yeah!
Salesman: Okay.
Caller: Yeah! I got mail!
Salesman: And then?
Caller: And then…yeah!
Salesman: And then?
Caller: I got mail! I got mail!

One of the voices on "Crank Yankers" is the comedy writer Rob Smigel, whose brilliant Comedy Central show "TV Funhouse" featured rude animal puppets. Smigel's also the man behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a puppet character who has become a pretty big star these days.

A month ago in Toronto on the Conan O'Brien Show, Triumph got in trouble for insulting Canadians.

CLIP: "Conan O'Brien"

Triumph: Are you separatists?
Woman: Yeah, 100%.
Triumph: Separate, huh?
Woman: Yes.
Triumph: Listen, listen closely. Hear that? It's the sound of no one giving a (bleeped expletive.)

And not long ago, in fact, on a TV show I hosted called "Face Time," Triumph was one of MY guests.

CLIP: From "Face Time"

Kurt: Triumph, thank you for joining me on face time.

Triumph: Well, I have a lot of respect for your work, you know. Turn of the Century was an amazingly insightful, satiric, and witty narrative.

Kurt: I'm very flattered.

Triumph: FOR ME TO POOP ON! He he he. You suck.

Now, I'll take that from Triumph but only because he's just a little plastic dog with somebody's hand up his rear end. As audience members we can accept puppets being rude and ridiculous in ways we wouldn't accept live actors, kind of like kings and their court jesters 700 years ago.

No venue today is more chockablock with puppets than the live theater. In addition to "Lion King" on Broadway is the comedy "Avenue Q." Off Broadway, puppets were in three serious, grownup shows the last time I checked.

And two weeks ago at New York's main avant-garde theater, opened a play called ''Master Peter's Puppet Show'' -- performed as a puppet show within a puppet show. Last week there was a new production of Monteverdi's opera "Il Ritorno d'Ulisse" starring puppets, and this week a new staging of Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" staring puppets.

Puppets are ubiquitous...except, alas, here on this medium. I mean I know that in the 1930s and 40s Edgar Bergen and his puppets were big stars on the radio.

CLIP: (Early radio banter between puppets.)

So could that work today? If I had my own sock puppet right now, on my hand, and, I don't know, I called him...Robbie and I gave him a little role in this show, would you buy it?

(puppet voice )I think they might. Kurt.

Really? OK, then -- this has been Kurt Andersen...

(puppet voice) ...in Studio 360.