The left’s fascist efforts to shame, blacklist, and censor comedians deemed “offensive” has failed. Anti-woke comedians “seem emboldened by the current climate,” laments far-left the Wrap.
“If there was an effort to make stand-up comedy a bit more genteel a few years ago — with offensive words and phrases placed out of bounds,” writes the Wrap, “a second Trump administration has emboldened more transgressive voices who are willing to wind it back to the days when it was fine to have a laugh at the expense of women, trans people, people of color and the mentally disabled.”
Do you want to know what another word is for “anti-woke comedy?” Comedy.
Do you want to know another word for “woke comedy?” A lecture.
There is no such thing as “woke comedy.” There’s nothing funny about woke. It’s not about laughs, it’s about applause lines. Woke is pedantic, smug, self-involved, and pious. Comedy is none of those things.
The best example the Wrap uses to illustrate the end of the Woke Terror is when SNL fired Shane Gillis after “audio surfaced of his homophobic comments,” along with a slur against Chinese people. But, they point out, since being fired, Gillis has hosted SNL twice.
What’s important to point out is that from where I sit, what saved Gillis was how he handled the firing. Rather than grovel like a bitch to Woke fascists, which would have cost him his sizable fan base, he tweeted this: “Of course I wanted an opportunity to prove myself at ‘SNL’ but I understand it would be too much of a distraction. I respect the decision they made. I’m honestly grateful for the opportunity. I was always a Mad TV guy anyway.”
He added that he would apologize to anyone “who’s actually offended” — which was no one.
Then he went on about his business making fun of the learning disabled (but not really).
The Wrap said:
Tony Hinchcliffe generated a wave of controversy at a pre-election Trump rally when he called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.” … Matt Rife drew heat for jokes in a Netflix special about domestic violence, quipping of a restaurant hostess, “If she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye.”
Comics like Gillis, Rife, Hinchcliffe, and Theo Von possessed loyal audiences even before Donald Trump’s reelection, but now they seem to be finding wider opportunities. With Trump back in the White House, Hinchcliffe has signed a deal with Netflix for three “Kill Tony” comedy specials (the first of which is the #2 TV show on Netflix as of publication).
The Wrap laments that it seems as if where to draw “the line” has changed, what with the dismantling of DEI policies in many places and growing (or maybe just more open) opposition to wokeness.
The line should only be drawn in one place: Is it funny or not?
Here are two examples of how real comedians think…
Fifty years ago, the suits at Universal Studios were freaking out over Animal House, specifically the sequence where our heroes end up at a black roadhouse where they are intimidated into surrendering their dates and running out of the place screaming for their lives.
Universal asked Richard Pryor to look at the scene. His answer: Leave it in. It’s funny.
And it is funny. It’s a classic scene but obviously some of the tight-asses at Universal missed the point of the humor. We’re not laughing at the hyper-masculine black guys. We’re laughing at our heroes who have suddenly become uncool and caught off guard. We’re laughing at their lack of chivalry and cluelessness about how to handle themselves among people who are different. The butt of the joke is the white guys.
Second example…
I don’t remember the specifics, but I do remember that after Jay Leno won the coveted Tonight Show gig after Johnny Carson retired, Leno and David Letterman became mortal enemies. And yet, when asked to appear in a skit on Letterman’s show, Leno agreed. Later, when he was asked how he could put all the bitterness with Letterman aside and agree to do such a thing, Lenos said, Because it was funny.
For true comedians, it is only about the laugh. Anyone standing up there with a microphone trying to accomplish anything other than making you laugh is something other than a comedian. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart… These guys are not comedians. They are smug lecturers who find themselves adorable.
George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Don Rickles, Jerry Seinfeld, Norm Macdonald, Eddie Murphy, Sam Kinison…
THIS is comedy (NSFW):
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
