
The New War on Comedy - andrenth
https://quillette.com/2019/01/03/the-new-war-on-comedy/
======
shammers2k
Comedian here. There is nothing new or insightful here, only the same tired
complaint when comedians get blowback for lazy jokes. Louis CK was once the
king of balancing smart and offensive - he now appears to have shifted to low-
brow.

Far more concerning are the types of contracts being asked of this author to
perform at a college campus. In my experience, when comedians are invited to
perform, it is done by a Student-run organization, which probably developed
its own internal policy. It isn’t surprising that student groups don’t want to
ruffle feathers when the consequences for hiring the next Michael Richards
stretch far beyond the room where it happens.

~~~
DATACOMMANDER
Was the bit really low-brow, or did you just not like it?

(Paraphrasing)

“You will address me as ‘there’; I identify as a location.”

I thought that was pretty funny.

~~~
shammers2k
In the world of comedy, this is already a very tired bit. “Can I identify as a
stapler” etc. It was funny at the beginning of identity politics discourse-
now its airline food.

------
e40
This reminds me of the Radiolab pod "In the No"[1]. Things are definitely
going off the rails. This discussion illuminates it perfectly for me: two
people can have a sexual encounter and agree 100% on the details of it, that
consent was given at each stage (in the affirmative), yet after it is over one
of the parties can retroactively revoke consent and claim sexual assault. In
fact, a young man was kicked out of college for just this thing (his lawyer
was on the podcast).

I wonder all the time how we got here. And I fear for my 18 yr old son, who
will enter college this fall.

[1] [https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/no-
part-1](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/no-part-1)

~~~
cptnapalm
It can get worse than that. Amherst College kicked a young man for "sexual
assault" when he was blacked out drunk and a girl decided to perform oral sex
on him. The accuser actually did commit sexual assault and there isn't the
slightest hint she will ever be tried for it. Her name is not publically known
as she is shielded for accusing someone of what she did. She was also shielded
from being deposed because it might traumatize her.

[https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2015/06/09/amhersts-
version...](https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2015/06/09/amhersts-version-of-
kafkas-the-trial/)

~~~
e40
I remember that. Totally insane.

------
happytoexplain
When will this faux sense of superiority end? People have a negative reaction
to people being harrassed, attacked, or hated. If you jack off in front of
people who are unwilling, you're going to get a big negative reaction. If you
express hatred for somebody (perhaps because they jacked off in front of
somebody who was unwilling, or because you hate their political ideologies, or
because you feel that they unjustly hate you), you're going to get a big
negative reaction. Acting like that's crazy, or irrational, or unnatural, or
trying to focus everybody's attention on censorship from private platforms
that occurs as a result, is all just a purposefully naive ideological attack.
This article is just another example of confronting hatred with hatred, and
its being written is just as inevitable as the reactions it addresses. Except
that it tries to pretend it's something above that.

When Louis says “being at a school where people got shot doesn’t make you
interesting”, and his audience "roar(s) with laughter" \- that's not laughter.
Laughter is a semi-involuntary reaction to something striking you as humorous.
If all people were utterly disconnected from the politics of the situation and
immune to moral offense, the range of reactions to that joke would be
somewhere in the neighborhood of smirking. That audience isn't roaring with
laughing - they're expressing hatred together.

------
drewgolas
>On the same day, Netflix pulled an episode of “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj”
for the following joke about the killing of Saudi Arabian writer Jamal
Khashoggi

From my understanding, they only pulled it from the library specific to Saudi
Arabia. As well, they left it on youtube, where the entire first season is
streaming for free. That seems either to be left out of the article, or to
have changed recently.

Other than that, this doesn't seem particularly new. Just easier to hear
about. People have always attempted to censor folk.

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test6554
>The underlying assumptions of social justice censorship are that words are a
form of violence, that a subjective interpretation matters more than the
speaker’s intent and that safety is contingent on not being teased or
challenged.

This is spot on. Best not to appease the outrageists.

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squozzer
To quote an ad-lib line from a famous rock musician -

"Does anyone remember laughter?"

>The underlying assumptions of social justice censorship are that words are a
form of violence, that a subjective interpretation matters more than the
speaker’s intent and that safety is contingent on not being teased or
challenged.

Probably _who_ tells the joke matters more. Except for the following:

>On the same day, Netflix pulled an episode of “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj”
for the following joke about the killing of Saudi Arabian writer Jamal
Khashoggi

Maybe, as the article insinuates, it was to protect the delicate feelings of
Saudi elites. My money is on the belief Netflix wanted to keep Hasan alive.

------
antidaily
Hacker news?

~~~
mondoshawan
Yeah. Definitely not. Need to spend more time on new flagging junk like this.

~~~
belorn
Here is a list of articles on the topic of social equality posted today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18822577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18822577)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18826683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18826683)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18824440](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18824440)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18823468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18823468)

