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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
>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.
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.
That's if such a thing exists. It seems to me that people's tastes and values have changed, and in this case, some comedians haven't noticed and want to continue as they were. Comedy has always sought to reach people on their level, whatever that may be, and be relevent.
Just as there was pushback when societies decided it wasn't ok to call PoC certain terms, the same is happening now sadly. This article makes it sound like comedy is only about using a particular language directed at a set of particular groups. I think comedy is much more than that. E.g. just because a joke doesn't have the n word in doesn't mean it can't be funny.
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.