Chelsea Handler is the latest of a series of comics to tell the PC police that enough is enough.
She revels in the fact that she can make jokes with impunity. Mormon jokes. Jew jokes. Mormon-Jew jokes. It comes with being in comedy. It also helps that coming from that background herself makes it hard to play the “hate” card against her.
But in an interview she gave for the Daily Beast — peppered with some really great insensitive wit — she showed how you can make a funny without hating the people you’re poking fun at. More relevant to the point, you can be funny and political at the same time. She didn’t need to walk back her own Progressive views to make a case for good humor.
Seriously, both sides of the political culture war need to figure out how to laugh again. Angry mocking? Sure, we’ve got that nailed. But if that’s your idea of humor, you’ve got a long way to go.
Seinfeld made waves last year when he announced that he doesn’t do college campus gigs, and is often warned not to since they are so humorlessly PC. Chris Rock and Larry the Cable guy don’t do campus gigs either.
It’s sad to think that college students — at the very flower of life — are wound up so tight they’re afraid to laugh at anything. Steven Crowder described how the PC police showed up at a gig and were literally taking notes and fact-checking his comedy routine. Comedy routine, people, how empty does your life need to be before you want to freaking fact-check comedy?
The much-ballyhooed Puritanical killjoys on the right do not have a lock on stupid censorship. And honestly, they have far less power than, say, the people levying a quarter million dollar fine for using the wrong pronoun in a sentence.
Seriously? In New York? As in “Live from New York… it’s Saturday Night?” As in “It’s Pat?” It’s crazy what’ll get their panties in a wad. (Or tighty-whities, if you prefer. Wait — can I still say whitey?) Don’t even get me started on the censorship of the South Park “Mohammed” episode. Mocking Jesus…? Sure, the networks are fine with that. (As is their right.) But Mohammed? Nope. Now that’s going too far.)
Don’t you just love how some of the same people who play the stupid PC game to the letter also have the loudest opinions against “Big Pharma”?
Maybe if we could lighten up a little, and laugh at our differences again we wouldn’t need QUITE so many antidepressants.
