In the three-plus decades that I have been a professional stand-up comic, the one thing I never worried about was an existential threat to comedy itself.
Sure the humorless always have been and always will be among us, but they have usually been on the fringes of society, especially in a free speech-loving republic like the United States of America.
Right?
Along came political correctness, which at first seemed innocuous enough. After all, liberals are forever coming up with ways to ruin seemingly innocent things, and we’ve managed to keep their lunacy contained. Things outside of government, that is.
It seemed unlikely, if not unthinkable, that they would try to institutionalize this PC nonsense and begin legislating against things like…words.
In the past six or seven years we’ve seen the perpetually aggrieved take over college campuses and–to borrow an oft-used phrase of theirs–normalize the demonization of anyone who runs afoul of the ever growing “you can’t say this” list of the poor dears.
Life moves more quickly all around in the digital age, and it would seem that the wussification of youth is taking hold, not just here, but abroad as well.
The classic American sitcom “Friends” recently made it to Netflix in the UK and The Independent reports that British millennials expressed “shock” about some of the story lines.
They found them “transphobic, homophobic and sexist.” Of course, those words get tossed around by millennial social justice warriors with such frequency that they begin to be so much background noise after a while. “Transphobic” is such a new word that WordPress spell check doesn’t even recognize it.
We may be used to the millennials blathering on like this, but then you stop and think, “Wait, the dimwits are talking about ‘Friends’ here.” Have things really changed that much in 20 years?
Lest you think this is just some British thing, there’s this gem from the Cosmo website last year that’s chock-full of so much SJW drivel it might soon be graduate level reading on many campuses. This is the same Cosmo that also has other posts like “5 Essential Sex Positions You Can Do Without Leaving The Couch,” which is subtitled “Get off without getting up.”
True. In fact, right here entire series have been created with stupid Christians as the butt of all jokes. Don’t even get started on the “comedy” that targets conservatives. Note that only THESE “comedians” can poke fun at gays or women.
Today’s Left wants to police, not just the present, but the past.
Book burnings were how past socialists dealt with “wrongthink.”
Now it’s going to be Islam’s muttawa = morality police.
Islam bans all music lest some be wrongthink.
It bans all representative art, lest some is wrongthink.
It bans all mixing of the sexes in public lest some engage in wrong actions.
Today’s progs might as well convert now.
They want to be Muslims…..as long as they can be the ones in charge, telling everybody else what to do, how to act, what to think.
They are upset over 20 year old comedy, imagine the shock of Laurel & Hardy or Charlie Chaplin, a Court Jester might hospitialize them TG for universal Healthcare.
@Kitt: Well, among the open-minded, compassionate, diverse left, there are things that are forbidden to be the butt of jokes. Their ideology, their incompetence, their failures, their naivete’ are out of bounds. However, the Christian religion is open season with no limits. Likewise, love of country and monogamy.
In other words, personal insult and harm for the sake of comedy is prohibited, but liberals think they are the final arbiter of what can be made fun of.
I’m wondering why no one is making a comedy about how hypocritical, whiny, sore-loser crybabies liberals are acting. I often laugh out loud at straight-up news reports that are supposed to be sympathetic of these pampered putzes; imagine how funny it would be if it were played up for laughs.