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Four years ago, progressives were riding high. Obama was president, healthcare was fixed forever, and the reset-button Ruskies were our best pals. But even in that golden age, there was a growing sense that comedy was … well … problematic.
So… How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
Everybody is a victim and if you’re not, you’re the problem – even so-called comedians. Dana Carvey was funny, the woman at the Press Correspondence Dinner was not. They don’t know the difference between poking fun and full-on humiliation. Remember the funny Steve Bridges?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4N93jLVPIA
Kimmel stopped being funny – what happened to Jim Carey? We need more laughter and pushing the envelope while maintaining good taste. Where is the next Norman Lear?
The gulf between to harridan like this and a hilarious storyteller like John Mulaney is immense. Mulaney may be a liberal but he mostly avoids politics so that he can tell funny stories, and even when he ventures into the political realm clearly from the left its still funny to those of us on the right.
She’s retiring? Good riddance I say.
The comedy is to be found in the entertainment media knowing deep down that the product sucks while still so earnestly begging you to consume it.
Eat those soggy flavorless vegetables, young man! They’re good for you!
Who thought that adoption of “that’s not funny” stridency combined with a denial of human group traits, a shared crooked human nature and deep personal faultiness could negatively affect comedy?
When I was in college an alumnus was invited to talk in a creative writing course I took. He really was an interesting guy with an entrepreneurial streak, he started off as an entertainer at a theme park, then later originated the idea of corn mazes, and eventually wound up as a producer either in Hollywood or Broadway, I forget which.
The one thing that stuck with me from his talk was that he liked to assign a dollar value to entertainment value, say three dollars for a laugh. The way he put it, if he charged you six dollars to enter a corn maze, He had better deliver at least the entertainment equivalent of two laughs during the experience or he didn’t do his job.
All that to say, If I ever actually paid to see Nanette, I would be demanding a full refund from the theater.
Jon,
Whom has comedy hurt? Not me, not me.
Regards,
Jim
Why do I suspect that, upon her “retirement,” this person of whom I had never heard before, is going to now be inescapable in pop culture for a short period, and, once this stunt fades, will be back doing what she calls comedy within two years, max?
Yeah I don’t get Gadsby. One of my progressive female friends posted a clip of ‘Nanette’ with the caption “omg she is so funny lol!” so I watched it. It wasn’t even remotely funny. She was talking about how she cursed out a guy for implying that anti-depressants might affect your art because they affect your brain (he was correct!). Something something her comedy wasn’t for him (how inclusive!).
Hater. Why would anyone want to change a light bulb? The lightbulb is perfectly happy as a light bulb.
No it’s not. Self-depreciating humor is one of the rare kinds of humor that isn’t based on being cruel to someone else. Lots of comedy is making people laugh at someone else’s expense. There’s a thin line between a good joke and a cruel insult. Being able to laugh at yourself is higher comedy. If you do it right, you’re not getting the audience to laugh at you, but to laugh with you. And not at someone else.
I don’t get the Curt Schilling reference.
I thought that at first too. I think it was the British use of ‘bloody’.
Three, actually. One to change the bulb and two to tell her how much better she did the job than a man would have.
The bulb might want to be a socket!
I envision a world where clandestine groups that go by names like “Foxworthy’s Faithful” or “Larry’s Legions” knock on backalley doors and buy and trade comedy routines on flash drives and SIM cards.
Netflix’s subscriptions are down. One has to wonder why, with such wonderful entertainment as the referenced comedy special, and that new Michelle Wolf show….
Not if it identifies as a ball point pen.
Don’t know how it can be said the Left has given up on comedy – their whole movement is a joke!
You can be funny while telling the most awful stories. Anyone else remember the specials that John Leguizamo used to do? I think the first was called Spic-orama.
The other day, my wife and I got talking about “stuff”. I found the old George Carlin routine on “stuff” and we watched it. It was hilarious (and non-COC in places). That is humor that doesn’t divide or put down, but illuminates what is common to all of us. I think that is the best humor, but it is hard to find any more.
Significant segments of the left have become just what much of humor used to target–pious, autocratic, conventional groupthink. Rather than take aim at themselves, comedians are packing it in. Self-preservation.
American Ninja 1 – my favorite scenes (part1)
37 second run time —
https://youtu.be/ihEMhqdZB2E
The above is a very enjoyable film clip that was entertaining.
However if things in California don’t soon change for the better, such a film sequence will be destroyed – as it characterizes Asians as only being capable of being ninjas. (Expert on child development says: “Many Asians are doctors and lawyers, accountants and teachers. Unless those aspects of reality are shown in the film sequence, it would be destructive to the ego development of children of that ethnicity to view this very limiting portrayal of their career potentials.”)
So the NYT thinks the most memorable moments of comedy in 2017 weren’t funny. I might be off base here but that seems problematic.
Will the best moments in writing involve demonstrations of illiteracy?
Depends on who is illiterate. Think back a year or two to the National Debating Championships, where one team completely ignored the subjects to be debated and instead did this weird presentation of rap and general shouting. They won the championship.
I walked into a room of young women watching a Margaret Cho special 10 years ago and the only noise was from the TV. No laughter, at all. I’m sorry but if you can’t even make a group of people who agree with you laugh you are not a comedian, you are a sidewalk preacher.
Really?
That’s almost not funny.
Rush has been saying for years that the left has no sense of humor. For example, when Trump quipped that maybe the Russians can find Hillary’s ‘missing’ emails, the left could see no other explanation than that Trump was suggesting the Russians hack her server.
Anyone with even a mild sense of humor knew what that was. It was a sarcastic shot at the inept attempts to find those emails. But since the left has no such sense, it had to be evidence of collusion.
If every joke is to be interpreted literally and with no sense of humor, then the vast majority of jokes are offensive. Which is exactly where we are today. Nothing is funny, unless it is about our orange Hitler. That is hilarious…
I suppose this means I can’t call Ms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, She Guevara, or Bolshevik Barbie.