The Death of Comedy
Discover more from Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
The Death of Comedy
And Other Short Takes on the News
The only time I laugh anymore, I mean really laugh is when I watch Tik Tok. I watch short videos knowing I am in the lair of humanity’s ultimate destruction. It’s too good. It’s too addicting. It offers up a glimpse of the kind of freedom we used to have in the mainstream but no longer do. There is no policing thought or speech. There is only the algorithm that keeps giving you exactly what you want.
You hope, in a given session, the algorithm gives you humor instead of, say, little dogs running after their owners as they flee from police or a guy who saves a dog just before it’s killed for dog meat or a starving dog living in a sewer tunnel. Those kinds of sessions can ruin your whole day.
The funny videos remind me of what Twitter used to be before it became the 9th Circle of Hell. I know Tik Tok is bad. It’s a data-gathering machine for the Chinese Communist Party, and it’s also a time-waster and potentially a hypnotic ritual to separate you from your money as you fall into a trance and buy whatever scrolls past you.
But Tik Tok is funny. It’s funny in the way nothing else is anymore. Not even Youtube. The Prince Harry mockery was the stuff of legends.
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I am that person who sends Tik Tok videos to my daughter, mother and friends that probably annoys them. I know I am contributing to the collapse of the Empire but there is no other place to laugh and laugh. What happened to comedy? It just vanished one day. Poof.
I was lucky enough to grow up in the era of great standup, an industry that has been hit especially hard by the new religious zealotry on the left, as Joe Rogan will tell you.
I remember Sam Kinison made me laugh especially hard because he would say things you’re not supposed to say. His jokes were incredibly offensive. But that’s partly why you laugh at them. It’s a way of releasing tension so we don’t go completely insane. There has to be a correlation between the lack of humor and the insanity of now.
John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel have sided with the Democrats, which means they have to play it as safe as possible. Their only targets are Trump supporters or Republicans or white people. Maybe to the aristocrats that’s funny. Maybe it makes them think the Titanic isn’t sinking. But none of them can make us laugh the way we need to laugh.
[profanity warning]
I listened to Bari Weiss’ Common Sense podcast with journalist Helen Lewis about gurus, and how all of a sudden people are turning to influencers, bloggers, or other thought leaders to help them light the way. And I just kept thinking about why that is. We no longer trust our media, of course. We can’t really trust our government, of course. We don’t have anything we need to help us keep things in perspective like hilarious monologues by Sam Kinison.
I have many gurus, as Helen Lewis would call them, and one of them is most definitely Ricky Gervais who stands apart from most comedians now because he isn’t afraid to make the most offensive jokes imaginable. He goes out of his way to touch untouchable subjects to show people that laughter is still the best medicine.
[profanity warning]
If you noticed, I put a “profanity warning” before each of these videos because that is the kind of warning that’s always been there. The idea that curse words can offend is not new. It isn’t allowed on network television, for instance, and will apparently demonize your Youtube videos. Me? I don’t wish to offend my readers.
I wonder is whether that is different from Disney putting a warning label before a movie like Gone with the Wind. Once people have the warning they can decide whether they can handle it or not. The list of offensive things, however, has gotten so long and detailed it has crippled nearly every film, joke, book, movie, etc. So what’s the answer here?
And once you put the warning there it may or may not color the whole experience. Are you going to spend the entire film waiting for that one offensive thing and decide whether you can handle it or not, like going on a roller coaster that has a warning it might cause panic? Is it still funny if it comes with a warning? Or is it funnier?
I don’t know. I just know that I miss laughter. I miss comedy. Here are some of my favorite funny movies. You know that you’re more likely to laugh if what you’re laughing about has startled you. Either it’s offensive or forbidden.
Two of them star Jamie Lee Curtis:
List of potential thought crimes:
A funny prostitute.
A poor Black man.
List of potential thought crimes:
Make fun of stuttering.
Making fun of gay men.
Two are from the Coen brothers:
Potential thought crimes:
Making fun of sex offenders (“eight-year-olds, dude”)
Potential thought crimes:
A Native American character who is a criminal.
Making fun of prostitutes.
And this - one of the funniest scenes in the movie is, of course, verboten:
One of my all-time faves:
Potential thought-crimes:
Too many to mention - it is just one politically incorrect scene after another.
And of course, it goes without saying that Airplane! would never be made today for obvious reasons:
I feel certain this, too, would be not filmable as is. They did make a stage play of it, so perhaps there aren’t many rules broken here:
Every Mel Brooks film is funny - but probably also not politically correct enough for today’s audiences. Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, the Producers. My favorite is High Anxiety (as a Hitchcock fan):
Hollywood Shuffle was definitely ahead of its time - it’s hard to know whether this is funny because it’s making fun of the right targets or whether it would still be offensive.
Last but not least, Caddyshack.
Viral Speech
AOC says it’s racist to bump Ilhan Omar for her words on Israel yet isn’t that exactly what they did to Marjorie Taylor Greene? Wasn’t she dropped from committees because of things she said? When I watched this by AOC I immediately thought - is that all she has now as leverage? The outrage that a woman of color is being sanctioned like any other politician?
How does AOC think it helps her argument to say that dumping Omar is racism in the wake of 9/11? I don’t think it does. Is there any other reason to fight for Ilhan Omar? I can think of one. Of all of the members of “The Squad,” she’s the one most willing to break with groupthink and stand on her own. I admire that. I don’t often agree with her but I think anyone who has the courage to face down their own side has grit.
How the Democrats Exploited the Sad Sack that was David DePape
The 911 call from Paul Pelosi and the police cam footage finally dropped. It was horrific. The sudden outburst by DePape that left poor Pelosi nearly unconscious and on the ground was a terrible thing to see. There was much criticism of the 911 officer who took way too long to get the subtle clues from Pelosi that he was in distress. But I guess you might have to be from California and have spent time in San Francisco to know that a call like that in the middle of the night where some guy is claiming to be Nancy Pelosi’s husband is not exactly unusual probably?
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive the Democrats, Joe Biden especially, for using that violent incident, like they used January 6th, to scare voters to the polls. It’s just so cynical and ugly. But like AOC, they can’t keep playing that card forever. Obviously, DePape was a clear example of just how out of control California has become in terms of managing mentally ill homeless people who are everywhere.
The story should have been focused on mental health, homelessness, drug use, and violent crime but of course, they had to make it about “Extreme MAGA Republicans.” It’s just so dirty you want to take a shower after.
Michael Cieply wrote a good column about this back in November that probably no one really read. In it, he compares DePape to other psychos captured in movies, like Rupert Pupkin in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy or Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Indeed, he’s onto something there:
Frankly, it’s disappointing to see Rob Reiner, as talented a popular director as ever there was, reverting to Twitter in the wake of the Pelosi attack. On Friday, Reiner pronounced Donald Trump “100% responsible” for DePape’s actions and called for the ex-president’s indictment.
Once upon a time (1990), Reiner directed a brilliant movie called Misery. It was about a fan (Kathy Bates) who became disillusioned by the latest manuscript from an author (James Caan) whom she had adored. He was injured, and in her control. She broke his ankles with a sledgehammer, shades of David DePape. Way back then, it won an Academy Award for Bates.
We could use something like that now. But that would involve a lot of work. It’s so much easier to rant on Twitter.
The Documents, the Documents
Am I the only one that sees the FBI search for classified documents as a way to even the score so that they can save face when they fail to prosecute Trump? Biden obviously wants Trump to run so they can pull out their old reliable strategy of scaring voters. But how are they going to calm down people like Rob Reiner who are desperate for a conviction?
Well, Jonathan Turley would know better than I do whether there is anything to the story. “The Fix is in,” he writes:
Either way, none of this suggests “transparency,” as Biden likes to boast. The investigation has proceeded with a small fraction of the information leaked or released against Trump. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) also says that the National Archives was blocked from putting out a press release about the case — either by the Department of Justice or the White House. Combined with the fact that nothing was made public until after the midterms, it shows that Biden’s team wanted to keep this quiet.
Wanted to keep this quiet until after the midterms and our media let that one slide. Isn’t it shocking, still, that they are this much in the tank for the Democrats?
This would be a great time to have a reliable press core. No wonder we seek gurus.
Julie Kelly remains ever stalwart in her fight for the January 6th prisoners:
The Old Left is awake in Jimmy Dore:
That’s all for now, friends. Hopefully have a podcast up by this weekend. Don’t forget, laugh like your life depended on it because it does.
The Death of Comedy
Oh please, PLEASE do not worry about offending your readers, if I am at all typical.
Being offended is a choice – if someone chooses to be offended, that's their business, not yours.
Please continue to be courageous in your writing. I think most of us can handle it.
The book The Edge of the World is Flat is the most hilarious modern satire I have read in awhile. It's about a world in which a non profit has achieved it's mission and is going to be disbanded, but is instead taken over by a billionaire who wants to convince everyone the world is flat. How the non profit convinces everyone is interesting, and the more I learn, a little but true to life. I didn't know what particular idea they were making fun of at first as there are so many, but it all fits together.
But also, as this column points out--comedy has gone from the left. This book shows satire on the right (or at least the gay author/heretic who believes people are born who they are). We all have long, eloquent, morally correct explanations for why we are politically homeless--but as a good heuristic I have to agree with Sasha, I'll go with the comedy. Any group that has lost the ability to laugh is seriously mental.