When Amy Schumer killed those people in South Carolina?
There is a discussion to be had about the presence of racial humor and the impact it has, but preferably it will be done by people who understand the concepts of self-deprecating humor, satire, and comedic critiques about perceptions of race in America. Which means that discussion won’t be supervised by these two.
I hope someone warns Key & Peele, because they are going to be next at this rate.
Keith G
She is the worst person in the world, obviously. So much privilege, so little time.
Baud
We’re on it, John.
kindness
I don’t always appreciate Amy’s humor but I won’t call her a racist. Comedians make fun of us (and themselves by extension) by picking at our wounds, our weak spots. Can that be called racist? Yes. It just was with Amy. Of course one could see racism as the driving object but would one be correct in making that link? Some will think so, some won’t.
There never will be a perfect world because no 2 people will agree on perfection.
trollhattan
Still eating our own young, I see. It must be Tuesday.
Capt Seaweed
I don’t care who thinks what. I still think “Blazing Saddles” is the funniest movie ever made…
SatanicPanic
I don’t get how this is supposed to be funny.
Germy Shoemangler
Key And Peele’s new season is beginning. And Hillary will have her own anger translator!
trollhattan
@Germy Shoemangler:
Seriously? I can’t wait!
JPL
@SatanicPanic: Amy Schumer did not cause the hatred that Roof had for blacks. Since I’m one of the few, who had never heard her jokes, I clicked on the Washington Post video. It wasn’t funny, imo.
JPL
Does anyone read the Post opinion page anymore?
trollhattan
@JPL:
I’m guessing Post opinion writers and our front pagers (two in one day, yee-haw!). My dead tree paper used to run several but eliminated most of them with a recent redesign, although Chucky K did leak through a week or so back to scold Obama on making History’s Worstest Deal Evar with the Iranians, instead of just bombing them (duh!).
Germy Shoemangler
@trollhattan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/arts/television/in-key-peele-season-premiere-a-shift-in-tone-and-volume.html?ref=arts&_r=0
BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Properly seasoned, they are delicious and very tender.
Valdivia
@Germy Shoemangler: I saw that Hillary will have her own. Can’t wait to see it.
Aaron Thomas
I can’t imagine submitting this piece for publication by the same organization that hires Washington Post Editorial Board, without being aware that I am full of crap.
Pogonip
@JPL: Cole does.
Baud
Jared from Subway is in legal trouble. Is there no one we can trust anymore?
Aqualad08
@SatanicPanic: No one is forcing you to find it funny, but since you asked the humor comes from her “dumb blonde” persona honestly believing the stereotype.
Don’t believe Stacey Patton and David J. Leonard; they can’t be bothered with anything but knocking down the most simplified straw men their minds can create.
dedc79
The grey area for me is when I get the sense that comics or comedic writers are hiding behind the whole “I’m making fun of racists/ism” defense to justify content that is really getting laughs because it is racist. Family Guy comes to mind as a major abuser of this.
GregB
Gabby Cole is right!
Elizabelle
@Baud: Do I get points for finding an article about Jared with a slam at Bill Cosby in it too? Was going to ask for “brownie points”, but that might involve young children.
Bring on the mascots. LA Times:
Yooooooge pedestals. Very pretty, very classy.
Keith G
@SatanicPanic:
A problem I have with reporting such as the above is the misrepresentations made, be they accidental or purposeful.
Schumer was not telling her audience, she was creating the premise for a tag. And then to go on and write:
Really?
bemused
Amy can get me laughing until I cry, make me cringe or leave me meh. Just my opinion, but she doesn’t seem to discriminate, so to speak, in skewering anyone or any issue.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: Chucky K needs to be chucked off the deck of the ocean liner. Hiatt, one of the premier hacks of our age, has taken the WaPo down the path to perpetual punch line, like the vile wastes of perfectly good newsprint like the WaTimes and the WaExaminer.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
This is why I try to keep people’s expectations of me as low as possible.
Keith G
@Baud: Your snark aside….Are there still folks who trust corporate shills? I hope not.
Baud
@Keith G:
Are you suggesting that my several reverse mortgages were a bad idea?
aarrgghh
right wing trope #14: “you’re a racist for pointing out my racism!”
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
FTFY.
Keith G
@Baud: I understand Fred Thompson since he is a stone cold outlaw anyway, but the fuckin Fonz?
Baud
@Keith G:
I know, right? Not cool.
Mike in NC
These days the break room at the Washington Post must be filled with fainting couches for its outraged writers.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Was it Fred or the Fonz that sold you on those?
ETA: IC, all of them Katie.
Cacti
“I used to date Hispanic guys, but now I prefer consensual.”
HAR HAR HAR!
Why don’t hypersensitive beaners just get that it’s all in good fun?
-White “liberal” blog host
Kropadope
@Cacti:
Not so much that as “why do people who get insulted by something someone says have to take to the internet and corral the butthurt legions into an Army of the Butthurt to destroy their livelihood instead of being normal and simply not watching that person on TV?”
chopper
I hope these guys never watch a Sarah Silverman bit or their heads asplode.
Cacti
@Kropadope:
I know, right?
Why can’t the groups that bear the brunt of bigotry in this country just take all of the continued slights in stride, and be big about it?
And who knows better what should be offensive or inoffensive to minorities than a white guy from West Virginia?
Nerull
@dedc79: 4chan used to be home to a lot of “ironic” racism, to make fun of racists. Or so everyone said. Of course, it turns out racists find racism welcoming and now its pretty much stormfront 2.0, but whocodanode?
kc
Is there anything the WaPo won’t print?
SatanicPanic
@Cacti: yup. Can’t she find another group to make lame jokes about?
Nerull
Its amazing how quickly people will adopt the exact same excuses. “Why are X people so sensitive?!?”
KG
@Kropadope:
probably not a good name for a band, but maybe a good name of a band’s third album – something where they get experimental?
Aqualad08
@Cacti: I’m sorry you’re offended, but as a member of the “white race” Amy Schumer was actually making fun of with that joke (you see, she’s being a white, privileged idiot for believing something so obviously false about another race) I’m offended that you’re not more offended for me for laughing at something that offended me…
Villago Delenda Est
@kc: Favorable stories about “that man” in the White House.
Roger Moore
@kc:
An endorsement of a liberal candidate?
Geeno
@Cacti: You have to remember that’s a thin slice of a series of jokes that depict HER as an empty headed slut. That’s the actual joke.
Find it funny or not YMMV, but it’s one of a series of stupid things she says in that bit. It’s not intended as a racist joke. For me, it’s the low point of one of her okay-not-great routines.
Keith G
@SatanicPanic:
I hear that jokes about the French are popular in some quarters.
Culture of Truth
I read the WaPo piece twice. The language is so over the top, still not sure if it’s a satire of political correctness. In any case, they only cite two jokes, one about Latina women and one about Hispanic men, so not sure if you can draw a straight line to Charleston.
Cacti
@Geeno:
My sides are aching from laughter.
Aqualad08
@Nerull: No, no…my excuses are far more nuanced. I know why you’re sensitive, and I respect that. My question to you is what the hell are you going to do about it? Close all the theatres?
LAC
@Mike in NC: the smell of Jennifer rubin’s stale coffee and white wine breath might also contribute to the fainting..
Trentrunner
We’re a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic culture. It’s the air we breathe.
EVERYONE in that culture is at least a little bit racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic.*
Thus it’s unsurprising that someone, a comic, say, a female comic, say, can both skewer the misogyny she knows everything about and thoughtlessly perpetuate racist and xenophobic slurs. Both are possible. Indeed, they are legion.
So I know when someone from that group tells me I said something offensive, I listen. I know it’s perfectly possible that I (thoughtlessly, I hope) partook of the particular bit of racism or sexism or whatever that wafts throughout our cultural air. And I become aware and then I stop it.
That’s what Amy should do, and that’s what we all should do.
It’s shitty to be racist, sexist, etc., but we can’t avoid it, and we certainly aren’t going to eradicate it by denying it (which Amy did and others usually do).
*This also explains why women can be sexist, gays can be homophobic, black people can be racist, etc…
Kropadope
@Cacti: Amy Schumer isn’t out there fighting to keep undocumented immigrants as permanent second-class citizens, she made a stupid joke or two (arguably, some of the listed jokes were actually kinda sympathetic to the plight of undocumented immigrants). Just because a group doesn’t have a good lot in life, doesn’t mean that they can never be the subject of a joke.
I’m gay and I like a good gay joke. Many, many of them aren’t very good, but I’m all for giving people the leeway to try. If we’re having a personal conversation and they’re actually being insulting I let them know. If I don’t like what a comedian has to say, I change the channel. Tracy Morgan’s idiotic comments about the possibility of his son being gay didn’t affect me in any way and, like this situation with Amy Schumer, I never would have even heard about it if not for the amplifying power of the internet.
Give people a break once in a while, most are actually pretty good.
Cacti
When Michael Richards told n*gger jokes at the Laugh Factory, he wasn’t assassinating Medgar Evers.
So what was the big deal?
I’m guessing 2006 John Cole thought they were real knee slappers.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: Nobody’s asking you to find it funny, classy, inoffensive, unobjectionable, or desirable.
SatanicPanic
@dedc79: This. I think there is a lot of this. I got the same impression from Arrested Development.
rikyrah
Yasha Levine
@yashalevine
BREAKING: Glenn Greenwald helped Philip Morris gag whistleblower and silence journalists going against Big Tobacco. https://pando.com/2015/07/07/shillers-killers/9a00367e93e2fb4e97324f51f6f15c50d2576930/ …
kent
No comedian is perfect. No comedian – no human – should be expected to be, nor asked to be.
Amy Schumer is funny as hell imo. Please watch her half-hour re-filming of “Twelve Angry Men.” (Helps if you know the original of course.) Watch her shorter bit with Tina Fey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
She is a smart / take no shit / pro-sex / progressive feminist.
You can take pretty much anything out of context. The WaPo editorial page did that and they’re trying to shame her. The comparison to Trump is ludicrous. They can go fck themselves.
Geeno
@Cacti: Humorless scold!
or was I joking?
Aqualad08
@Cacti: “My sides are aching from laughter.”
Just as an aside, what do you find funny?
Major Major Major Major
@SatanicPanic: I’m curious what you noticed in Arrested Development. I’ve seen it a zillion times and I don’t recall it pinging my “errrr, can they do that?”-dar at all.
Cacti
@rikyrah:
Good to see you rikyrah.
I’m sure you’re as surprised as I am to see that John Cole doesn’t understand why it’s a big deal for the nice white lady to make jokes about how rapey brown-skinned men are, or that it’s being handwaved away by so many of the “progressive” commenters here.
Keith G
@Cacti: Jesus Christ ……nothing like not appreciating a difference in scale.
Have you turned into a performance artist or a troll?
Edited…For what it’s worth Richards statement was not a joke but he lost his mind and very inappropriately confronted someone who was heckling him
dedc79
@Aqualad08:
Well there’s the question of her intent, which you take at face value, and the question of why most people are laughing at the joke. Is your position that this second question shouldn’t factor into our consideration?
I’m mindful of how some black comics have grown increasingly uncomfortable with delivering routines poking fun at black culture as they came to realize that a larger and larger percentage of their audience was white.
Do you think there are a lot of mexican americans laughing at this particular joke?
Culture of Truth
Also, FWIW, she’s apologized and said she’s trying to be a better person and comedienne. Which puts her way, way ahead of most people who get this kind of criticism.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Jan from Toyota seems nice.
Aqualad08
@dedc79: “Do you think there are a lot of mexican americans laughing at this particular joke?”
I dunno. Have you asked them or are you just assuming they aren’t? As far as I can tell, neither of the writers of the op-ed are Mexican Americans, either…
Cacti
@Keith G:
You like jokes where minorities are the punchline.
Shocked.
chopper
@Cacti:
They can’t all be wholesome family comedians like bill cosby.
Major Major Major Major
For some reason I just remembered an old Scott Thompson ‘Buddy’ skit where he’s trying to figure out what makes the word ‘faggot’ so offensive and goes letter by letter explaining why each letter is gay, and decides after ‘o’ that by process of elimination it must be the ‘t’, so please just call us ‘faggos” from now on.
Not super relevant since he’s gay and all, but I just thought it was funny.
feebog
@Cacti:
Maybe we are surprised that you don’t understand the absurdity of comparing a comedian’s joke to a Presidential Candidates racist, hateful comments while announcing for said office.
Cacti
@Culture of Truth:
But why would she have apologized?
She didn’t kill anyone, therefore nothing was wrong with what she said.
kc
@Geeno:
Let him bask in his glorious righteousness.
Cacti
@feebog:
Michael Richards was a Presidential candidate?
dedc79
@SatanicPanic: Well that’s interesting. I tended to think of Arrested Development as a show that did a better job of making clear that the jokes were at the expense of the privileged, oblivious, racists (ie the Bluths). I’m thinking of the instances where they show Lucille Bluth making her mexican cleaning lady turn her purse inside out before leaving to make sure she hasn’t stolen anything. I thought it was pretty clear that we’re supposed to be laughing at Lucille rather than laughing because Mexicans are thieves.
SatanicPanic
@Major Major Major Major: I just thought every minority character on the show was a stereotypical portrayal, which I get, that was kind of the point of the show, but sometimes I thought it was a bit too much
SatanicPanic
@dedc79: Yeah maybe so. I suspect that a lot of people would watch it the way they watch Colbert- taking it at face value. But what can you do? That’s a difficult thing to navigate.
That being said, I haven’t seen the show in a while, so I may be misremembering.
Germy Shoemangler
@Omnes Omnibus: I like Jan from Toyota; my favorite bit of hers was when she did the beatnik poetry. I like Flo, especially when she plays all the characters in her family. I even like the Sprint Framily; the little girl with the birds flying around her head and the patriarch who is a hamster in a plastic ball. I would never buy anything they’re selling. I just find the commercials somewhat less objectionable than most.
kc
.@rikyrah:
He worked at a law firm that represented a tobacco company?
Is that it?
Culture of Truth
The authors associate one comedian, citing two jokes about hispanic people, with:
– Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine black people in a church
– churches are burning
– church pastors are receiving death threats
– KKK is planning rallies in South Carolina
– Latinos are being deported in record numbers
– 80 percent of Central American girls and women crossing Mexico en route to the United States are raped
– children languishing in camps in the Southwest
Which is totally rational response, and not at all offense in itself.
Davis X. Machina
I see ‘Schumer’, I assume ‘Chuck’.
I see ‘Dunham’, I assume ‘boots’.
And I’m not sure if it’s Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, or Katy Swift and Taylor Perry.
I am old.
Kay and Peele…. Smith, and Norman Vincent?
kc
@Keith G:
Yep. It only takes one glaring misrepresentation for me not to trust anything else a writer says.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman:
It is known.
Germy Shoemangler
@Omnes Omnibus: No love for the Producers?
Culture of Truth
@Cacti:
Since you believe that, she shouldn’t have apologized.
Betty Cracker
@efgoldman: Obviously!
Culture of Truth
I would go with Young Frankenstein by a long way, also.
Keith G
@Cacti: The object of a punchline of a joke can at times be not as important as how the joke was crafted and what the purpose of the joke is.
Our culture has been made much richer by writers and performers who ignored categorical imperatives – such as don’t show this in a film, don’t write about that, never talk about this topic in a performance.
While some might think that categorical imperatives help to limit the power of the majority class, I’m pretty sure that categorical imperatives are more often used to shackle the growth of the thoughts and reach of the minorities in any given culture. That is why I tend to be a bit of a free speech absolutist and want to give creators as much leeway and benefit of doubt as possible.
SatanicPanic
@Cacti: Trump is a serious candidate? I thought he was a comedian too
Geeno
@Cacti: Did you hear her say “spic”? I can guarantee that if you had, she’d totally have gotten the Michael Richards treatment.
Omnes Omnibus
@Germy Shoemangler: The Producers is fine. Young Frankenstein is almost perfect.
cokane
@Culture of Truth: It’s about moral preening. Not actually about ameliorating suffering in the world.
Cacti
@Keith G:
A member of the socially dominant group making jokes at the expense of the disfavored ones is the humor of a schoolyard bully, and has a long and inglorious history in American performance art.
chopper
@Davis X. Machina:
Her dad is distantly related to chuck schumer.
GregB
@efgoldman:
Frau Blucher is right!
Major Major Major Major
@SatanicPanic: Huh. I didn’t get that, I’ll have to keep an eye out. Other than Anyang(sp?), the other minority characters seemed just as fleshed out as they needed to be given that the show wasn’t about them.
Remember Ice? He was hilarious.
YMMV. I guess season 4 got a little more questionable with their treatment of Asians. Fun fact, most of the Indian characters (in the India scenes) were former cast members of Outsourced.
Kropadope
@Cacti: Comedians of every demographic makeup make jokes about people of every demographic makeup. It’s so easy to pick on a comedian for what he or she said and maybe even have them held responsible. But, why don’t we direct that fire at people with actual institutional power who may never say a racist thing in their lives but manage to oppress millions, billions of people?
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: And you’re more than welcome to hold Mr. Freire’s viewpoint here. I think it’s right when we’re talking about institutionalized, particularly government-run or government-backed speech, even.
This is neither. It’s a comedian, possibly being taken out of context, and certainly without ill intentions. We live in a rich media environment where changing the channel, as it were, is easier than it has ever been. I’d never have even heard of this if it hadn’t been for this ridiculous WaPo article. Perhaps pointing it out is doing more harm than good, by your theory?
rikyrah
what she said was racist….
of course, she had the right to say it….
but, accept the consequences that those she offended won’t take it well, and will come for her.
Cervantes
@SatanicPanic:
People with disabilities!
kc
In the meantime . . .
Keith G
@Cacti:
This type of humor being used as the bludgeon of the bully certainly can be the case, but it is not categorically always the case.
“Expense of the disfavored” interesting phrase. Is that what Schumar is doing? Louis CK? Jerry Seinfeld? Chris Rock?
Culture of Truth
@Cacti: “Nothing was wrong with what she said.”
Case closed.
Rex Tremendae
@Cacti: @Cacti:
Please don’t refer to Hispanics as “beaners.” And if your defense is irony, well, maybe you need to permit others the same.
John Cole
A.) The whole routine is her making fun of herself and dumb white girls.
B.) Shocking video of two men perpetuating racist trope of the angry black male:
C.) This is where I point out that is Cacti hadn’t spent the last half decade lying about me and distorting everything I said that I actually might give a fuck what s/he said.
kc
@rikyrah:
That sounds menacing.
Cacti
@Major Major Major Major:
And in all cases, the member of the dominant group making the offensive statement should be given every possible benefit of the doubt.
In this thread, this principle has manifested itself as “She didn’t shoot any black people in a church”, “She didn’t say spic”, “Our culture is enriched by artists pushing boundaries” and “She isn’t a government official”.
Could we maybe come up with a few more ways to say it’s okay for the nice white lady to call Hispanic men rapists?
rikyrah
I keep on telling you…
Some folks seem to wanna party like it’s 1958.
And, us Nigras and Brown folk just keep on wanting to interrupt their party.
That it’s a new day.
rikyrah
@kc:
Only menacing if you think you can just roll up, spew racist stuff, and think there will be no blowback.
JPL
@rikyrah: Amy Schumer who ever she is did not cause Roof to kill nine people. It is stupid to suggest other wise.
Kropadope
@Cacti: How about “come down off the high horse?”
Cervantes
@Cacti:
I think it’s because they’re inferior.
@Cacti:
As indicated above, I think your larger point is a serious one — but as a woman is Schumer a “member of the socially dominant group”? How about as a Jew?
Each person is a member of many groups, some more powerful and others less — and so when a joke like Schumer’s (about Hispanic men) is said to be “funny,” it may be the result of some complexity. Which does not mean it should be exempt from analysis and criticism.
rikyrah
@JPL:
YOU connect Schumer to Roof?
I didn’t do that.
I connect Schumer to the continued line of racist shyt thrown at non-Whites in this country everyday…..
hellslittlestangel
If ethnic stereotyping isn’t racist, then she’s not a racist.
I think she’s sometimes funny, but too often just Comedy-Central-Roast-style obnoxious.
Cacti
@John Cole:
And yet, little flower, it was you defending Amy Schumer’s jokes with the same logic employed by the Confederate battle flag apologists (i.e. flags don’t kill anybody).
kc
@rikyrah:
“Come for her.”
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti:
Fine, we’ll put it in grad school terms. Propositions:
1) I’m not sure that’s what she was saying, I don’t have the full context.
2) Even if that is what she was saying, she has that right.
3) I don’t think anybody’s saying it’s OK to call all Latino men rapists.
4) Dominant groups have rhetorical power over other groups, which can be self-fulfilling on a society-wide level.
5) I don’t think anybody here would say anything different if it were a minority making these comments towards dominant groups.
Synthesis:
Fuck it, this is why I didn’t go for the PhD. See above.
SiubhanDuinne
@kc:
Yikes.
Kropadope
@Cacti: My standards for the Confederate flag are pretty much the same. Don’t display it at government buildings, but everyone else is free to do as they see fit.
JPL
@rikyrah: The oped piece that John linked to, did. I certainly didn’t mean you did but the blog was about the Washington Post oped piece.
Cacti
@Kropadope:
How about “stop defending ethnic bigotry as source material for laughs”.
Cervantes
@Aqualad08:
Yes, racism and stupidity often share the same human host. I don’t find this reality particularly entertaining — but perhaps others do.
kc
@Cacti:
I’d bet money you neither read the WaPo article or listened to the Schumer bit you’re hyperventilating about.
Hungry Joe
@efgoldman: Brooks’s “The Twelve Chairs,” though flawed (WAY too slow), is pretty damn funny, too. I’d rank them 1) “The Producers” 2) “Blazing Saddles” 3) “Young Frankenstein” 4) “The Twelve Chairs 5) “History of the World, Part I.” You can have “Spaceballs,” “Silent Movie,” and “High Anxiety.”
John Cole
@Cacti: Nope. Still don’t give a fuck what you think.
schrodinger's cat
Am I the only one who has no idea who this Amy Schumer person is?
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve barely heard of her and haven’t seen anything she’s done.
kc
@SiubhanDuinne:
Indeed.
The article goes on to note that most of the defendants in Caddo are poor and black.
Gravenstone
@Omnes Omnibus: I prefer Lily from AT&T, but YMMV.
Cacti
@John Cole:
And yet, here you are responding. ;-)
pete
Amy is brilliant and hilarious and edgy. You think you can keep that going and not f*ck up? She apologized, frevvinsake. If you are not yet familiar with it, check out this work of genius: Last F**kable Day, with Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfusand Patricia Arquette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpsI8mWKmg
Anyone who can produce that deserves some slack.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: Not really but I’m old so maybe I don’t count. What I do know is Amy Schumer did not cause Roof to kill nine people.
Kropadope
@Cacti: So, no one can make jokes about ethnic bigotry? Not even the Mexians? Not even from a sympathetic perspective?!? Wow, you’re no fun.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gravenstone: I don’t trust people who bedazzle. There is something off about them.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@rikyrah:
FWIW, she apparently did apologize and say that she will not use the joke or similar jokes again. I haven’t been that impressed by her work, but she doesn’t seem to base it around racist jokes.
Baud
“The Aristocrats!”
kc
@Baud:
I’d never heard of her until pretty recently – she seems to have become popular really quickly. She has a show on Comedy Central; I’ve just seen a couple of bits on YouTube that are pretty funny.
It’s odd to me that as soon as she became popular, she became a target. Daniel Tosh has been doing race jokes for years on CC and I haven’t seen any farkin’ WaPo opeds about him.
Cacti
@Kropadope:
Amy Schumer is not Hispanic.
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Exactly, the authors of the article used three selective quotes from hours upon hours of material and one of the selected jokes was actually sympathetic to the plight of Mexican immigrants. Even if she did do a lot of racially themed jokes, tone matters.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@rikyrah:
The article Cole linked to basically said that Schumer is equally as guilty of murder as Roof because the writer was able to find two racist jokes that Schumer made about Latinos at some point in her career.
I’m assuming the writer was trying to make a point about the overall culture being steeped in racism, but it’s still a stupid argument on the writer’s part.
JPL
This has to be the saddest post since whether or not Terri Schiavo could see balloons. Amy Schumer has nothing to do with the deaths in Charleston. I didn’t even know who she was and after a few searches came up with my conclusion.
Kropadope
@Cacti:
A: You don’t seem to believe it should be use as a source at all. That must include Mexicans.
B: You didn’t address the “sympathetic perspective part of the question, which is presumably the more applicable here.
C: Why don’t you find a real hobby? Trashing comedians on the internet is like “I want to trash people on the internet but I’m too lazy to find a real target.”
Gravenstone
@Cacti: That’s because you’re fun to bait, sweetheart.
Lisa Lampanelli
Beaners?
It’s about Puerto Ricans you fucking racist.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@kc:
White male comedian gets a pass while female comedian gets raked over the coals for milder jokes? Hmmm, wonder what the reason could be. It’s a total mystery.
For the record, I despise Tosh. My idea of hell is being forced to listen to his voice for more than 30 seconds. Having to watch him smirk makes me want to claw my eyeballs out.
Baud
@kc:
I don’t really keep up with the pop culture.
kc
@Baud:
I’m brushing up on pop culture in hopes that the WaPo will pay me to write a few paragraphs of bullshit about pop culture.
Kropadope
@kc: If you’re brushing up, you likely already know too much to report on the subject by modern MSM standards.
Digital Amish
Can someone point me to a comedian who doesn’t employ some type of stereotype in their humor?
A rabbi, a priest and a pedophile walk in to a bar. The bartender asks “Table for two?”
Baud
@kc:
Don’t forget the accented “e” in Beyoncé.
Aleta
@Baud: ha
J R in WV
@Cacti:
Actually, people from West Virginia are a marginalized minority as well. The derogatory name for us is “Hillbilly” and once upon a time a TV show made fun of ancient folkways that allowed mountain people to survive in solitary lives on tiny farms in the deep forests of the mountains. It was called “Beverly Hillbillies” and it was the most repulsive TV I have ever experienced. Right there with “Chicago Sharecroppers” which is my own metaphorical creation!
In some places the use of the word hillbilly for Appalachian people is forbidden – just as in some places the use of words like spic or nigger is forbidden.
I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked where I am from, and then am told “Really?!?! You don’t sound like you’re from…” small mountain town. But I am. My family (both sides) worked hard to speak proper English.
Now I’m as comfortable with a hillbilly accent as I am with a TV accent; but I never think it doesn’t make any difference. I hope to be explaining that a “white guy from West Virginia” may have run into prejudice aimed right at his forehead. I have.
Sometimes people can’t believe that the smartest guy/girl in the room just might be from the hills. Or Black, or Mexican. Sometimes I had to spend large amounts of money on hiring consultants to validate the things my group wanted to do, because our management (also from WV) couldn’t believe that their staff knew as much about both the problem set and technical solutions as a $200/hour consultant from a big city.
Once we got one of those guys in, and at lunch I fired him because he was informing us about the newest technology from a training book he was holding in his hand, because that was the only knowledge he had that could help us – in his hand, not in his brain. How was this guy supposed to solve complex problems with knowledge in his hand?
We spent a lot of resources on that kind of thing. It got sad at times.
So don’t go assuming white people from WV have no personal and intimate knowledge of prejudice. That in itself is prejudice – pre-judging someone’s knowledge based on irrelevant issues, like skin color, or where you grew up.
Some of you folks need to get over yourselves! Or get fucked, one. I don’t care which tonight.
trollhattan
So, anyway, that Louis C.K. fellow is pretty funny, eh?
Aqualad08
@Cacti:<"And yet, here you are responding. ;-)"
You speak the language of the trolls…I can only assume you are one, especially in light of how black and white your humorless worldview is…
Betty Cracker
@Lisa Lampanelli: LOL! No, seriously, LOL!
J R in WV
@Lisa Lampanelli:
Really? Puerto Ricans?
There are about 33 million Mexicans and about 4 million Puerto Ricans in this country. I think you are mixing your slurs up miserably and without knowing anything about the country outside the big city you live in. In most states you can probably count the PR population while eating lunch. The rest of the country lives and works with Mexicans, who work hard and contribute as much as the Puerto Ricans and Italians do.
Jumping on John Cole and calling him a “fucking racist” is way beyond polite argument. I have to believe you have never been outside greater NYC (or perhaps Boston?) if you can imagine that John is a racist. He lives with a black guy you
ignorantstupid slut!WaterGirl
@pete: Thanks for the link, that was fun.
kdaug
“discussion won’t be supervised”
Interesting
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: I thought that was snark, but what do I know?
Still, props for standing up for Cole!
Kropadope
@J R in WV: The irony slipped past you, didn’t it? Making a racist comment to decry racism…no?
ETA: Never mind that the person used the name of a fairly racially provocative comedian to post it. Like really racially provocative, not the “3 out of context quotes in hours worth of material” kind.
Cacti
@Aqualad08:
Maybe someday I’ll reach a sufficient state of progressive enlightenment that I can appreciate the subtlety and sophistication of a non-HHispanic white comedienne riffing on how rapey Hispanic men are.
But I hope not.
WaterGirl
I didn’t watch the Amy video that sparked all of this, and I don’t know exactly when her performance was. But I assumed the joke was mocking the republican idiot who things all the men coming in from mexico are rapists.
Kropadope
@WaterGirl: Something that subtle will never occur to the language police.
hamletta
I don’t appreciate people literally taking her jokes out of context. Slicing out a particular punchline in order to scold her is bullshit.
Any woman who asked 12 Angry Men to evaluate whether she’s fuckable is aware of what she’s doing.
There’s always a delicate balance in joking about prejudice — witness Archie Bunker — but where do you draw the line?
Dave Chapelle was horrified; Carroll O’Connor was horrified. They were mocking prejudice, but wound up with fans who didn’t get the joke.
Comedy isn’t pretty. Comedy is supposed to piss people off. But in the best cases, it does so with purpose. Inside Amy Schumer has done so in some freaky ways this season.
For these writers to pull individual bits on the day of her series’s season finale reeks of reaching to me.
Aqualad08
@Cacti: You won’t. You’re already too high above the rest of us to care…
hellslittlestangel
@WaterGirl: It can be hard to tell when Lisa Lampanelli is joking since nothing she says is funny.
Aqualad08
@Cacti: BTW, were you born a Dostoevsky character or did you “evolve” into one?
C.S.
@Cervantes:
Yes . . . others with an actual sense of humor and a working knowledge of the concepts of “irony” and “satire.” Hell, even a passing acquaintance with the idea of “mockery” would probably suffice.
joel hanes
Forgive them, Father
For they do not get the joke
C.S.
@joel hanes: Careful . . . Cervantes and Cacti are gonna start calling you a religious bigot.
Steve From Antioch
@kc:
No it is much, much worse than that. He apparently worked at least 3.1 hours on something -AND- his name appeared “prominently” on the letterhead of some mean letters. Not that he wrote the letters, mind you, but since he was a member of the firm his name appeared “prominently” on the letterhead. “Prominently” in this context meaning it was one of 50 or 60 other names on the letterhead.
Nerull
“Ironic” racist humor is a cover for people to laugh at racist jokes while patting themselves on the back about how non-racist they are. The fact that this thread could have been copy pasted from redstate shows that quite well. We’ve got it all – ” (blank) people are too sensitive!” “They say (blank), why can’t we?!?” “LANGUAGE POLIECE!!11981237123”
And yet, only one group seems to find it very funny. I wonder why that is.
Christ.
Steve From Antioch
@J R in WV: I spend the first 24 years of my life in West by God Virginia.
If you think that the “prejudice” that exists against hillbillies affords them/us a “personal and intimate knowledge of prejudice” then you really need to get out more.
SFAW
So is/was it OK/funny for Cleavon Little to say “Hey where are the white women at?” Even though he was black? Was it racist of Mel Brooks to write that line? (And him a Jew and all!) [Never mind Lili von Shtupp’s “It’s twue!”]
If so (or not), then why so (or not)?
C.S.
@Nerull:
Non-ironic “holier-than-thou” stances are a cover for people who do not care to think too deeply about humor that is beyond their grasp, while patting themselves on the back about how sophisticated their comic tastes are. The fact that large portions of this thread could have been copy pasted from a transcript of a Reed College dormroom circa 1990 shows that quite well. We’ve got it all – ”I do SO have a sense of humor!” “Any time race is invoked it is ipso facto for the wrong reason — why don’t you get that?!?” “YES, I DO HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR!!11981237123″
And yet, only one group seems to find this not funny. I wonder why that is.
Christ.
Daulnay
@Keith G:
People who still trust corporate shills?
Hillary – she has one of Monsanto’s running her campaign.
Aqualad08
Show me a comedian who has never offended someone and I’ll show you a bartender…
Cacti
@Steve From Antioch:
When I read JR in WV’s post I thought “When did Jim Webb start posting here?”.
Cacti
@Nerull:
I was going to say that someone will tell that you’re just too much of a dullard to appreciate hipster racism, but I see it’s already happened.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Cacti:
Are you 100 percent sure it was the men who were supposed to be the rapists in that joke? One thinks of the sheriff in Arizona who threatened to have his lover deported if he tried to break up with him.
gwangung
@Cacti:
I am non-white.
I actually DO this sort of comedy of stuff at night.
I sure as HELL don’t want you at any of my shows. Talk about skew lines…..
Plantsmantx
Amy Shumer aside, it seems to me that most of the (old, male) comedians who have jumped on the “SJW” bandwagon don’t really specialize in self-deprecating humor.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Which joke? The one that mentions “Hispanic guys”? Or some other?
SFAW
@SFAW:
So neither the dullards nor the apologists have an opinion? OK then.
Yeah, yeah, I understand it’s because it was an uninteresting question, and self-evident, and not very bright because reasons.
Next up: was Lenny Bruce racist when he did his bit about JFK introducing all the niggers in his cabinet? What about when he talked about wops, spics, and kikes?
Paul in KY
@dedc79: As many laughs as Family Guy gets, it also gets the same amount of cringes (from me).
When it’s not funny, it’s really not funny.
Kylroy
@kc: Because Daniel Tosh won’t feel bad when you call him on it. It’s no fun to point out the racism of someone that doesn’t care what you’re saying. But if the person will acknowledge your criticism and give more coverage to your hyperventilating op-ed…
Paul in KY
@efgoldman: I think Blazing Saddles is funnier.
drkrick
@Culture of Truth:
Not to mention a lot of the people who give it.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): He does seem to be quite an asshole. He came to Bonnaroo once & performed & I would be looking around making sure he wasn’t walking around with a camera crew. You do not want to get in any tape he does.
Paul in KY
@J R in WV: That might have been a joke.
Nerull
I understand now. POC need to just chill out, and understand that this group of white people calling them all rapists is totally on their side and nothing like the other group of white people calling them all rapists. Because they added wink-wink-nudge-nudge to the end.
That makes it funny. Really.
And white progressives wonder why PoC often feel like white progressives don’t care about their issues. If only they just realized how FUNNY n****r jokes are when said in the right tone of voice.
Aqualad08
@Nerull: Just as an aside, what comedians do you find funny?
Kylroy
@Nerull: I understand now. Comedians who make insensitive jokes are indistinguishable from spree-killing terrorists and people who lie about our nation’s history.