So there are terrible people in the world. And for some reason they get to do all of the talking. This is especially true every election season. Politicians say and do dumb things and they do it because they are listening to the loudest of our society.
Unfortunately, the loudest tend to be the dumbest and craziest. It’s why they’re the loudest. And out of a lack of reason and logic we’ve let them represent us. We’ve let them speak for us.
Take the recent argument in the comedy world about rape jokes. Rape jokes are tacky and hackneyed at best and at worst perpetuate the subjugation of women in our society. The very funny and smart Lindy West has been one of a few voices of reason in this debate while many more dummies have tried to shout her down. She brilliantly laid out the logical response to rape jokes in this article here.
The firestorm that came after was pretty ridiculous, especially considering how well thought out (and correct!) her argument was.
Basically what happened was Lindy (I can call her that now. I tweeted her. No big deal. She didn’t respond, but we’re tight. Tweet tight. [Update: She favorited my tweet!] #LoveAtNoSightCauseWeHaveNotMet) Lindy basically said (and I’m paraphrasing), “Rape jokes aren’t good for society. You don’t get to use my vagina as the butt of a joke that perpetuates a systematic hostile attitude towards women.” And everyone on Twitter, except me and a few others, said “You don’t get to tell me whether I get to assault you with my penis. It’s MY penis!” That’s not much of a paraphrase, sadly.
And that’s ultimately why the world is still an awful place. As far as we come in our reasoning towards life as a collective body we still have dumb, barbaric wastes-of-space who will say and do dumb things. For every time we did something good, like freed the slaves, we had some moron say, “Hey, what was the big deal with owning people, oh wait did I call them people? I meant to say what’s so wrong with owning those human-like creatures and making them work for nothing?”
We’ve always had terrible people. We just didn’t always have Twitter giving every idiot a place they can be heard.
Imagine what we would have heard if Twitter existed when Lincoln was assassinated, or the slaves were freed, or when Murder She Wrote was cancelled after poor ratings.
Undoubtedly there would have been people who would have said, “Killing a president is wrong and all, but I don’t care for coloreds.” Or when the slaves were freed someone would have said, “Not hate, just heritage…of making money by forcing others to work for me like my father before me. Seriously, guys. Life is so hard for me. #FML Please retweet.” And some brainiac would have said, “It just doesn’t make sense that Murder, She Wrote didn’t beat Friends!”
Despite how stupid these are, someone would have said them. And someone probably did despite the fact Murder, She Wrote skewed old and never had a strong 18-49 demo. I mean, seriously, CBS, that’s bush league. Friends was in it’s second season!
A big part of comedy is that there can be no sacred cows, because we need to be able to pick apart everything in order to hold it accountable. But that only works if you view comedy as an important artistic tool that helps to smooth out how we think as a society by pointing out where we have gone wrong. But if you think the purpose of comedy is simply to be funny then there are no rules and there is no point. Working under that belief, all you’re required to do is find a clever way to turn phrase.
I like comics who go for something a little deeper than just merely being funny. If all you want to be is funny, fine. Cut up with your friends and leave going on a public stage to the professionals who have something important to do. At the very least you should be doing comedy to make people escape the awful things in the world that most comics are trying to tear down. That’s fine. But if all you want are laughs that come at your behest and control, then get off of the stage.
You have to earn your time in front of people in a public forum. The dumb have been at the mic speaking for us for far too long.