A Spectre is haunting comedy...

[Monte Davis]

I have some broader and more ambivalent misgivings about how the
progressive version of "more outraged than thou" has accelerated with
social media... but very little ambivalence when it comes to comedy, which
has been a "firewalled" space to say *anything* in a lot of cultures for a
long, long time before the First Amendment. See court jesters, satyr plays,
carnivals & Lords of Misrule, giggly scandalous children's rhymes, etc etc.
IMHO that has been and remains a good thing: if there's anywhere the
Voltairean "...but I will defend to the death your right to say it" should
be absolute, it's comedy.

To put it another way: my own preference when I vehemently object to
expressions of racism, sexism, etc. is to prioritize targets with actual
legal/political power...

Followed at quite a distance by random celebrities NOT in the sphere of
comedy/ satire...

Followed by the random racist/sexist/etc bozos in my face who attempts to
sweeten his venom ingenuously with "Hey, just kidding! You [bien-pensant
advocacy label here] are so humorless!"

Followed, at the very very bottom of the priority list, by those who
explicitly fly the cultural flags/tags of comic/satiric performance. Too
many of my own cherished progressive tenets started out and/or gained
momentum there.

On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 2:46 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I wrote this for my blog a couple days ago.
>
> I realize it may rankle some here in terms of its implications, but I
> would really appreciate feedback from a group of people whom I am pretty
> much certain are, for the most part, a lot smarter than I am.
>
> So, by all means... critique away!
>
> Here's the link:
>
>
> http://dailydirtdiaspora.blogspot.ca/2015/07/thats-not-funny-manufactured-crisis-of.html
>
> Thanks in advance for your help!
>
> Mark T. aka Jerky LeBoeuf
>
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