BEFORE: Penn Jillette carries over from "The Amazing Johnathan Documentary" and I'm doubling up (doubling down?) today because tomorrow's movie is a LONG one, a two-parter. It's another film about a deceased comedian, I think you can probably figure out which one, as HBO recently released the 2-part doc, and it slipped right into my chain. But adding anything makes my chain longer, and therefore that much more difficult to hit the July 4 benchmark film on time. I think I can still make it - lots of time this weekend for movies, with the theater closed down.
THE PLOT: An examination of Western society's apparent contemporary intolerance of edgy humor from comedians.
AFTER: Ah, the conundrum of free speech - you'd think we as a society would have figured this one out ages ago - either you can say anything you want, or you can't, it's one or the other, right? But then one day somebody asked if you could scream "Fire" in a crowded theater when there was no fire - that's speech with the potential to harm somebody who could get crushed in the evacuating stampede of people. Besides, the pen is mightier than the sword, right? You can kill somebody with a sword, but you can also poke their eye out with a pen, I heard that happened at Comic-Con once. So, OK, no screaming "Fire" without cause, that's a no-no - but it's a slippery slope, isn't it? What about giving somebody bad directions, or not informing them about the thin ice on the lake? Then there's hate speech, which is also now against the law. Suddenly there are a bunch of restrictions on so-called "free speech", it's only allowed if it doesn't hurt anybody?
Ah but what if it merely offends others? Used to be, back in the day if you didn't like what somebody was saying, you could just ignore it, or you could champion their right to SAY it without believing it or even agreeing with them. Those days are gone forever, now if somebody doesn't like what somebody says or how they say it, even if it's, you know, just a JOKE, they try to get them cancelled. Don't get me wrong, some people DESERVE to be cancelled, especially all the people using their power to get sex, like Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer and Harvey Weinstein and yes, comedians like Bill Cosby and Louis CK. This is just the economics of the marketplace, if somebody is proven to be a creep or physically assaults another person, then the public has every right to vote with their wallets and say, collectively, "We won't watch any other movies or TV shows with THAT person in them." Or, directed by that person, in the cases of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski.
But then, there's the court of the legal system, and the court of public opinion. Do people have a right to say, for example, THAT joke by Gilbert Gottfried, about Japanese tsunami victims, it went too far. Cancel him! Jokes are jokes, they're not reality, they take place only in the mind, and then when people start regulating humor, they've become the thought police, and by then we're so far from the original intent of the free speech laws that we've basically come full circle. We started at "you can say anything you want" to "you can't say anything that I don't like" - the ultimate expression of the entitled "ME" generation. You don't like that kind of humor? Fine, don't come out to the club, then - or walk out, demand a refund, but then when you try to shut the performance or the club down so that comedian can't perform any more, now YOU'RE the one impinging on somebody else's rights. There's no "right to not be offended" in the Bill of Rights, it turns out.
But, this is where we find ourselves - thousands of people running schools and campuses trying SO hard over the last few decades to be "politically correct" that they've gone too far, now they try to shut down anything that could be potentially offensive to anyone. So no more racial humor, religious humor, gender-based humor, or poking fun at the handicapped - sorry, differently abled. We need humor in our lives more than ever these days, why would anybody want to stamp it out or put any limitations on it? This shouldn't be a hot-button topic like gun control or abortion, the comedy club should be a safe space where anything goes and nothing is off limits.
On the other hand, a comedian or cartoonist sometimes learns what the limits of good taste are only by exceeding them - the case in point was the French newspaper that printed cartoons depicting Allah, and this led to the newspaper offices being bombed by terrorists. They KNEW that it was offensive to Muslim groups to depict their God in a drawing, and they did so anyway -nobody deserves to get blown up, of course, but they knew on some level that the drawing would provoke a response. Similarly, we had Chris Rock at the Oscars this year make a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's hair loss, and this led to Will Smith getting out of his seat and slapping the comedian in front of millions of viewers. Smith got banned from future Oscar ceremonies, and debate raged over who was at fault, the comedian for telling the joke or the actor for not being able to control his response.
Social media, of course, plays a role in all this, because suddenly everybody's opinion MATTERS, simply because everyone has an outlet to express themselves, or at least that's what it feels like to many people. The truth is, you as an individual are just a grain of sand on a giant beach, and your personal opinion matters ALMOST not at all, in the grand scheme of things. Just remember that you can have an opinion on anything, but you are NOT obligated to share that with the world, just because you can. Instead, just try to relax and see the funny side of things, if you can, because we're not here for a long time, but we can be here for a good time, if you could just find it in yourself to lighten the F*CK up and get over it, whatever "it" is.
Also starring Adam Carolla (last seen in "Down to You"), Ron Collins, Bob Corn-Revere, Noam Dworman, Karith Foster, Gilbert Gottfried (last seen in "Gilbert"), Lisa Lampanelli (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Chris Lee, Greg Lukianoff, Heather McDonald, Dan Naturman (last seen in "Top Five"), Jim Norton (last seen in "The Irishman"), Jonathan Rauch, Jon Ronson
with archive footage of Steve Allen (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Lenny Bruce (ditto), George Carlin (ditto), Richard Pryor (ditto), Mel B, Martin Bashir, Chris Brown, Nick Cannon (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Hugh Hefner (ditto), Jimmy Kimmel (ditto), Dave Chappelle (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Stephen Colbert (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Chris Cuomo, Bob Dylan (last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), Buddy Ebsen, Mel Gibson (last seen in "Boss Level"), Jonah Hill (last seen in "The Beach Bum"), Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "Spielberg"), Don Imus, Heidi Klum (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Jo Koy, Artie Lange (last seen in "Gilbert"), Howie Mandel (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Chico Marx (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Groucho Marx (ditto), Harpo Marx (ditto), Marlee Matlin (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Gavin Newsom, George Pataki, Steve Perry, Henry Rollins (last seen in "The New Guy"), Howard Stern (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump"), Teller (last seen in "An Honest Liar'), Donald Trump (also last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), Robin Williams (last seen in "Spielberg")
RATING: 4 out of 10 public apologies
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