The Pot Calling the Kettle Michael Ian Blackface
The Pot Calling the Kettle Michael Ian Blackface
I don’t like that I’ve become something of a comedy scold, but you know what? Comedy needs comedians to call out shitty comedy every now and again. I don’t mean a joke that doesn’t land; I would conservatively estimate 83% of my jokes fail. What I mean is that high-profile comedians tend to be insulated from criticism from their fellow comics for the same reasons that all industry leaders tend to get a pass from others in their industry. Joe Rogan is an industry leader. Tony Hinchcliffe is an industry leader. I’ve called out both of them here and here. I called out a guy I used to consider a friendly acquaintance, Louis CK. Andrew “Dice” Clay, 67, used to be an industry leader but is now just a cock. And I called him out, too, after he threatened me.
“Scold” is not the kind of role I feel at ease with because I’ve said and done plenty of my own dumb and offensive shit over the years, including wearing blackface for an episode of “Stella.” I’ve committed every comedic crime there is to commit, with the exception of asking my fans if I can jerk off in front of them. I’m neither perfect, nor as funny as most of the guys I call out. So why do I do it? Because few other comics are.
The fact is, I have a small platform and a conscience. I don’t like to see bad comedy elevated as a celebration of our First Amendment. While it’s true that our Constitution guarantees that people can say whatever they want, it also guarantees that scolds like me can wag our fingers at them and clutch as many pearls as we choose. I don’t ask that they be “canceled,” I don’t say they’re not funny, I don’t insult their careers (well, I might’ve insulted Dice’s career a little). In fact, I go out of my way to acknowledge that they do things well. Joe’s podcast, for example, is one of the most important modern media enterprises. That’s true. It’s also true that he made some jokes in his last special I had issues with, and I wrote a piece about it. Big deal. Rogan doesn’t care what I think. Rogan doesn’t even know I exist.
With Hinchcliffe, the situation is obviously much different. He, too, has an enormously popular podcast. He got hired by the Trump team, for whatever reason, to do a set at the MSG rally. You know how there’s that phrase, “He understood the assignment?” I think Tony understood the assignment a little too well. He understood that the Trump base would lap up him calling Kamala Harris a cunt (a word removed by the campaign from his prepared remarks.) He assumed they would love him saying that Latinos “cum inside everything.” Or that Puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage. Oddly, the mildest joke was the one in which he pointed out a random Black guy in the crowd and said the two of them “carved watermelons” together. Tony Hinchcliffe not only understood the assignment, he probably thought he was going to get a Perfect Attendance Record to go along with his standing O.
Why would a comedian get up at a political rally and make those kinds of jokes if he didn’t think they would be well-received? You need to understand – I’m sure you already do understand – that a comedian’s bread and butter is laughter. We say things that we expect will be well-received. Why would Tony make those jokes with any other expectation? And why would he have that expectation? And because in the Donald Trump Broniverse, “locker room talk” is a sanctified, time-cherished male activity. In the locker room, whether it’s in an actual locker room or Madison Square Garden, words are consequence-free.
And because in the Joe Rogan Broniverse, in which he is minor royalty, people expect you to get on stage at the Comedy Mothership in Austin and say “edgy” things like “retard” and whatever other slurs you want to throw out there. They’ve created an alternate comedy reality in which it’s always 1983.
And you know what? I’m fine with that. I really am. I’m fine with people saying whatever outlandish, hateful shit they want to say in a comedy club environment. People can vote with their time and their dollars. The Comedy Mothership, for those who don’t know, is Joe Rogan’s comedy club, famous for its “anti-woke” credo. Fine. Whatever. The club is incredibly successful, which makes sense, because people still want their funny racism to go with their overpriced PBRs. I don’t care.
Comedians are not language police. Nor should we be. So I don’t care about the words comedians use. What I care about is the moral licensing aspect they grant to their audience when they do so. Getting on stage, particularly if you’re an industry leader like Rogan or Hinchcliffe, and shitting on people for their ethnicity, is to invite your audience to do the same in their real world interactions. They see you – rich, famous dude – up there saying, as Rogan did:
“You’ll say the R word but you won’t say the N word? Yeah! ‘Cause I’m more afraid of Black people than I am of retards! Duh! Don’t you know how jokes work, faggot?”
I do know how jokes work, Joe. And I know that feeding your audience this high-fat junk food is bad for them and bad for you. You can say it, just like Tony can say whatever he wants, but why? Is it because you’re addicted to triggering the libs? Isn’t comedy supposed to be, I don’t know, better than that? Again, you’re free to be a shitty comic, but why be a shitty comic in such an obviously destructive way?
You’re not a free speech warrior. You’re a hack comic.
And I’m sorry – I don’t buy the “it’s just a joke” excuse. It’s just a joke when you tell it on stage. But it’s not a joke when the attitudes you’re creating a permission structure for your fans to mimic you offstage. Cruelty is not comedy, despite MAGA’s finest efforts to equate the two. I was recently in a Twitter conversation with a person who told me that comedy changed in 2015 and we “lost the funny words.” I have no idea why he picked 2015 as the moment when comedy died, but I have a pretty good idea of the “funny words” he feels like he can no longer say.
Comedians are not immune from the culture they help create. As I said, tell whatever jokes you want to tell. I don’t care. But at least take a moment to consider what you’re putting into the world. That’s all I’m asking. If shitting on Puerto Rico for absolutely no reason is how you want to express yourself, by all means, my good man. If you want to dredge up lazy stereotypes and use them to demean one of the few Black dudes at a political rally, you go right ahead, sweetheart. But just know that the outrage you cause isn’t from people needing “to change their tampon,” as you said. It’s because some of us are trying to make things better in whatever small ways we can, and it sucks when one of my own is up there actively trying to make things worse. Because that’s the effect of the “cruelty as comedy” movement. It’s making things worse.
Tony will come out of this a hero, no doubt. He will be lauded by the Broniverse. Millions more people now know his name. His podcast will, no doubt, only grow. And that’s fine. As I said, people vote with their time and their dollars. They can do what they want. I will never have Rogan’s success, or Tony’s success. Or Louis’s, for that matter. Or, sadly, even the success of Andrew “Dice Clay,” 67. What I have, instead, is a clear conscience about how I practice my craft. Blackface and all.
I recently came across a meme which offered a much-needed phrase: Schrödinger' douchebag. It was defined as "a person who makes offensive or inflammatory remarks and characterizes these statements as either sincere or joking based on the reactions of others."
Love that you made this less about whether a thing is “funny” and more about whether The Craft is being honored. Think it was Kyle Kinane who said something similar to your point about a comedy world locked into 1983, that comedy like society has to evolve. I continue to struggle with the Rogans of the world whose work just isn’t that good and how they continue to gain in popularity. But then I suppose Picasso would have said much the same about Warhol and soup cans.