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.
What all those decades of abuse amount to is attempted conversion therapy. Conducted by an entire society.
And I tried. I tried to change. I suppressed it. I donned the role and tried to play it. I joined the military and spent 20 years doing outrageously dangerous, what I thought were stereotypically masculine things...all in an attempt to change who I was. I tried and tried until I faced do-something-about-this-or-die, and I finally started doing something.
Here now, I am 7 years post transition and happier, healthier, and finally myself. My sense of identity never changed. I just hid it from everyone else and tried to hide it from myself. I was a girl. I am a woman. My confidence in my identity has only grown stronger. This is right. This is true. This is me.
Against all of you, all that time, I held to myself.
Do you think you could hold to your identity, your sense of self through the efforts of every person you knew or knew of? For that long?
I see people losing their sense of self after watching a few ads and listening to a speech and a podcast by frothing right wingers convincing them their values are not actually their values. Good people, people with strong moral and ethical backgrounds, losing themselves into the Trump cult...the maga sea of hate in a few weeks of exposure. Every belief they ever held, now subservient to The Leader.
Family values? I grabbed her pussy. Nation of laws? I could walk down 5th avenue and shoot someone. Patriot? Let's overthrow the government.
They live in that ecosystem now...any trace of who they were replaced, modified. Rationalized by the irrational. Beyond hope of recovery.
Which of us do you think is being authentic? Who was intrinsically themself, and who was made into what they are now? Which of us do you think might benefit from conversion? From convincing? From changing their mind?
Freedom to say anything doesn’t remove your personal responsibility towards society. Joe et al have created a level of influence in everyday discourse whether they like it or not. What they do with that influence will shape how people interact with each other for a generation. With that in mind they need to recognise that society isn’t like the green room of a comedy club….
Tired of people who think they can just rehash old bits from Mel Brooks movies, Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy routines and call it cutting edge comedy. It was edgy and cool when they did it, or at least as edgy and cool as it ever got, but it’s just old and tired now. Racism? Dude, that’s so 19th Century.
I imagine 2015 is the arbitrary date this person mentions because in 2016 they graduated high school and found out people don’t think it’s funny when you say “retard” and make dumb hand movements. Unless you’re Donald Trump, in which case you become president for mocking a disabled writer. God I remember that happening and thinking “that’s it, right? That’s the end of that!” Nope. If only!
You have touched close to a point here I have seen missed by a LOT of very smart people, comedians, who are sincerely trying to "get it". And it is the one about granting license. The "Just telling jokes" thing.
I am a trans woman. I am 65. All my life in this society has been a constant drum beat of how bad a person I am for being who and what I am.
How wrong, perverse, sick, ridiculous, insane, dangerous I am. A laughing stock to the extent that some cis guy who looked like I did...like my body did through no agency or desire of my own...merely aping the movements of a woman was a subject of hilarity and disapproval. Let alone actually donning clothing or such or God forbid, actually telling someone you're not sure "boy" or "man" fits you and girl or woman makes a ton more sense. That shit gets shut down pretty quick.
Every conversation with a joke about effeminate men. Every comedy routine. Every movie with a serial killer. Through the years. Everywhere. Silence of the Lambs winning an Oscar. Ace Ventura. On and on.
All these things day after day. Teaching people these lessons. Making it ok. Everyone you know taking them in and repeating them. For years and decades. How horrible you are. How...funny.
And it seeps in. You take it onboard. And you hate yourself. Shame. Guilt. Fear. All day every day.
It's honestly a wonder ANY of us survive and DON'T kill ourselves, let alone survive as functioning, compassionate, somewhere close to normal adults. Yet somehow we do. Tough road we walk, us snowflakes.
The steady rain of tiny rocks. Pebbles. Today we call them micro-aggressions. Any one of them you could shrug off. We do. All the time. But every day, multiple times a day for years and decades...falling on your shoulders and pressing you down until each new one is a struggle to lift yourself off the ground under that mountain of pebbles to crawl forward another inch. Again.
Could YOU handle that?
Those are your jokes. They are part of that rain of pebbles. Individually no big deal, collectively, a mountain. Don't tell me jokes don't matter. People repeat that shit. From you, from everyone else.
Don't tell me until you are the only one making them and a thousand of your fellows call you out on it every single fucking time and make you feel like shit every fucking single day.
Oh. Wait. That happened to YOU? You got called out on Twitter and thousands of people jumped down your throat and made you feel like a terrible person and it was traumatic and unfair cuz you were just being you...a comedian telling an innocent joke. Pitiful mistreated canceled you. Career shot. Reputation ruined.
Welcome to a hint of the daily trauma of the first five decades of my life.
Maybe...try to be the person who lifts a pebble from the pile instead, hmm? You never know what shoulders they are landing on. Someone you know. Someone you love.
This is a great note, and I think I’m about to cry. My daughter is a young trans woman and while we are 100% supportive and all in, this really made clear what she goes through and we don’t know about… Thank you.
I'm seeing a fair amount of pundits pushing the narrative that Tony and the MSG rally have harmed trump's election chances, so if MAGA is unsuccessful in their attempt to steal the election, assuming by all that is good in the world they don't win outright and this narrative somehow seeps into their godawful information bubble, I don't imagine Tony coming out of this as a hero.
Nice essay! My husband and I love vinyl and have started seeking out old comedy records. So fun. Cheech and Chong are a blast. Carlin is the best so far---but we are still discovering. We're hoping to come across some old Redd Foxx because I hear the party albums are irreverent and raunchy and great. It is fine for comedy to evolve though. I cringe at the jokes I used to tell as a teen in the 80s (lots of gay/Aids jokes, some n-word punchlines, misogyny--because I used to be unbothered about degrading other women). I still love to laugh and am fortunate to have a hilarious husband, but I am relieved that I am a more aware (proudly woke) person now.
Wait until you listen to the album by Bill Cosby where he talks about Spanish Fly. In retrospect it's really chilling to hear him admitting to drugging women to get sex like it's H-I-larious.
"What I have, instead, is a clear conscience about how I practice my craft" that and the fact that you have empathy is part of what makes me look forward to reading your work.
I always go back to the Eddie Izzard Dress to Kill special joke about ORIGINAL sin, creating your own fucked up weirdness instead of relying on someone else’s old faithfuls (Eddie ov corpse not being a hate-filled arse).
I share strongly share these sentiments and while I don't listen to Rogan's show or Tony's, I've always understood when comic is clearly part of the Broniverse. I'm happy to say that their thing isn't my thing. As a comedian, as a writer or creator - wouldn't you want to be better?
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.
The Hollow Man: Trump’s Sad Little Masquerade of Manhood
Behind the bluster and red hats lies a brittle brand of masculinity—a hollow charade that cloaks cowardice, denial, and failure.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-151038838?r=4d7sow&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
One last point I'd like to make.
What all those decades of abuse amount to is attempted conversion therapy. Conducted by an entire society.
And I tried. I tried to change. I suppressed it. I donned the role and tried to play it. I joined the military and spent 20 years doing outrageously dangerous, what I thought were stereotypically masculine things...all in an attempt to change who I was. I tried and tried until I faced do-something-about-this-or-die, and I finally started doing something.
Here now, I am 7 years post transition and happier, healthier, and finally myself. My sense of identity never changed. I just hid it from everyone else and tried to hide it from myself. I was a girl. I am a woman. My confidence in my identity has only grown stronger. This is right. This is true. This is me.
Against all of you, all that time, I held to myself.
Do you think you could hold to your identity, your sense of self through the efforts of every person you knew or knew of? For that long?
I see people losing their sense of self after watching a few ads and listening to a speech and a podcast by frothing right wingers convincing them their values are not actually their values. Good people, people with strong moral and ethical backgrounds, losing themselves into the Trump cult...the maga sea of hate in a few weeks of exposure. Every belief they ever held, now subservient to The Leader.
Family values? I grabbed her pussy. Nation of laws? I could walk down 5th avenue and shoot someone. Patriot? Let's overthrow the government.
They live in that ecosystem now...any trace of who they were replaced, modified. Rationalized by the irrational. Beyond hope of recovery.
Which of us do you think is being authentic? Who was intrinsically themself, and who was made into what they are now? Which of us do you think might benefit from conversion? From convincing? From changing their mind?
Freedom to say anything doesn’t remove your personal responsibility towards society. Joe et al have created a level of influence in everyday discourse whether they like it or not. What they do with that influence will shape how people interact with each other for a generation. With that in mind they need to recognise that society isn’t like the green room of a comedy club….
I enjoyed your writing. Thank you.
Tired of people who think they can just rehash old bits from Mel Brooks movies, Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy routines and call it cutting edge comedy. It was edgy and cool when they did it, or at least as edgy and cool as it ever got, but it’s just old and tired now. Racism? Dude, that’s so 19th Century.
I imagine 2015 is the arbitrary date this person mentions because in 2016 they graduated high school and found out people don’t think it’s funny when you say “retard” and make dumb hand movements. Unless you’re Donald Trump, in which case you become president for mocking a disabled writer. God I remember that happening and thinking “that’s it, right? That’s the end of that!” Nope. If only!
You have touched close to a point here I have seen missed by a LOT of very smart people, comedians, who are sincerely trying to "get it". And it is the one about granting license. The "Just telling jokes" thing.
I am a trans woman. I am 65. All my life in this society has been a constant drum beat of how bad a person I am for being who and what I am.
How wrong, perverse, sick, ridiculous, insane, dangerous I am. A laughing stock to the extent that some cis guy who looked like I did...like my body did through no agency or desire of my own...merely aping the movements of a woman was a subject of hilarity and disapproval. Let alone actually donning clothing or such or God forbid, actually telling someone you're not sure "boy" or "man" fits you and girl or woman makes a ton more sense. That shit gets shut down pretty quick.
Every conversation with a joke about effeminate men. Every comedy routine. Every movie with a serial killer. Through the years. Everywhere. Silence of the Lambs winning an Oscar. Ace Ventura. On and on.
All these things day after day. Teaching people these lessons. Making it ok. Everyone you know taking them in and repeating them. For years and decades. How horrible you are. How...funny.
And it seeps in. You take it onboard. And you hate yourself. Shame. Guilt. Fear. All day every day.
It's honestly a wonder ANY of us survive and DON'T kill ourselves, let alone survive as functioning, compassionate, somewhere close to normal adults. Yet somehow we do. Tough road we walk, us snowflakes.
The steady rain of tiny rocks. Pebbles. Today we call them micro-aggressions. Any one of them you could shrug off. We do. All the time. But every day, multiple times a day for years and decades...falling on your shoulders and pressing you down until each new one is a struggle to lift yourself off the ground under that mountain of pebbles to crawl forward another inch. Again.
Could YOU handle that?
Those are your jokes. They are part of that rain of pebbles. Individually no big deal, collectively, a mountain. Don't tell me jokes don't matter. People repeat that shit. From you, from everyone else.
Don't tell me until you are the only one making them and a thousand of your fellows call you out on it every single fucking time and make you feel like shit every fucking single day.
Oh. Wait. That happened to YOU? You got called out on Twitter and thousands of people jumped down your throat and made you feel like a terrible person and it was traumatic and unfair cuz you were just being you...a comedian telling an innocent joke. Pitiful mistreated canceled you. Career shot. Reputation ruined.
Welcome to a hint of the daily trauma of the first five decades of my life.
Maybe...try to be the person who lifts a pebble from the pile instead, hmm? You never know what shoulders they are landing on. Someone you know. Someone you love.
Someone listening.
This is a great note, and I think I’m about to cry. My daughter is a young trans woman and while we are 100% supportive and all in, this really made clear what she goes through and we don’t know about… Thank you.
:)
Wow. That was really powerful. Thank you so much for sharing.
Some of you may think: "Gosh, that was long and repetitive and she really just kept beating that 'day after day' drum a lot".
Yes. Yes I did.
Melody, do I have your permission to reprint your note in its entirety for a piece I'm writing?
Yes, Michael, you do.
Sorry, that should have read "may I have your permission".
You may :)
Godspeed to you, Michael: https://tempo.substack.com/p/funny
This was great - thanks for sharing!
I'm seeing a fair amount of pundits pushing the narrative that Tony and the MSG rally have harmed trump's election chances, so if MAGA is unsuccessful in their attempt to steal the election, assuming by all that is good in the world they don't win outright and this narrative somehow seeps into their godawful information bubble, I don't imagine Tony coming out of this as a hero.
Rogan is a cuck. He's not funny, never was. And at least in his broniverse ( excellent word, by the way) we know where they are.
Nice essay! My husband and I love vinyl and have started seeking out old comedy records. So fun. Cheech and Chong are a blast. Carlin is the best so far---but we are still discovering. We're hoping to come across some old Redd Foxx because I hear the party albums are irreverent and raunchy and great. It is fine for comedy to evolve though. I cringe at the jokes I used to tell as a teen in the 80s (lots of gay/Aids jokes, some n-word punchlines, misogyny--because I used to be unbothered about degrading other women). I still love to laugh and am fortunate to have a hilarious husband, but I am relieved that I am a more aware (proudly woke) person now.
Wait until you listen to the album by Bill Cosby where he talks about Spanish Fly. In retrospect it's really chilling to hear him admitting to drugging women to get sex like it's H-I-larious.
You’re better and funnier than every ahole you name dropped in this article. Thanks for speaking up.
"What I have, instead, is a clear conscience about how I practice my craft" that and the fact that you have empathy is part of what makes me look forward to reading your work.
Thank you MIB.
I always go back to the Eddie Izzard Dress to Kill special joke about ORIGINAL sin, creating your own fucked up weirdness instead of relying on someone else’s old faithfuls (Eddie ov corpse not being a hate-filled arse).
I share strongly share these sentiments and while I don't listen to Rogan's show or Tony's, I've always understood when comic is clearly part of the Broniverse. I'm happy to say that their thing isn't my thing. As a comedian, as a writer or creator - wouldn't you want to be better?