I don't have very much sympathy for comics who feel they are being "cancelled" because of puerile jokes. They never have been funny except to a small audience that revels in this ribald banter. I hadn't heard of Jerry Sadowitz until he was called out at the Fringe festival. I doubt I will find him funny if I bother to listen to see what follows his homophobic, misogynistic and racist rants, but I'm sure others will. Maybe they should put warning labels on these comics like they do rap albums so you know in advance what to expect?
Personally, I find none of this funny. I tried to watch Dave Chappelle's act, The Closer. He had faced similar "persecution." It wasn't the trans jokes that bothered me so much as it was the way he characterized women. Netflix tried to use the same argument that not everyone will like or agree with what they provide on their streaming service, but let's face it very few people want to listen to this crap anymore and those that do are primarily watching it for the shock value. There's nothing particularly funny about constantly referring to women as c_nts, and his show was littered with such references.
I know it has become a kind of "lingua comica." Ricky Gervais calls everyone c_nts. I suppose it is quite common in Britain, at least that's the impression you get watching his sitcoms. Gervais spent a whole episode of his terribly self-serving After Life on the word, determined to get Kath to use it. Comics seem to work on the premise that if you say a word often enough it loses its bite, which doesn't make much sense. Anyway, it is very doubtful you could get away with such banter in a workplace today, which Gervais likes to use for his settings, as persons are much more sensitive to this kind of talk. Most persons were never comfortable with this kind of banter, they just learned to live with it. Now, persons are speaking out, much to the chagrin of comics.
It's kind of funny to watch these comics so strenuously defend themselves and other comics. They seem to believe they have carte blanche whenever they get up on stage, but they have always faced heckling, especially in stand-up routines, so why such thin skins now? I suppose it is because they stand to lose money. Chappelle, Gervais, Louis C.K. and others are multi-millionaires. Chappelle used to joke that this new found wealth changed the way he looked at politics.
As it turns out, it did. He helped block a low-income development project in his neighborhood by speaking out at a city council meeting on the project. He threatened to pull the plug on a comedy club he was fronting if the city went ahead with the project. It seems he shared the same fear of his wealthy neighbors that the affordable housing project might lower the property value of their homes. His spokesperson fired back that the development was just a sham to get affordable housing grants, arguing over the generic design of the housing. She said that Dave isn't against affordable housing per se. If that is the case then maybe he wants to hire an architect to design better looking low-incoming development projects in his neighborhood?
There used to be a time comics really struggled to be heard. Sadowitz still struggles for visibility. He isn't in the same stratospheric financial club as his contemporaries, but they stick up for him, because they think any attack against any comic will "cheapen" their acts. The schtick these days being "cancel culture." Even John Cleese has railed against this wokeness in contemporary society.
What lurks behind these complaints is the sad realization that many of this comedians' jokes haven't aged well. Mostly they appeal to audiences their same age, who still find some humor in these ribald jokes. These comics constantly lament that they can't reach a younger audience, but they couldn't reach a young audience anyway because they make absolutely no effort to identify with them. Instead, they attack Millennials any chance they get.
It isn't the sexual content of the jokes that is bothersome, it is the way it is specifically directed at certain groups. I remember hearing Robin Williams years ago and he made me laugh till I cried with his sexual jokes. He often pointed to his own inadequacies, which many of us shared. He rarely made fun at other persons' expense, and this is why his humor transcended generations.
Much of the male comedy we see today is derived from resentment, which these comics believe they share with other males in the audience. These comics feel men are no longer free to converse with women in the jocular way they would like, and so they lash out at women for stifling their creativity and libido. They don't understand this whole trans thing, so they make fun of it like some Vaudeville act, and then are stupefied when some in the audience don't find it funny. Same goes for co-opting stereotypical accents.
There just isn't that much room for these types of jokes these days and so the promoters of the Fringe festival did what any promoter would do, drop an act that received an unprecedented number of complaints. Sadowitz may not like it, but that's the way it is. Just think of it as a hook pulling a bad comic off the stage.
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