Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke
12 Jan 2019.

A few months ago, a stand-up comedian named Nimesh Patel was doing a set for a student audience at Columbia University. He told a joke about how a gay homeless man he knew should choose between his two oppressions. It was not a tasteless or mean-spirited joke. Regardless, the organizers walked on stage during his set and asked him to leave. They felt his humour was disrespectful. The irony, that what they were doing was the ultimate in disrespect, was lost on them. It would have been a watershed moment had just one audience member stood up and shouted "Get off the stage, you stupid cunts." Alas, we cannot expect common sense from university students nowadays.

It's just as bad on Facebook, where morons denounce Seinfeld for its 'soup Nazi' jokes. Bringing this level of scrutiny, where people take old comedy and deconstruct it for 'offensive' content, is sick. Why are so-called 'woke' people so afraid of comedy? Easy. Because they are too stupid to understand context. Can't understand irony. Don't realize that making a joke about something is not the same as attacking it.

So there probably couldn't be a better time for an all-queer stand-up comedy series. Meet Out on Stage, from TLA Releasing, a six-episode series showcasing up-and-coming queer comedians. Bitches will bitch that most of them are white and male. It should not matter. Funny is funny, a rare gift that most people on earth do not have, so can we just take a moment to celebrate queer comedy, please? I can't help but quoting my favourite lines from this show. Like: 

As a kid I would watch To Catch a Predator to learn how to catch a predator. So as a kid I might have taken naked photos of myself and then sent them to older men in order to lure them to my house. And the most fucked up thing is that no one came over. I think its because pedophiles want to rob you of your innocence and nobody wants a slutty kid. - Chris Bryant

A transgender girl called me a fag the other day. We're friends, but I had no idea what to say back. '"You're a fag, Joe," she said. "Oh yeah, well, good luck … on your journey." I don't know what the rules of ball-busting are with trans people. Even 'ball-busting' the phrase sounds like a problem right out of the gate. But she called me a fag, I had to say something. All I could think to say was "Takes one to know one, little miss wrong genitals." - Joe Dosch

I don't know why people don't like gay people. Are you aware that they are killing gay people in Chechnya right now? I don't know what to do. I definitely feel like the community is looking to me for answers. So I shared it twice on Facebook. - Jonathan Rowell

Oh. My. God! Jokes about predators and transpersons and killing gays in Chechnya? How dare they? Reading them, these statements may cause offence and outrage and indignation.  Which I suppose is my point. Stand-up comedy is meant to be listened to as it is performed, not read off a page. No other context can matter.

Allow me to summarize with a quote from writer Konstantin Kisin, who recently said, "The underlying assumptions of social justice censorship are that words are a form of violence, that a subjective interpretation matters more than the speaker's intent … Comedians use lies to tell the truth—the notion that the exaggerations, stories and carefully crafted falsehoods we deliver on stage should be taken literally will be the death knell of comedy." Well, I hope the producers of the excellent Out On Stage are not stymied by such literal thinking. As we used to say when we were kids, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."