Is Hannah Gadsby Funny?

 

That's the basic sentiment that comedian Dave Chappelle postulated in his response to the recent backlash of his latest stand up comedy special.  In an effort to appease any trans or otherwise LGBTQ activists protesting his show, Mr. Chappelle announced that he would agree to meet with them under a few conditions:

1. Anyone he meets with busy have seen his stand up special The Closer in its entirety.

2. They must meet him at a place and a time of his choosing.

3. They must ADMIT that Hannah Gadsby is not funny

I'm thinking that Dave threw that last condition in just as a way to rankle Ms. Gadsby since she is one of Dave's most vocal critics of his show.

If any of the people who are following this situation were to be asked this question, most of the responses would range from "HELL YEAH!!!" to "FUUUUUCK NO!!!!" with very little falling in-between.  Of course, if one were to compare the stand up acts of either of these two, Mr. Chappelle would easily come out the winner.  His venues are always well attended with pretty much every member of that audience roaring with laughter. Meanwhile, Ms. Gadsby's are also adequately crowded but the laughter sounds tepid and reserved at best.  

That being said, I'm not really on board with declaring a comedian being "not funny" as though it were a statement of fact.  Hannah might not be as big a draw as Dave and is probably very VERY far down most people's "Funniest People of All Time" list.  However, at the same time, she does have her audience who does appreciate everything she says and does in her routine.  You'll have a hard time convincing her she's "not funny" after she's been in an auditorium full of people laughing and cheering at most of what she's said.  This goes for every comedian that's ever been declared "not funny" by pockets of the general populous such as Carrot Top, Galleghar, or Jay Leno to name a few.

As I see it, the issue here is not about the talents (and/or non-talents) of Hannah.  The issue causing the big cultural divide here is the OVER-INFLATED HYPE around her comedy routine.  Too many critics (possibly paid off or coerced in some way) seem to be artificially trying to prop up Hannah Gadsby as this "...bold new fresh approach that will revolutionize comedy..." or something to that extent.  What these critics fail to realize is that is not how paradigms in mediums get shifted. It has to happen organically as a choice of the people in the audiences.  A quick check of just the ratings on the website Rottontomatoes can demonstrate this point easily.

The results are inversed.  With Dave Chappelle, the critics are giving him bad reviews in order to bring his rating down while the general audience is giving him much more favourable reviews.  For Gadsby, her critics are heaping praise upon her to get those numbers up. Sadly for her though, the audience score does not agree and is much MUCH lower.  In terms of her place and her legacy in the history of comedy, this makes her the exact polar opposite of the great Lenny Bruce.

Back in his day, the late 50's to mid 60's, Lenny Bruce was quite a controversial figure.  He absolutely pioneered the "stand up philosopher" approach to comedy in which he unabashedly spoke his mind and never backed down.  His routine would go on to influence comedians like George Carlin, Mort Saul, Richard Pryor, and pretty much every other comedian to come after him.  Dave Chappelle's stand up is absolutely on the same trail that Lenny blazed.  Really, he was the bold fresh revolutionary that todays critics are purporting Hannah Gadsby to be.  However, there is a significant difference Lenny and Hannah.  

In Lenny's day, he was NOT being praised by critics.  In fact, his harshest critics were always having him arrested.  He was always getting hauled in to the nearest police precinct under penalty of violating something called "obscenity laws" or some such trumped up charge.  He was arrested and tried so often that many of his later stand up routines were just of him reading verbatim the transcripts of any one of his trials.

Thankfully for Mr. Bruce and comedy in general, the people were on his side.  Not only did people flock to his shows time and again, many of those so-called "obscenity laws" were relaxed which helped pave the way for many bold comedians I mentioned above and many more.

The exact opposite seems to be happening as far as Hannah's concerned though. As demonstrated by the Rottontomates score above, it's the critics that are with her while the vast majority of the people........... not so much.  

I'd even say that the people are more so siding with Dave Chappelle in this debacle over his Netflix special.  He's the Lenny Bruce in this situation. While not being charged and arrested, he's certainly under threat of what's called "cancellation" that meaning he could have more difficulty finding performance work in the future.  But that's the risk he's willing to take to exercise the right to free expression.  

Hannah Gadsby, on the other hand, has taken it upon herself to reiterate what the mobs protesting

Chappelle's special keep saying.  They say that his jokes are "harmful" to the trans community and so his special MUST be pulled from Netflix immediately.  I am on "Team Chappelle" for this very reason.  There is no such thing as a "harmful" joke.  People are only "harmed" by a joke if they make the conscious choice to let a joke feel harmful to them.  A person choosing to feel "harmed" by a joke is certainly not the comedian's fault.  Even if the comedian's intended purpose was to deliberately hurt the feelings of his chosen targets, in the interest of free expression, the listener is still free to interpret that joke in a way that does not feel hurtful.  That person is also free to not frequent to auditorium in which the comedian is performing nor watch it on any medium.  If more people understood how this freedom works, the backlash against Dave Chappelle would not be nearly as insidious as it is now.

Despite me being entirely on the side of Chappelle here, this does not mean that I am fully condemning Hannah Gadsby.  I certainly don't dislike her as a comic and I wish her no ill will at all.  Like I said earlier, her audience may not be as big or enthusiastic as Dave's, but she does have an audience that she entertains on a regular basis.  If she can hold on to this niche market then she has a long enjoyable career in stand up ahead of her and nothing that I or anyone can say will take that away from her.  But, as the question is posed in the title of this blogpost: Is Hannah Gadsby Funny?  That is up to individual interpretation of course.  If you personally enjoy her stand up, by all means see her do a live performance. If you don't, save your time and money by avoiding her venues altogether.  Everyone concerned will be happiest with this arrangement.

I will end this post with saplings of each of the aforementioned comedian's routines. They are all being presented here objectively and you the reader can judge for yourself which one suites you best.

Have fun and keep laughing.

Jon Lovitz has something to say

 I was poking around the inter webs recently (as many many many of us tend to do ESPECIALLY under Covid lockdowns) when I stumbled upon an article that piqued my interest just a tad.

The link to that article is here.

As a birthday present to myself, I will make a blog post (as I've done here and on the main blog) about exactly why this article caught my eye in this way.

Firstly, I'd like to state that his comparison of what we call "cancel culture" to McCarthyism is relatively accurate.

"urm............ duuuuuh........... mick.... coffee-ism.......... durrrr........ wutts dat?"

Oh right. I should realize that there could be a number of people reading this that are either to young or just not so astute about history. So, I need to take some time to make sure everyone is as informed a possible on this subject before continuing.

What Jon Lovitz has done here is compare today's practice of getting people in trouble for a social media post or just anything said in public (or even in private) to that of the House Unamerican Activites Committee hearings that Senator Joe McCarthy set up un the late 1940's and continued to use well into the 1950's.  You see, at the time, Joe felt that there may be too many communists in the United States making concerted efforts to subvert America.  His mission was to root them all out and neutralize them whether it be through deportation (for anyone not born on American soil) or to suppress someone's ability to work as a professional.  This "red scare" that Senator Joe was pushing had the hugest impact on Hollywood where so many creative person's were called to testify before his committee of very VERY partial judges.  A testifying person only had two choices: 1) to "admit" to being a communist subversive, or 2) give the names of everyone they knew who had "subversive leanings".  Worse still was that the criteria to be called to testify was simply to be "suspected" of communist sympathies. If, 30 years ago, you had been in a Grade 2 class with someone now under investigation (and you hadn't even seen of thought about that person since), that would've been enough to make you a suspect.  It was a very bleak time in American history full of human rights violations that should never be repeated ever again.

So hopefully you can see how publicly condemning someone for 10 year old tweets or just hitting the like button on something J.K. Rowling posted is similar to what Joe was doing all those decades ago. Although, one key difference is that back then it was being back then it was a sitting senator carrying out this suppression. In this era, we're just doing that to each other. At least Joe and everyone on that HUAC panel were getting paid their salary for their efforts. The people forming online mobs (or in some cases "in the street" mobs) are getting.......... what exactly? Nothing but a release of emotional masturbation, that's all.  (um.... hey.... to anyone coming on here to say "nO nO nO wE aRe FiGhTiNg FoR sOcIaL pRoGrEsS... yeahNO....... it's emotional masturbation. Own it.)

As you can guess, I'm definitely on side with Mr. Lovitz. I also dislike the chilling effect of self-censorship this mob rule has brought onto politics, art, and free speech in general.  The proponents of this mob rule even have to gall to profess that they're "holding people accountable" (this is of course more of that emotional masturbation I mentioned earlier).  It's somewhat ironic that these same people have a problem with an independent journalist known as Andy Gno. He has taken it upon himself to document and report on the activities of Black Block Antifa and frequently does so on his twitter account.  Many of his critics say that Andy presents a highly skewed image of Antifa because he's got a very pro-conservative bias against them, thus all of his reports are at the very least suspect.  Oh ok.  I'm not here to defend nor condemn Andy, so for the sake of argument let's say these allegations about him are true.  From his perspective, he considers himself to be............. wait for it..................... holding people accountable. If his push for accountability is a highly prejudicial overreach based on ideological biases, then so is the other push.  In a truly free society, NEITHER push for "accountability" (which is merely an entire populous acting as judge, jury, and executioner) should be happening.

Anyway, I brought up this whole thing with Jon Lovitz not to merely profess my alignment with him on this topic.  I do so because just a few years back, Jon was saying something different entirely.

I think we sadly can all remember the huge tragedy that happened at Charlottesville back in August of 2017.

It shocked and horrified many people who watched it on TV and online, and it surely left plenty of physical and mental scars on people who were actually there.  It was after this tragedy that the efforts to suppress speech and expression really got ramped up.  People were calling for the curtailing of speech that upset them. The most extreme example that I saw at the time was the United Nations actually suggesting that then President Trump repeal the First Amendment because "we're afraid of what those alt-right thugs will say next".  Online, Jon Lovitz himself was one of those voices calling for such suppression. "NAZIS SHOULD SHUT UP!!!", was the basic sentiment of his tweets that day.  I remember getting into a twitter feud with him about that very thing. I reminded him that denying speech for anybody, no matter how abhorrent their views of humanity are, leaves too much wiggle room for the suppression of other people's speech.  Well, needless to say, he and everyone on his feed that supported his position were not in the mood to hear any constitutional platitudes that day.  Things got heated for sure, but Im proud to say that neither of us got nasty. We didn't sink to ad hominem and we certainly didn't point to either of our ethnicities in an effort to shut each other down.  Yes, Jon Lovitz is a Jewish man and so it is quite understandable that he would be upset over a line of people with nazi sympathies chanting their mantras in the streets.  All the same, I felt he needed to be reminded that the US constitution has to work for everyone all the time no matter what.  Eventually, he did calm down to a point where both of us could come to an agreement.  I took a screen shot of the tweet exchange that ended our heated discussion on what I think is a positive note:

There it is. He certainly didn't want to throw away the First Amendment. He just didn't enjoy hearing those alt-right people chanting.  That was his biggest concern at the time.  I think maybe now that he's seeing the big chilling effect that anti-free speech sentiment in the wake of Charlottesville has wrought, he can see just how important it is to uphold free speech rather than protect the feelings of those who have trouble handling words.

For real, the absolutely all time dumbest notion to have emerged from that event was that "words can be violent and cause harm therefore such violent words must be suppressed for everyone's safety".  BULLSHIT!!!  Words cannot be violent or hurt anyone or anything. They just sit there being words.  Words are either a brief expulsion of carbon dioxide and water vapour from the mouth, a splash of ink on a sheet of paper, or a tiny swath of digital bits taking up an equally tiny amount of bandwidth on a website.  That's all they are.  In fact, the only time in the entire history of Planet Earth and the universe that words have ever ever EVER and I mean EVER caused any harm was back in 1989.  It was in a made-for TV movie in which Don Adams reprised his Maxwell Smart character that he first made popular in 1965. It was called Get Smart Again.

In that show, the chief is fed up with trying to exchange secret messages to Max through the Cone of Silence because it has always malfunctioned one way or another.  However, one of the engineers at Control Headquarters is very proud of his new invention.  He calls it the Hall of Hush.

How it works is that, whenever either of them says something, the words physically manifest into the room instead of being heard. This way they can foil any bugging devices that their rival KAOS might've planted.

The problem quickly becomes apparent when Max fills the entire room full of words due to his rambling about the merits of this invention.  The room becomes so full of words that the only way Max and the chief can have any room to move is by eating some of the words.

Of course, having to eat a word or two wouldn't count as having pain inflicted upon oneself.  However, just before they start eating, the chief does inform Max of the pain he's feeling.

Right there.  A headache.  That is the only pain ever inflicted upon a person by a word.  A fictional chief in charge of a fictional organization professed to having a headache caused by all of the words physically floating around their heads.  Although, this being a show based on fiction, those words were added afterwards through technology so the actors never really experienced any headache from those words anyway.

So that's the ONLY example of words causing pain. Any other time anyone has claimed to be "harmed by words", it was only because they allowed themselves to feel harmed by those words.  We all have our own agency. We all have the ability to assign as much or as little power to words as we see fit.  That was the philosophy of (certainly who I consider to be) the patron saint of free speech the great Lenny Bruce.  If that brave and courageous man were alive to see the social media mobs demanding the "cancellation" of people who say things that upset others, he would be beyond horrified.  I think, for the good and prosperity of humanity, we need to return and emulate Lenny Bruce's philosophy as much as possible.

I'll end this post with a classic performance of Mr. Lovitz. For his commitment to free expression, he deserves to have his best work showcased for the world to see.  Whether the entire world is reading this blogpost or not is immaterial. Enjoy!  

 

 

F@{K MITCH MCCONNELL

 

No no no! I don't mean have sexual intercourse with him! Yuck! Gross! By that, I mean that Mr. Mitch should NOT be a senator, but rather he should be locked in a giant safe which is locked in a bigger giant safe which is itself locked in an even bigger gigantic safe which is then buried............ on an asteroid made out of the stinkiest rhinosehraus shit that's at least 10,000,000,000,000,000 light years from Earth. Then that asteroid should be sucked into the biggest and least escapable black hole the universe has ever produced. That way, this frog-joweled ersatz despot can never bother any of us ever again.

"Why should this happen?", you ask. I will get to that by the end of this blog post. Yes, it will definitely include stuff about Donald Trump, the 2020 election, and Trump's last days in office.  Sorry about that. I know we're all sick to death of see him and talking about him by now, but I need to say what I'm about to say so here it goes.

If you need to know my basic opinion of Trump, you can check out this old blog post of mine I made back in 2015 when he started campaigning.  You can also watch this old video I made in an attempt to do an impression of an "anti-sjw youtuber". 

(Drink a shot of zambuka every time you cringe).

I'm sure some people reading this might want to ask me if I think "the 2020 election was stolen from Trump due to massive fraud".  My response to that is I........................... don't care.  I think both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are bad choices to be president each in their own way.  If Trump and his "legal" team had somehow managed to flip enough electoral votes to Republican, then stupid dumb Donny

would stay on as president.  But, with the election results staying as they are, it means that stupid old creaky old Joe Biden becomes the president.  This contest was almost literally the Giant Douche/Turd Sandwich confrontation that South Park made an episode about. No matter which one of those two got in, America (and the world really) is in for 4 more years of absolute bullshit so I saw no need to "pick a side" for either one of them.  I can show you who I WAS rooting for with this one meme I made:

In my opinion, that result would've rescued America from this quagmire.  But I digress.

My approach to this period of time is from a free speech angle.  How will things of that nature go along under Joe Biden's administration?  Well, one big unfortunate development is the likes of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez demanding there be a list made of Trump's supporters and that they be essentially driven out of society.  

She, of course, is doing this in the wake of that crowd of people storming the Capitol building at that Trump rally.  Granted, that storming was the stupidest thing anybody could've done at that moment.

 From what I could see, these people thought they were having their big patriotic "throwing tea in the Boston Harbor" moment which is why they were taking selfies throughout the whole ordeal and posting them to social media.  However, what they should've realized was that this was actually their "jock fraternity demolishing the nerd's frat house" moment.  If you can recall that moment from the movie Revenge of the Nerds, you can see what I mean.

Anyway, as egregious as their actions were, resorting to full blown McCarthyism never helps anyone.  You can NOT have Mumbly Joe calling for unity in all of his pre-written speeches and then turn around to criminalize a huge percentage of Americans because of their opinions. That violates pretty much every constitutional amendment one can name.  Thankfully, not all Democrats (with more power in all the branches of government) feel this way.  Soon after AOC proposed the beginnings of her own HUAC (House Unwoke Activities Committee) hearings, another member of congress and even part of the "squad" Rashida Tlaib stepped forward and presented some legislation to contradict that.

I don't agree with all of Rashida's politics, but I'm in 100% agreement with her on this. Leave everyone's civil liberties alone. Expressing support for someone should not and never be an arrest able offence.

So, anyway, that's a little taste of free speech under Joe Biden's administration so far.  How would things have faired under a Trump 2nd term?  Well, one big example we all saw was his mishandling of Colin Kaepernick.  However one feels about Colin's gesture to disrespect the national anthem for his own reasons, it is his constitutional right to do so.  As I'm sure we can recall, Trump went on a rampage about this calling him a "son of a bitch" and demanding the NFL fire him.  Geez, talk about government overreach, imposing on a privately owned industry and demanding that a football player denounce his beliefs or lose his job. The same way compelled speech is not free speech, so too that compelled patriotism is not patriotism.  Trump should've left Kaepernick alone and kept doing his job.

But, the MOST heinous assault on free speech happened just one or two days before Trump left office, and this is where stupid evil Mitch comes in.

Trump had announced that he was going to pardon a huge number of people as his last act before stepping down.  A tremendous social media campaign was launched to convince him to drop the charges America had imposed on the embattled journalist Julian Assange thus setting him free.  I won't explain here why Assange is in such trouble and why he needs to be set free now. I'll just post a link to this article I found that gives a good overview of his situation.  The absolute basic issue is that Assange was essentially arrested for doing his job as a journalist by exposing war crimes in Iraq committed by Americans. So keeping him in jail is a threat to true journalism everywhere. If he is allowed to be detained even one second after I've typed this sentence, it means that the only "journalism" allowed are government sanctioned talking pieces who only praise the "deal leaders" in charge whether in public view or shadowy.

Miracle of miracles, the social media campaign had reached Trump's eyes and he was actually prepared to put Julian on his list of pardons.  This is when Flying Monkey Mitch McConnell swooped in and told him "NO"! Mitch even went so far as to threaten Trump (at the time a sitting president) with full indictment in the senate if he freed Assange.  So, Trump felt he had no choice but to deny freedom to Assange yet again.  His acquiescence to appease the senate was a useless gesture because they're going to try to convict him in the senate anyway no matter what.  Trump should've delivered a huge parting blow by pardoning Assange so that the esteemed journalist can get back to work and expose the traitorous actions of the deep state actors in Washington and thus create a better chance to have THEM locked up once and for all.

So, freedom and democracy are dying both because supposed "tough as nails" Trump is actually an easily frightened coward...

"...Brave brave Sir Donny..."

...but also because Bitch McConnell is a deeply evil man who should not be in power.  Of course it's not just him. There are plenty of black-hearted deep state officials working in Washington and in governments all over the world who want to squash freedom in the pursuit of power.  If we the people want to have a better and more free world, we need to champion the honest altruistic heroes like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden while holding big billowing flames to the feet of deep state tyrants like #BitchMcConnell (please get that trending) and/or the neo-McCarthyist scolds like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

Keep up the good fight, everyone.  The next four years are going to be just as long as the passed 4 years. Buckle up.