Not all, but many comedians for centuries have deigned to offend. In doing so, they put hubris in perspective and on notice. No doubt the kinds of ethnic and personal remarks of comedians like the late Don Rickles have always struck a dissonant chord in some audience members, but in general, anyone going to see Rickles at the height of his career knew that offending was the nature of his comedy. Rickles belonged to a generation that produced Lenny Bruce and that fostered comedians of the next generation like George Carlin. Irreverent? Yes. Offensive to some? Yes. Funny? Definitely—but, as they say, only you’re into that kind of humor.
As many would acknowledge, being made the object of someone else’s humor is uncomfortable at the least and, at the worst, well, here is a long list: objectionable, abusive, reprehensible, and repugnant. If we look at any of those adjectives, we can find in them a hint of wounded pride or perspective. We can also find a hint of wounded identity and exposed insecurity. Who wants to have either identity denigrated or personal security breached? In defense of our perceived personhood, we tend to take offense. And then we cast aspersions, sometimes casting them hard as in the current milieu of “cancel culture.”
But comedians on stage aren’t the only people who have to avoid hard-cast aspersions that hurt more than thrown tomatos. Now, people throughout society have to duck after they comment. Where did this originate?
I suppose a historian of free speech could point out that every age has had cancel culture and that not only comedians of the time, but also any outspoken person could be subject to cancelling, sometimes permanently, as in killed very dead. When the powers-that-be have no sense of humor and a heightened sense of identity and importance, any comment can put the commenter in jeopardy.
So, to ask when all this politically correct, don’t-offend-me milieu began leads to a simple answer: It’s always been there, at least as long as people have made fun of other people. I don’t know whether Neanderthals, Denisovans, or any of our hominin relatives had a sense of humor, but I assume that humans have long had one, especially since the time when languages became codified or standardized.
Now a word from our esteemed Teller of Anecdotes: For years I passed by the lab of a colleague who was known for his lectures interspersed with humor. Laughter cascaded into the hall outside that room, and in walking by, I would smile, knowing that students were enjoying their learning. And then, over the years, I began to notice less laughter and more silence. When my colleague announced to me his intention to retire in his early sixties, he said that “students aren’t the same. No one can say anything and no one gets humor, no one gets a joke. Teaching just isn’t fun anymore; it’s time for me to move on.”
Yep. Lack of humor. Two reasons: 1) Humor always has a context, a knowledge of history, culture and psychology and 2) Humor requires an audience with an open mind, if not totally open then at least cracked like a boiled egg’s shell. When students don’t know history, culture, or psychology, they have little reference for a joke. That’s not unusual for any of us. If you listen for example to an old radio broadcast of comedians like Bob Hope, Jack Benny, or their contemporaries, you’ll hear some jokes that make little sense because their contexts were the current events and people in a time unfamiliar to the twenty-first century listeners. Yet in their live radio shows, one can hear genuine laughter from the audiences who got the jokes.
But cultural context aside, consider that second parameter for humor, an open mind. Minds are sealed by the hubris and self-identity not only of individuals but also of the favored class, a class that gets its societal power from a self-assumed elitism. And since the young of every generation grow up under the influence of elders in charge of social acceptance, they fall into an intellectual line, making them likely to condemn what their elders condemn. When someone like Lenny Bruce comes along, the powers-that-be impose restrictions.
In an interview with ESPN’s Colin Cowherd, Jerry Seinfeld expressed what my now retired colleague expressed, that college students have a sense of humor tempered by or even eliminated by political correctness. Seinfeld said, “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC.’” Seinfeld continued by saying, “They [the college students] just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice’…they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”*
Colleges. Universities. Now they’re at the forefront of humorless cancel culture. And cancel culture means that no free exchange of ideas can exist without persecution. The folly is the lack of folly. A free sense of humor is dead. There’s no room for George Carlin or Don Rickles unless the comedian makes fun of individuals in a class of persecuted or estranged outsiders. No one in a protected group can be subjected to humorous denigration because “there is no such thing.” All satire has to be approved satire.
But as I said, there’s nothing new in this. Voltaire, were he alive today, would agree. Free-ranging humor is dead because satire must be approved; humor, controlled. The hall outside that retired colleague’s lab is probably always silent. That stream of laughter has been completely dammed. And with the demise of humor we have entered a new age of mind control and protected hubris. Boring for the openminded, but no doubt satisfying for those within the sensitive protected group.
And as in every past age of protected hubris, the end of the age comes with a fall. The dam that creates the reservoir of unheard humor eventually breaks under a natural pressure. “Pride,” as we can read in the Book of Proverbs, “goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Just who are the proud and haughty who have constructed the dams blocking the humor of our times? I can’t name or make fun of them, of course, without risking cancellation.
Notes:
*Falcone, Dana rose. 8 June 2015. “Jerry Seinfeld: College students don’t know what they hell they’re talking about.” Entertainment. Online at https://ew.com/article/2015/06/08/jerry-seinfeld-politically-correct-college-campuses/ Accessed February 12, 2021.
Why did I write this? This morning I saw a story about a professor who lost his job because he asked a question. One of his students, and then a host of people who were not his students, cried foul to the university (St. John's). In their acquiescence to the pressure from those who would cancel a university professor for simply posing a question, regardless of its nature, the school fired him without considering the context of the question and the intellectual conversation it was designed to stimulate. Instead, it chose to walk down the path of those who without evidence called the professor a racist. When universities shut down the free exchange of ideas, the world loses any chance of escape from the cycle of freedom and censorship as one generation's free thinkers succumb to the whims of its censors who, in turn, succumb to erasure by a future generation. Cancellers beware lest you find yourselves disdained by your progeny.
As many would acknowledge, being made the object of someone else’s humor is uncomfortable at the least and, at the worst, well, here is a long list: objectionable, abusive, reprehensible, and repugnant. If we look at any of those adjectives, we can find in them a hint of wounded pride or perspective. We can also find a hint of wounded identity and exposed insecurity. Who wants to have either identity denigrated or personal security breached? In defense of our perceived personhood, we tend to take offense. And then we cast aspersions, sometimes casting them hard as in the current milieu of “cancel culture.”
But comedians on stage aren’t the only people who have to avoid hard-cast aspersions that hurt more than thrown tomatos. Now, people throughout society have to duck after they comment. Where did this originate?
I suppose a historian of free speech could point out that every age has had cancel culture and that not only comedians of the time, but also any outspoken person could be subject to cancelling, sometimes permanently, as in killed very dead. When the powers-that-be have no sense of humor and a heightened sense of identity and importance, any comment can put the commenter in jeopardy.
So, to ask when all this politically correct, don’t-offend-me milieu began leads to a simple answer: It’s always been there, at least as long as people have made fun of other people. I don’t know whether Neanderthals, Denisovans, or any of our hominin relatives had a sense of humor, but I assume that humans have long had one, especially since the time when languages became codified or standardized.
Now a word from our esteemed Teller of Anecdotes: For years I passed by the lab of a colleague who was known for his lectures interspersed with humor. Laughter cascaded into the hall outside that room, and in walking by, I would smile, knowing that students were enjoying their learning. And then, over the years, I began to notice less laughter and more silence. When my colleague announced to me his intention to retire in his early sixties, he said that “students aren’t the same. No one can say anything and no one gets humor, no one gets a joke. Teaching just isn’t fun anymore; it’s time for me to move on.”
Yep. Lack of humor. Two reasons: 1) Humor always has a context, a knowledge of history, culture and psychology and 2) Humor requires an audience with an open mind, if not totally open then at least cracked like a boiled egg’s shell. When students don’t know history, culture, or psychology, they have little reference for a joke. That’s not unusual for any of us. If you listen for example to an old radio broadcast of comedians like Bob Hope, Jack Benny, or their contemporaries, you’ll hear some jokes that make little sense because their contexts were the current events and people in a time unfamiliar to the twenty-first century listeners. Yet in their live radio shows, one can hear genuine laughter from the audiences who got the jokes.
But cultural context aside, consider that second parameter for humor, an open mind. Minds are sealed by the hubris and self-identity not only of individuals but also of the favored class, a class that gets its societal power from a self-assumed elitism. And since the young of every generation grow up under the influence of elders in charge of social acceptance, they fall into an intellectual line, making them likely to condemn what their elders condemn. When someone like Lenny Bruce comes along, the powers-that-be impose restrictions.
In an interview with ESPN’s Colin Cowherd, Jerry Seinfeld expressed what my now retired colleague expressed, that college students have a sense of humor tempered by or even eliminated by political correctness. Seinfeld said, “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC.’” Seinfeld continued by saying, “They [the college students] just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice’…they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”*
Colleges. Universities. Now they’re at the forefront of humorless cancel culture. And cancel culture means that no free exchange of ideas can exist without persecution. The folly is the lack of folly. A free sense of humor is dead. There’s no room for George Carlin or Don Rickles unless the comedian makes fun of individuals in a class of persecuted or estranged outsiders. No one in a protected group can be subjected to humorous denigration because “there is no such thing.” All satire has to be approved satire.
But as I said, there’s nothing new in this. Voltaire, were he alive today, would agree. Free-ranging humor is dead because satire must be approved; humor, controlled. The hall outside that retired colleague’s lab is probably always silent. That stream of laughter has been completely dammed. And with the demise of humor we have entered a new age of mind control and protected hubris. Boring for the openminded, but no doubt satisfying for those within the sensitive protected group.
And as in every past age of protected hubris, the end of the age comes with a fall. The dam that creates the reservoir of unheard humor eventually breaks under a natural pressure. “Pride,” as we can read in the Book of Proverbs, “goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Just who are the proud and haughty who have constructed the dams blocking the humor of our times? I can’t name or make fun of them, of course, without risking cancellation.
Notes:
*Falcone, Dana rose. 8 June 2015. “Jerry Seinfeld: College students don’t know what they hell they’re talking about.” Entertainment. Online at https://ew.com/article/2015/06/08/jerry-seinfeld-politically-correct-college-campuses/ Accessed February 12, 2021.
Why did I write this? This morning I saw a story about a professor who lost his job because he asked a question. One of his students, and then a host of people who were not his students, cried foul to the university (St. John's). In their acquiescence to the pressure from those who would cancel a university professor for simply posing a question, regardless of its nature, the school fired him without considering the context of the question and the intellectual conversation it was designed to stimulate. Instead, it chose to walk down the path of those who without evidence called the professor a racist. When universities shut down the free exchange of ideas, the world loses any chance of escape from the cycle of freedom and censorship as one generation's free thinkers succumb to the whims of its censors who, in turn, succumb to erasure by a future generation. Cancellers beware lest you find yourselves disdained by your progeny.
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