Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Sebby, maybe you just missed the post below, but your (lack of a) response leads me to think that complaining about cancel culture is a way to avoid discussing the very real bad things that some people do, and instead to talk in a vague way about free speech. Your commitment to free speech would be more convincing if you tried to deal with what actually happened with Adam Rapoport, instead of using a phony victimization of him. YMMV.
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I’ll reply twice...
My prior reply got me thinking, what is the impact of cancel culture on humor? Unquestionably negative.
And humor is a way people from different backgrounds can find common ground and, more importantly, a way for victims to fight back.
I watched Chappelle’s 8:46 and felt the need to go thru his best bits from his Comedy Central show.
The stuff holds up 15 years later. Genius. He skewers, mocks, and shows the abject stupidity of racism at a level I think only Richard Pryor has previously approached.
But could he make that show today? No.
That’s tragic. Because as teaching moments go, when my child has watched that show, The Lesson Stuck. The question the show demands any kid ask is, “Why would anyone hate people of another color?”
And as a parent you can answer, as I have, “Because bigots are idiots. Like the idiots in the skits. That’s why.”
If we geld comedy in deference to cancel culture idiocy, we lose one of the most potent weapons against all forms of bigotry.
You can soberly decry bigotry all day long, and if that’s the exclusive method, you’ll exhaust and bore people. Alternatively, you can do some of that while also mocking it, and if mock it well, in the moment it takes the listener to laugh, you’ve taken away 70% or more of the bigot’s claim to credibility. That which can be effectively mocked is shown to be weak.
But you can’t do both if the people who are doing the sober messaging are officiously alleging bigotry on the part of the humorists doing the mocking.
