Nothing says “the holidays are here” like members of Wokescold Nation going out of their way to suck the fun out of virtually everything they can get their joyless little paws on.
They have been coming after comedy for a while now. I’ve been writing about it for the last year or so as they have stepped up their efforts, most recently in my Morning Briefing back in September.
It is a mystery to me why a college education costs so much these days, as we are churning out some real dullards for all that money. Zillions of dollars later, we have a nation of thirty-somethings who don’t know what either “context” or “subjective” means.
There have been a few comedy-related incidents in recent weeks that indicate the leftist humorless disease is spreading.
One is an incident that happened last year but just recently came to light.
Former America’s Got Talent judge Gabrielle Union claimed she was cut from the show after urging managers to report moments of “toxic culture,” including a joke from comedian Jay Leno she deemed offensive.
Oh.
Only a severely emotionally-stunted moron would go from “I didn’t like that joke,” to “It’s a ‘toxic culture’ because when I tattled about it my bosses didn’t do anything.”
Here’s Leno’s big offense:
Beyond the personal criticism, the two were upset with how other offensive issues were not addressed, including reports of an offensive joke made when Leno made a guest appearance on the show. While preparing for the show with Union and Hough, Leno walked past a painting of one of the show’s judges and executive producer Simon Cowell surrounded by his dogs.
Leno, 69, joked that Cowell looked at the dogs like they were “on the menu at a Korean restaurant.”
Again…oh.
The attempts to cover up all of the rapeyness of the mainstream media newsrooms indicate the presence of a toxic culture.
The joke never made it on the air, by the way.
Some are attempting to retroactively rake Leno over the coals but, for the most part, this is one time that cancel culture has failed in a character assassination attempt. That’s because Ms. Union didn’t understand her place in the Hollywood pecking order relative to Jay Leno’s. Had she been punching down over something this petty, she almost certainly would have claimed a scalp (a reference that Union would no doubt report me to the authorities for using).
Other more recent examples include a Vegas ventriloquist being asked to remove a Trump puppet from his act after three years, more than likely because he wasn’t being offensive to Trump voters with it, and a Canadian comedian being fined 35 grand for offending someone with a joke.
Add to that Pete Davidson now requiring his audiences to sign NDAs before the show and it’s a real comedy boom time out there.
I began doing stand-up in the 1980’s — during an actual comedy boom. America was thirsty for irreverence then, and we had the freedom to provide as much of it as we wanted to.
The role of the comedian is to skewer society, those in power, and various sacred cows.
The problem with the millennials of Wokescold Nation is that they’re minting new sacred cows every ninety seconds or so, and all are considered protected species.
Worse yet, we’re dealing with young people who have a perverse lust for behaving like constipated nonagenarians. A younger generation screaming “Get off my lawn!” at an older generation. They don’t want to have fun. It is difficult to make people enjoy humor when their default is to not enjoy anything.
The good news, boys and girls, is that the Gen Z kids seem to have a little more fiber in their diets. Perhaps it’s because they grew up exploring YouTube, which can still be a bit of an entertainment Wild West, despite its Zuckerbergian tendency to overly police itself.
Perhaps it’s merely because they’ve seen closeup what has become of the preceding generation and gave it a big, “Oh HELL no!”
At any rate, we can’t let the Wokescolds infect them.
Quarantine the carriers maybe?
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PJ Media Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.”
