The George Carlin Deepfake: Comedy in the AI Crosshairs?

On By carlunegbuIn Other ControversiesLeave a comment

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) crisis across the creative industries apparently shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon and now comedy seems to have been thrown into the mix of its hapless targets. Only this time comedy appears to have won the opening battle in its own war with AI, at least going by the lawsuit that has been in the news lately.   The said lawsuit was the one filed by the estate of the late comedy legend George Carlin, who died in 2008, against two podcasters for their offending use of AI in the violation of his publicity rights and for copyright infringement.   

In the case under discussion, the two podcasters Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen, used “deepfake” technology (which performs a digital imitation of real people) to create an AI character named Dudesy, who mimicked Carlin in a faked comedy special titled “Geroge Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” which was then posted on YouTube in January 2024. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed by Carlin’s estate in federal court in California, the case was settled on April 1, 2024, with the podcasters agreeing to permanently delete the material from the Internet and to refrain from using his image, voice, or likeness without the appropriate permissions. As of the filing date of the lawsuit, the offending audio routine had garnered more than half a million views on YouTube.

To be sure, the heightened interest of the Carlin estate in the Dudesy comedy special here was entirely predictable. In the recent book “Comedy Goes to Court: When People Stop Laughing and Start Fighting” at chapter Six, (available on Amazon), the author uses the separate cases of the comedian Louis CK and The Three Stooges, to illustrate how the fame of any successful entertainer could continue to generate the “gravy” from any number of sources, including the commercial use of the person’s very name, voice, likeness, and more, even long after the person is no longer alive, in which case the late entertainer’s family or whoever controls their estate takes custody of the copyright to this valuable property interest. Given this, it should not require much imagination to see why the Carlin estate would be quite opposed to the unauthorized Dudesy comedy special, both from a financial point of view or otherwise.      

More broadly, and aside from the concrete concerns of the Carlin estate, the use of deepfake technology in this manner throws into sharp relief the nightmare scenario faced by people in creative industries, including actors, singers, comedians and more, who worry about being displaced from their jobs by AI products in a substitution sort of arrangement that renders them unemployed.  (Recall, for instance, the long SAG-AFTRA strike that ended last fall.)   

The question that then arises is how the newly evolving deepfake technology squares with the law regarding the protection of copyrights and other intellectual property products. In this regard, it bears noting that this sort of unauthorized imitation of a copyrighted product sits at the core of what the copyright law is designed to prevent. And since this imitation by Dudesy is apparently motivated by the commercial interest of the podcasters, it lacks the sort of excuse that could otherwise justify an invasion of someone’s else copyright, typically the “fair use” doctrine, which includes notions of de minimis, market substitution and the like. In the said Carlin audio, Dudesy the AI character explained that he had first “listened to all of George Carlin’s material and did my best to imitate his voice, cadence and attitude as well as the subject matter that I think would have interested him today.” Surely, this indicates that so much of the Carlins’ copyrighted product was taken in the training of the AI character.   

In a nutshell, what we have here with the Dudesy comedy special is a naked invasion of a protected copyright that carries with it a strong probability of unfair market substitution of the copyrighted product, not least because the unwary could be led to think they are getting an actual George Carlin comedy performance.

Also, accompanying the copyright violation in this case is the clear violation of the right of publicity which, as discussed in the book referenced above, is one of the important rights that fall into the estate of a deceased celebrity, and this right is of the sort that simply cannot be utilized by someone in the position of the podcasters without the permission of the copyright holder’s estate.   Long story short, this appears to be an open-and-shut case of copyright violation and publicity rights violation by the podcasters. No wonder the podcasters quit the fight early with a promise to be on their best behavior and not to re-offend. Good riddance, one might say.

So, what, if any, are the lessons here for the creative community? Short answer: AI can be checkmated by the copyright law when it goes too far in the imitation of protected works in comedy and other creative spaces. Same thing for invasion of publicity rights. The flip side here, though, is that not everything is protected by the copyright regime. Thus, AI being an evolving technology may yet find some less brazen way to infiltrate this protected territory and thus cause discomfort, especially if the pesky technology is being deployed not for a wholesale takeover or substitution of the protected material but rather as an aid in the process of creating something else inspired by it.

Yet, if or when that happens, the good news is that due to the increasingly observational and experience-based nature of contemporary comedy, a rather unique and even personal bond tends to develop between comedians and their audiences, a sort of dynamic in which the interposition of AI might be truly problematic. Apparently not so for comparable creative endeavors like movies and music where the odds of displacement by AI seem greater, and this is unfortunate.     

In the end, whether the just-repelled AI invasion of the comedy space will get a second life at some future date or occasion is the sort of question that only time will answer. For now, though, thanks to the Carlin estate lawsuit, comedy sure seems to have won a big victory worthy of a genuine celebration.   

Editor’s Note: The new book “Comedy Goes to Court: When People Stop Laughing and Start Fighting“, is now available on Amazon and at bookstores. Go get your own copy of the new bestselling book today and, of course, enjoy the read!

Jad Sleiman: Is the Ban on Comedy Moonlighters a Last Acceptable Prejudice?

On By carlunegbuIn Other ControversiesLeave a comment

   Talk of expanding one’s career horizons and you might think of moonlighting as one of those harmless pursuits that people indulge in, sometimes for money, other times just for the hell of it. Except maybe when it comes to comedy, it seems.  Recently, we saw the case of journalist Jad Sleiman, who works for the NPR affiliate WHYY in Philadelphia, who was fired in January last year but later re-instated (thank goodness) after he won an arbitration proceeding against his employers; they were crossed with him over his moonlighting gig as a comedian. Sleiman’s troubles recall the case in fall 2013 of another comedian, Vince August, who was forced to give up his day job as a judge in South Hackensack, New Jersey after the bench and bar authorities in that state basically told him that moonlighting as a comedian was “incompatible” with the position of a judge.   

   To put moonlighting in perspective, we see in our daily experience people from all walks of life moonlighting in other areas outside their day jobs: lawyers, schoolteachers, doctors, therapists, personal trainers, politicos, you name it, can, say, work as actors, musicians, marathoners, athletes, corporate ad shills, or if they like cabbies, and not much dust is ever kicked up, even by the career purists in our midst who tend to take it as something being done in good fun.

  One can fairly suppose that if Messrs. Sleiman and August would have been moonlighting instead as marathon runners, actors, or musicians, they probably would not have attracted the same backlash from the journalism or legal communities respectively, as happened in their cases. And all this begs the question: what is it about comedy that gets people’s goats in this way?

        In Sleiman’s situation, his employers found footage of his stand-up comedy work on social media. The employers characterized the jokes as having “racial, sexual and misogynistic connotations,” and concluded that the radio station did not want to be associated with such sentiments and were thus letting their employee Sleiman go. The arbitrator, for his part, was not swayed by the arguments of the radio station and, after saying that he found some of the jokes funny and others not so funny, ordered the radio station to reinstate the employee to his job. He however ordered Sleiman to delete all his standup comedy jokes from his social media site. In Vince August’s case, what got him in trouble with the legal community were the jokes he made about religion, national origins, and children, which the authorities claimed might cause him to be biased against those folks if they appeared before him when he sits as a judge.        

  So, why this apparent prejudice and singling out of comedy as a no-go area for moonlighters, as our society gets its knickers in a twist? Perhaps, this attitude is a holdover from the last generation when comedy was not taken seriously as a career path, an era in which parents would discourage their kids from pursuing a career in comedy. But this would not be a good explanation today when comedy is considered by many to be at a “golden age,” having become a reliable and lucrative career path for those who succeed at it, just like anything else.  This means there has got to be a better explanation for the continuation of this apparent discomfort with comedy: more likely, it is because of the zeitgeist of contemporary society, which is characterized by political correctness and a desire to be woke in all things. At its core, the goal here is to protect the vulnerable from oppression by more powerful forces in society. And with comedians there is a worry that they tend to “punch down” at vulnerable people in society in rendering their jokes, thereby increasing the sense of oppression of these targets, whether it is Tracy Morgan against gay people, or Daniel Tosh against rape victims or Dave Chappelle against transgender people. (Incidentally, Chappelle says he likes “punching down”).

  However, for any society that stands ready and mentally prepared to drop its lingering prejudice against a specific group of its members, it should be possible for these concerns to be addressed by some appropriate devices that are already well-recognized and in use in our society. For example, in situations such as Sleiman’s own, where the offending jokes were posted on social media, a simple “disclaimer” statement, claiming the views as the comedian’s personal views, rather than those of his employers, ought to suffice, as we see every day with various professionals engaged in extracurricular activities. In August’s case, there is the old concept of the “Chinese wall”, which erects a barrier that separates any two things that are not supposed to meet. In his work, August seemed to adopt this method by opting to use a different name, Vince August, for his standup comedy work rather than the name he used as a judge, which was, obviously, his actual name in real life. In addition, he did not discuss his life as a judge during his comedy routines and vice versa.

  In the end, there is no disputing the noble instinct in sticking up for the vulnerable in our society, as our contemporary society seeks to do via political correctness and woke ideology. Similarly, it is quite healthy for our institutions, whether it be the media or the bench and bar, to not want to be associated with any continuing oppression of society’s marginalized groups. However, the existing situation with comedy moonlighting tends to make our society rather complicit in the oppression of yet another group, this time comedians. By refusing to acknowledge available and time-tested safeguards that should resolve our concerns, we may be unwittingly indulging what increasingly appears to be one of our society’s last acceptable prejudices. Therefore, it is well past time to also open the moonlighting gates to comedy. Just let Jad Sleiman and other comedy moonlighters be.

Editor’s Note: The new book “Comedy Goes to Court: When People Stop Laughing and Start Fighting“, is now available on Amazon and at bookstores. Go get your own copy of the new bestselling book today and, of course, enjoy the read!

The Hasan Minhaj Controversy: Attacking the messenger and ignoring the message?

On By carlunegbuIn Other ControversiesLeave a comment

A recent article in The New Yorker by the reporter Clare Malone revealed that comedian Hasan Minhaj had lied about some of the events that he had recounted in his comedy work.  And this revelation has prompted a swift and brutal backlash. Yet, on closer examination, this may well be a case of the proverbial much ado about nothing resulting in a needless attack on the messenger of a rather noble message: social justice.

In the article, Minhaj admitted that the following were not true: that his young daughter was hospitalized for exposure to anthrax; that he had interacted with a certain FBI informant; and that a white female friend had turned down his high school prom invite at the last moment. These incidents were used to demonstrate the discrimination and marginalization he had endured as a Muslim of Indian descent living in America. And the stories themselves did appear in his various comedy works for Netflix and others, including “Homecoming King” (2017), “Patriot Act” (2018) and “The King’s Jester” (2022).

  While conceding that “lying is comedy isn’t always wrong,” Jason Zinoman, the influential New York Times critic-at-large asserted rather harshly that Minhaj had “crossed a line”.  Calling him “the boy who cried racist wolf,” MSNBC columnist Noor Noman, a Muslim Pakistani American, charged that Minhaj’s behavior by potentially stoking disbelief in future claims of oppression by marginalized groups had damaged the cause of social justice and aided white supremacy. Minhaj’s other critics have accused him of weaponizing his otherness in an unfair attack on other people. Defending Minhaj, however, comedian Whoopi Goldberg noted:  “There’s information that we will give you as comics that will have grains of truth, but don’t take it to the bank…that’s our job, a seed of truth. Sometimes truth and sometimes total BS.”

Of course, at issue here is whether it is permissible for a comedian to base the message of their material on a factual lie or untruth, not least because Minhaj is a comedian that is active in the social justice space.     

In his own defense, Minhaj said: “All my stand-up stories are based on events that happened to me,” he said. “I use the tools of stand-up comedy — hyperbole, changing names and locations, and compressing timelines — to tell entertaining stories. That’s inherent to the art form. You wouldn’t go to a haunted house and say, ‘Why are these people lying to me?’ The point is the ride. Stand-up is the same.”

Then he almost sabotages himself by introducing the complicating factor of “emotional truths”, a process whereby he utilizes his fictional stories to dramatize the travails of his marginalized community. This concept, though, does not seem like the best peg on which to hang his defense, given that, “emotional truth,” subjective, nebulous, and imprecise as it is, can fairly be said to provide a potential shield to anyone seeking to take liberties with factual accuracy in any given situation. Not a good look in his current circumstances.    

However, the good news for Minhaj is that based on comedy’s tradition, he is allowed to make stuff up as premises for his joke. Put differently, he is entitled to as much factual accuracy or truth as he chooses in making his point. (Even his adversaries concede that when it comes to the factual basis of a comedian’s joke, “lying” is not a deal breaker.) And for society at large, comedians stand on a different footing from other people with respect to the accuracy of their factual statements. In his Times opinion on the Minhaj controversy, Zinoman deals with this issue of trust as he references Minhaj’s past interview with Barack Obama in which the former president admits that he had consumed all the books, albums and movies featured on his annual “best-of” lists.

Rather instructively, Zinoman wrote: “To quote Minhaj, everything is built on trust. That trust operates differently for politicians and journalists than for artists, but it matters to us all. Treat it carelessly and the price can be steep.”  (emphasis supplied). Darn right, concerning the “trust” question, when Obama the politician makes factual statements while recommending a product or service, we put it on a different scale than when Minhaj the comedic artist is serving up factual premises for his joke. Context is pivotal here: surely, to expect or demand more accuracy from Obama’s factual claims than Minhaj’s is not to treat matters of trust carelessly.

Next, Minhaj’s critics seem to suggest that because he is dealing with social justice issues as a “trusted source” for political and social news, a paradigm shift is required with respect to the facts, one that requires that he adhere to factual accuracy. However, given that the more the merrier in the noble endeavor of social justice work, comedians are no less welcome as campaign partners than, say, lawyers or environmental activists, not least considering their large influence on our contemporary pop culture.  And it would be self-defeating for our society if we were to exclude the voices of people like Minhaj merely because, by virtue of their occupational background, they are not obligated to adhere to factual accuracy as rigorously as, say, a lawyer making a closing statement to a jury or a congresswoman participating in a budget debate on the deficit on the House floor.    

In the end, perhaps Minhaj’s comedy may not seem sufficiently ethical to his critics and, one must concede, he has been rather opportunistic in some of the paths he has taken to stardom, and this writer is no fan of some of his tactics.  Yet, even as he engages in his social justice advocacy, he is nonetheless allowed under comedy’s rules of the game to practice his own chosen brand of comedy, warts and all. To insist otherwise is to foist one’s value judgments on his craft and/or to take one’s eyes off the ball of his social justice work and thus to attack the messenger while ignoring his vital message. Surely, society can do better than that.

**Editor’s Note: The new book “Comedy Goes to Court: When People Stop Laughing and Start Fighting“, is now available on Amazon and at bookstores. Go get your own copy of the new bestselling book today and, of course, enjoy the read!

Sarah Silverman Sues ChatGPT’s Owner: Should Comedians be Worried about AI?

On By carlunegbuIn Other ControversiesLeave a comment

Say hello to the AI era and its associated headaches: In recent times and seemingly from almost out of nowhere, Artificial Intelligence (AI), has jumped into the center of our public conversation thanks largely to the massive headaches it is causing everywhere from authorities worried about people cheating in their testing sessions to people worried about losing their jobs: Hollywood actors, for instance, are terrified AI could displace them at work and Google is reportedly working on getting AI to write news reports and thus send journalists to the unemployment line. Closer to home in comedy, this past July Sarah Silverman the comedian sued Open AI, the maker of ChatGPT for copyright infringement of her memoir “The Bedwetter” which she claimed was copied “without consent, without credit and without compensation.” The comedian alleged that since she did not grant OpenAI her permission to include her said work among the materials used in training the AI models, the material was likely copied from a “shadow library” of pirated works. Welcome to the era of generative AI, which describes computer programs that can create texts, images, and music, just like a human being could.

So, the obvious question is: should comedians also be worried about their own jobs and, if so, just how imminent is the AI threat to the careers of comedians? Perhaps an alternative way of framing the same question is to ask the old question of what ways comedy is or is not like the art forms of music and movies, a question that is often posed separately in the copyright protection context.    For comedians, the answer this time is good news. Unlike the comedy of a generation ago, characterized by the proverbial mother-in-law jokes, comedy today, especially stand-up comedy, tends to be a highly personalized art, where the personal experiences and perspectives of the comedian is front and center of the material and this factor tends to create a certain bond between the comedian and his audience. As a result, it is predictably more difficult for any AI bot to replicate for any comedian’s fans the same warm and idiosyncratic rendering of the material from their favorite comedian. People looking to see, for example, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, or Sarah Silverman, for that matter, would probably be quite reluctant to emotionally engage with, let alone bond, with a bot pretending to be their favorite comedian.

Yet, while comedians won’t be the first ones to fall victim to the invasion of AI, the new climate of AI aggressiveness in the art community threatens to create the proverbial slippery slope where people are conditioned to accept less and less authenticity in art as bots move into new areas, (you guessed it!) comedy included. After all, just 10 years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine the gigantic strides that AI technology has now made in various areas of human endeavor. So, whither comedy should such a dispensation ultimately arrive? In other words, how will comedy fare in such a world? Can comedians mobilize as effectively against the invasion of AI as the actors are currently doing? Well, as it happens, unlike the earlier question above, the news on this front doesn’t seem so good.

For starters, it seems fair to say that the same factors that make it rather difficult for AI bots to displace comedians from their jobs are, ironically, the reason why comedians are ill-suited to take concerted action against AI. And here is why: actors, for instance, by virtue of the nature of their work, are accustomed to working as a group and for long hours (think of all the moving parts and the different sorts of people who must collaborate in the production of a movie, both on and behind the camera).  So, the habit of collaboration and the camaraderie that inevitably results from collaborative activity are literally second nature to actors: after collaborating to produce it, it is easier to get them to collaborate to protect and defend their work.  

On the other hand, with comedians, the sort of teamwork that actors are known for is often missing, again due to the nature of their work where each comedian works on their own and does not need the collaboration of each other to produce their material. The ruling instinct in this professional community is for each member to shield their material (i.e., the jokes) from each other and this is a matter of self- preservation. Thus, comedians are more like individuals than team players and this very quality tends to take a toll on any effort to organize comedians for any sort of concerted action. Pushing back against the invasion of AI technology is a classic situation where concerted action is required and comedians are historically weak on this front.

To get a sense of the challenge here, consider the failed organizing effort by comedians in the late 1970s to start getting paid for their work by owner Mitzi Shore at the storied Comedy Store in Los Angeles or even the somewhat more successful but rather short-lived New York Comedians Coalition, so-called, led by comedian Ted Alexandro in 2004 which sought to persuade the comedy clubs in New York to pay comedians more money for their work. Anyone who has tried herding a group of cats to a common destination can perhaps imagine the problem being described here.

Whatever the outcome of Sarah Silverman’s lawsuit against Open AI, it is now a fact that AI has become something of an unwelcome guest in the house of the creative artist community. While comedians are all the way in the back of the line among the groups facing the disruptive impact of AI, they nonetheless have a dog in this fight, not least because if the dam breaks and the toxic waters of AI rushes into their territory, the very nature of their work puts them at a relative disadvantage in terms of taking collective action to meet the challenge. So, surely the comedy community will be watching for the outcome of Silverman’s lawsuit and what that could mean for their community in the new era of AI disruption.

**Editor’s Note: The new book “Comedy Goes to Court: When People Stop Laughing and Start Fighting“, is now available on Amazon and at bookstores. Go get your own copy of the new bestselling book today and, of course, enjoy the read!

Comedy Versus Free Speech: Deconstructing a Never-Ending Story

On By carlunegbuIn Other ControversiesLeave a comment

Comedy today is a long way from where it was just a generation or two ago considering that it has now migrated from the fringes to the center of the cultural conversation. But will it be allowed to enjoy its newfound fortune undisturbed, or will it become a target of detractors who rather resent the methods by which the art form exercises its right of free speech. At issue here is just how much leeway comedians are permitted when it comes to saying things that other people might find objectionable or simply intolerable. Especially if said objections are made on behalf of vulnerable demographics in the society, as in when comedians are perceived to be “punching down” at their targets. An obvious question here is whether the attempts to deter or push back at comedians when they punch down can legitimately be seen as a threat to the integrity or even the very survival of the art form itself.

 In contemporary society the pushback against the perceived excesses of comedians is embodied in the phenomenon of political correctness (PC) and its current enforcement tool cancel culture. Among the community of free societies this tension looks to be most stark in contemporary America, not least because of the unique constitutional protection for free speech under the First Amendment.

 Regarding the threat that PC and cancel culture pose to comedy, two schools of thought seem to have emerged over time, namely, those who perceive a threat to comedy and those who think the threat is rather exaggerated. And from all indications, neither side in this debate appear willing to blink anytime soon.  

 The first group is made up mostly of comedians, such as Lewis Black, who genuinely worry about the negative impact of cancel culture on the free speech rights of comedians. In an April 2021 appearance on the NewsNation program Banfield, Black said there was now a sense of Russia-style inquisition against people perceived to hold objectionable views, and he even mentioned the word McCarthyism. Finding it “odd that a lot of these things” nowadays originate from the left as opposed to the 1960s when they came from the right, he explained that the urge to cancel people was due to a “lot of us being alone in our various pods and judging other people in the midst of losing our minds.” Black also queried whether canceling people was so high on our list of priorities compared to other important things we need to do as a society. To demonstrate the extent of the problem, Black and the host Ashley Banfield even pointed out that someone these days could get in trouble not for making the joke but rather for merely laughing at it or not pushing back against a joke perceived to be objectionable.  (On this point, Banfield referenced the backlash in April 2021 against then New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang for merely laughing and not pushing back at a joke about sexual violence in a video he appeared in.)   

The other view of the matter comes from those who do not really consider this situation a problem. People such as comedian/comedy writer Kliph Nesteroff, who in an October 2021 op-ed for the Seattle Times (“’Cancel Culture’ Has Always Been a Problem for Comedy”) acknowledged the cancel culture problem but then took the radically contrary view that “comedians have far more freedom today”, based on his observation that subject matter involving sex, religion, politics and profanity, no longer results in jail time nowadays unlike in the past decades going back to the turn of the last century when Mae West (1927), Lenny Bruce (1960s) and Richard Pryor (1974) got in hot water with the law for what they had said.

 So, which side is right on this important question? As one might have guessed, the answer is not so straightforward after all. For starters, it is obviously tempting to suppose that contemporary comedians have it so good since they no longer risk jail time for freely wandering into formerly prohibited areas where the taboo subjects reside, whether it be religion, sex, or politics.   Yet, staying out of jail does not necessarily resolve the free speech challenge for comedians, especially when viewed from a career perspective. Cancel culture today, it turns out, poses a pretty serious problem to the comedy art form not least because of its career-ending consequences. On a comparative basis, it seems like the occasional arrest for transgressing the lines of what is considered acceptable would be less of a problem for any comedian than the brutal banishment of the comedian from their workspaces, which is often the unfortunate result if not the pernicious goal of cancel culture, whenever it targets an erring comedian.  

 Still, despite the objection of most comedians, the disciplining impact of political correctness has been a net positive for comedy at least inasmuch as comedy can be legitimately perceived as a “product” being sold to contemporary society, a factor that inevitably forces comedians to do their market research.  Especially now that comedy has not only become a big-money enterprise, but people out there seem more willing than ever before to pay for a good laugh. We can certainly think of a scenario where what makes people laugh is the thing that they are willing to “buy” from the comedian merchant. If the consumers’ minds have been so conditioned by PC thinking that they do not find a joke funny and would rather not buy it, then tough luck for the merchant hawking the joke. In a free-market society with consumer autonomy, the comedian has no more right to sell the consumer a joke they consider unacceptable than the neighborhood grocer has the right to sell the same consumer a basket of stale fruits they may find unpalatable. PC thinking may be wrong and perhaps unfair to comedians, yet the customer is still king.  

 In the end, there is one thing both sides seem to agree on: the tension between comedy and free speech won’t be going away any time soon and striking a balance between these two things remains a necessity. Nesteroff says the “tug of war between censorship and free speech has been part of comedy for its entire existence…and will likely continue.” Black for his part says that “this is something that will work itself out as we evolve.”

While we await the striking of that all-important balance and its contours, it does not seem convincing to assert that political correctness and cancel culture will kill off comedy as an art form. What rather seems more likely to happen longer term is that these factors will shape or change how comedy is performed.  And it will be interesting to see how the new practice of comedy will be different from what we know today.     

Editor’s Note: The long-awaited book “Comedy Goes to Court: When People Stop Laughing and Start Fighting” is available now and on sale. Be sure to grab your own copy of this new Amazon bestseller today. Enjoy the read!

What’s a Comedy Central “Roast” Doing at the Supreme Court?

On By carlunegbuIn Other ControversiesLeave a comment

Without a doubt, comedy is a big deal these days in our society, especially in our pop culture, and when done smartly at an appropriate forum, the jokes can mean a lot of money, but when done in a certain way at certain places, they can also be a deadly serious affair that can wind up in front of the judges at the US Supreme Court. Not least when it involves a Comedy Central roast featuring the famous and talented insult comic Jeff Ross and a murder trial in a red state like Texas. And, under the circumstances of this case, the crucial question that pops up is whether an apparent joke is still just a joke or perhaps something rather dark and incriminating. But first, here is some background to all this:

In 2011, a Texas man named Gabriel Hall murdered an elderly man and badly injured his wheelchair-bound wife in College Station, Texas. In 2015 while Hall awaited his murder trial, comedian Jeff Ross visited the jail house where he and other inmates were being held and over some days Ross filmed a special for Comedy Central titled “Jeff Ross Roasts Criminals: Live at Brazos County Jail”. Ross claimed he was there because he was a believer in second chances and that he wanted to see if the inmates at the jailhouse had a sense of humor about their situation. Among the inmates Ross spoke to was Hall and although his talk with Hall was not ultimately included in the special when it aired, the prosecutors in Hall’s trial nonetheless subpoenaed the footage of Ross’s conversation with Hall and played it for the jury during the sentencing phase of Hall’s trial following his conviction a few months later. The prosecutors aimed to use the footage to persuade the jury that Hall had shown no remorse for his crime; as a result, the jury sentenced Hall to death.  In the footage, Ross asked Hall what he was in for, whether he had hacked somebody’s computer? Hall joked that he took a machete to someone’s screen. Ross then remarked that Hall looked like “a fuckin’ scary dude,” to which Hall said: “Oh, come on, I wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Then, Ross said: “What about a human?” And Hall replied: “Ah, they’re annoying.” The banter also included Ross making some derogatory comments about Hall’s Asian heritage.      

Well, Hall’s lawyers have challenged the use of the footage in securing the death sentence, claiming that it gave a rather misleading portrayal of Hall and his true feelings in a situation where Hall was just playing along with a comedian and nothing more. Even more significant, Hall’s lawyers have also hitched their wagons to the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel provision, claiming that the comedian’s interactions with Hall, which generated the footage, was permitted by the jail house authorities without the presence of Hall’s attorneys and was therefore unconstitutional.

So, now we are dealing with at least two main issues here: the right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment plus the question of whether the content of the footage was just a guy playing along with a comedian or whether it was something else more sinister, as in, somebody who showed no remorse for murder.  First, the Sixth Amendment. Under the law here, anyone charged with a crime is given the right to have their lawyer present during what is known as “critical stages” of the process, meaning that this right usually comes into being even before things start happening inside the courtroom in front of a jury and so on. To explain it more simply, once a guy is arrested by the cops and is informed that they have a right to a lawyer, most ordinary folks do understand that to be the beginning of the person’s journey through the criminal justice process, and that is therefore a “critical stage” of things. The basic idea here is to protect the person in custody against unfair oppression by the government authorities.

But our situation here with Jeff Ross and Gabriel Hall is rather interesting in one obvious way: most ordinary folks can also appreciate the fact that someone bantering with a comedian, even inside a jail house, stands on a rather different footing when it comes to the right to counsel than, say, someone being interrogated by a cop in the same situation. Unlike a comedian, a cop ain’t joking around with the guy in custody, rather he is usually trying to get information about a crime, something that could doom that guy at his trial. Well, let’s just say the difference in the two situations is pretty clear and this is where Hall’s legal team has a genuine problem when it comes to their big argument about the Sixth Amendment. And this is a heavy lift, for sure.

By comparison, the lawyers seem to have a less heavy lift when it comes to whether the footage shown to the jury reflected Hall’s true feelings, as in, remorse or no remorse for his crime, or if it was just a guy playing along with a comedian. Again, most ordinary folks would understand that a guy sitting down somewhere and doing a back and forth with someone he knows is a comedian probably isn’t expecting such information to land in front of a jury that is deciding his guilt or innocence let alone a jury that is deciding whether he should live or die.         

So far, the efforts of Hall’s lawyers to shoot down his death sentence have tanked on appeal before the Texas courts, and they have decided to seek another bite at the apple at the Supreme Court of the United States. Only time will tell if they’ll find success with this move. And it likely won’t be long before we see how the Supreme Court processes the subject of humor in the criminal justice system. And, of course, it’ll also give us a window into the high court’s own sense of humor.

**Editor’s Note: The new book “Comedy Goes to Court: When People Stop Laughing and Start Fighting“, is now available on Amazon and at bookstores. Go get your own copy of the new bestselling book today and, of course, enjoy the read!

The Assault on Chris Redd: Who’s on the Hook?

On By carlunegbuIn Comedy Legal1 Comment

For comedians, getting attacked onstage on occasion when things get charged is something many can relate to. But getting attacked offstage and outside performance venues seems like a different beast altogether. Sadly, though, it happens: just ask Saturday Night Live (SNL) alum Chris Redd who was recently assaulted by an unknown male assailant outside the famed Comedy Cellar in New York City as he arrived to perform at the club. In a vicious attack that left him “gushing blood,” the comedian sustained some rather serious injuries, including two fractures to his nose and one to his cheek.

While both the identity of the attacker and his possible motives remain the subject of speculation, the real-life implications of the situation are less uncertain. Reportedly, the attack happened as Redd was approaching the front door of the club; so, if we suppose that the spot where the assault occurred was under the control of the club, then some two-fold questions arise:  first, what are the options open to an injured comedian in Redd’s position and, second, what are the responsibilities of comedy venues to those who visit their venues, including performing comedians. As for Redd, it is certain that if the attacker is caught, he will be held accountable for his actions, perhaps by the district attorney’s office charging him with a crime or perhaps by Redd himself suing the attacker in civil court for damages for assault.  But what if the attacker is not caught and Redd remains aggrieved and wishes to put someone on the hook? Who can he sue and on what conditions or in what circumstances?

Given that Redd is a professional person who was booked to perform at a scheduled event, he was in the position of an “invitee” to the venue, meaning simply that his presence there at the time was anticipated. Thus, it is logical to consider whether the comedy club was possibly liable for not preventing the incident. We’re dealing here with an area of the law known as premises liability, which as the name implies concerns the responsibility of occupiers of premises to protect persons lawfully on their premises. In layperson language, the law requires occupiers of premises to take reasonable measures to keep their premises safe for the protection and benefit of their visitors and all others who may lawfully be expected to be present on the premises. Just what reasonable measures are required often depends on the circumstances of each situation and may include such things as adequate lighting, proper signage, security guards, and so on. 

Although reasonable measures may mean different things in different situations, one constant factor in deciding whether the measures taken in any situation are reasonable is what is known as “foreseeability.”  In other words, was it foreseeable that unless the measures or steps in question were taken, the damage or injury that ultimately resulted would likely have occurred? If the answer is yes, then the occupier of premises would be held liable in negligence for the damage or injury that occurred. Of course, if the answer is no, then there is no liability. Simple as that!

So, how does all this apply to Redd and the Comedy Cellar, if we suppose, of course, that the place where the attack occurred was part of the club’s premises?  Considering that, could it be said that the comedy club, as an occupier of premises, was somewhat negligent in failing to prevent the attack on Redd, its invitee?   

In other words, what reasonable measures could the club have taken to prevent the attack? To say it differently, were there any missing links in the way it managed its security operations that one could say did make the attack foreseeable?  These are vexed questions of fact and when push comes to shove in court, these are the sorts of matters that jurors (as finders of fact) wrangle over when they retire to deliberate in their jury rooms. But generally, in situations like these, if the Comedy Cellar would have provided such things as proper lighting, adequate signage and security arrangements on its premises, it is hard to see how it could he held liable for the random act of an unknown assailant who acted swiftly and varnished into thin air. It will be something of a stretch to say that such an incident was foreseeable under the circumstances. Of course, if such an incident would have happened previously, then it changes the calculus of liability: the club could then be said to have had knowledge or fair warning of the danger in question and thus had a duty to address such a situation going forward.

As of this writing, the assailant has not been caught and his dark motivations for the brutal attack remain a mystery. And so far, there is no indication of any actual or planned lawsuit against the Comedy Cellar by Redd. Yet one thing is for sure: in an age of increasing dangers to comedians, comedy venues are obliged to become even more vigilant about security issues on their premises. If this matter was not always taken seriously at event venues, well, it seems about to change.

Editor’s Note: The new book “Comedy Goes to Court: When People Stop Laughing and Start Fighting” (an Amazon bestseller) is now out and available for sale. Go grab your copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

Lewis Black and his Posse: Comedians at the Copyright Barricades

On By carlunegbuIn Other ControversiesLeave a comment

When it comes to the business of copyrights and its protection, one could be forgiven for thinking of comedians as downstairs people compared to musicians. To be sure, this old problem also seems to be a matter of respect as well as money. Not surprisingly, the comedy community these days is trying to do something about it and this time it’s the streaming services that are in their crosshairs for allegedly using their work without paying compensation for it by way of licensing. Enter Lewis Black: the comedian is suing the streamer Pandora in a California federal court for $10 million in copyright infringement damages, for allegedly streaming about 68 of his works without a license. The works in question are comedy recordings.

Black is only the latest comedian to file this sort of claim against Pandora, which is already being sued by comedians like Andrew Dice Clay, Ron White and others, including the estates of George Carlin and Robin Williams.  A win in these lawsuits will be a huge development both in terms of expanding the landscape of available copyright protection and of course turning on an additional money tap for comedians. The other big streamer Spotify avoided similar litigation last year by moving pre-emptively to yank some comedy recording from its platform after it couldn’t agree terms with the copyright holders. In that dispute, Black himself, in a gesture of solidarity with the aggrieved comedians demanded that his own works be taken off Spotify platforms as well. 

But what is really at issue in these cases and can Black and his brethren in fact win?

For starters, it bears explaining that when a work is protected by copyright, it means that the said work is both an “original” creation of the copyright owner as well as a thing that is affixed to a “tangible medium.” The said copyright owner could be an artist, a designer, a writer and more.

Now, though the allegation of the comedians we’re dealing with here is that the streamers are basically not paying for the recording being streamed at all, the question that must ultimately be resolved when it comes time to pay is exactly what particular elements of the comedy “work” should be paid for under a license. In other words, exactly what contents of the work are being licensed by the streamers? (The sort of copyright that comedians hold in their work is known as “spoken-word” copyrights.)  

While the streamers like Pandora and Spotify claim that a comedy recording is a single unified product that should attract only one license fee for the whole work, the comedians, for their part, claim that a comedy recording does in fact have two portions, namely, the recording itself and then the composition, or comedy writing, as separate components. To support their case, the comedians point to the situation with musical copyrights where the license purchaser, say a streaming service, buys and pays for both the musical recording itself as well as the composition of the song lyrics, as separate licenses. This argument was well foreshadowed by Black’s now famous remark that “a joke is just as powerful as a lyric of a song,” with the obvious implication that since the streamers are already paying separately for song lyrics, why not a joke as well.

Then again, one might well ask: if a musical recording and comedy recording are so analogous to each other, how come the two products have been treated so differently for so long and how come the comedians are only speaking up now?

It is worth noting how this question of timing seems to have played into the defense of the streamers as they attempt to fight off the recognition of this additional copyright, namely, comedy writing, which the comedians are seeking. In this regard, the streamers’ argument can be described as one based on tradition, something that some may well perceive as somewhat oppressive.  And it appears to relate to rather philosophical questions about the historical place of comedy in the broader society’s scheme of things and the inevitable value judgments around such questions. In this context, it is common knowledge that comedy’s existing recognition as an authentic art form or rather as “its own thing” is of rather recent vintage.  By contrast, music and the visual arts (think sculpture, painting, et cetera) have long been respected as legitimate art forms with valid claims to their own integrity and thus deserving of protection via things like copyright.      

Now fast forward to contemporary times and it is soon obvious that comedy’s fortunes have changed: with its newfound status as a legitimate art form, basking in the glow of a “golden age,” comedy no doubt has acquired a quite defensible claim to the greater protection of its integrity, just like music and the visual arts. Thus, for the comedy community, there is no better time than now to press this additional claim as part of an overall effort to protect every aspect of their art form and to benefit from it where appropriate. Quite simply, if not now, when?

So, in a manner of speaking, this brings us to a history versus law scenario: the comedy community’s good timing in launching this fight for a bigger slice of the pie is one thing, but whether the court will recognize their claim is quite another, considering the novelty of their claim. Though there is no certainty as to what the court will do, yet, if the comedians can justify their new claims under the law, then history won’t be able to stand in their way and they will win big. As already noted, such a big win will expand the contours of what elements of a work of comedy are protected from infringement and thus available for additional licensing. In this battle for more respect and money it seems like the comedians are the odds-on favorites to win, given the similarity of a joke and a song lyric in this copyright context and the sheer oddness of continuing to treat the two items differently. But, of course, the jury’s still out on the matter.  

*Book Release Notice: Well, folks, the new book “Comedy Goes to Court: When People Stop Laughing and Start Fighting,” is finally here and is scheduled for official release on September 22, 2022. Publisher: Hybrid Global Publishing. However, as of today the book is available on Amazon as an ebook for 99 cents. If you do obtain your copy at Amazon and you happen to like the book, please feel free to recommend the book to your friends/associates by simply giving the book a nice review/recommendation on Amazon. Enjoy the read and the laughs! Cheers!

Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle Attacked Onstage:  An Open Season on Comedians?

On By carlunegbuIn Other ControversiesLeave a comment

First, there was the slap heard around the world this past March when comedian Chris Rock was attached by actor Will Smith as he stood on stage during the last Oscar ceremony in Los Angeles. Then, not long after came the vicious assault on comedian Dave Chappelle by a crazed audience member at the Hollywood Bowl in May.

As one might expect, many are now wondering whether we might be entering an era where comedians have to worry about becoming victims of physical assaults by people who are unhappy with their shtick onstage. Bill Maher has described the situation as a “war on jokes” and other comedians like Kathy Griffin, Howie Mandel and more have said they won’t be going back onstage at least in the meantime. So, if there is a war on comedy, what then can be done to address the situation? Before answering this question, it may be worthwhile to try to figure out what options for redress are available to any comedian attacked onstage as Messrs. Rock and Chappelle were.

Well, the obvious person to be held legally liable here is the attacker himself (or “tortfeasor” as lawyers would say). The aggrieved comedian’s quite simple claim here is one for damages for battery, which is a claim asserted against someone who has made an unlawful physical contact with somebody else without any lawful excuse. Now, how about the venues responsible for hosting both the comedians and their attackers? Here, most ordinary people would think the comedian should be able to sue the event venue and thus make them liable for not taking steps to prevent the attack on the comedian. But, alas, it doesn’t work that way in the law and this expectation will likely be disappointed. For starters, the law generally won’t hold one person liable for the “intentional” act of another person, unless, for instance, a special sort of relationship exists between them.

Typically, such relationships include, say, a master-servant situation or employer-employee situation where one person can be said to control the way and manner that another individual performs their job. These situations are often referred to as “vicarious liability” situations. But does that apply in this situation? Can one validly say that a vicarious liability situation exists between, say, the hosts of the Oscar ceremony and the actor Will Smith or for that matter any of the so many celebrities and other guests at the ceremony?

The all-too-predictable answer here is no. Because Will Smith and the other guests are merely “invitees” (albeit lawful ones) to the ceremony. They are no more related to the event hosts than someone who attends a show at a comedy club and while therein decides on their own to beat up another patron of the comedy club. Liability for such “intentional” acts falls upon the person who did the act, rather than the venue. Unless of course the event hosts had reason to know or should have known that such a danger existed and yet did nothing to prevent it. In such situations, the event hosts would be liable to any injured “invitees” who become victims of any particular dangers that were foreseeable and therefore preventable.  Long story short, comedians who get injured in situations like the ones here, like Rock and Chappelle, can generally only go after the guy who attacked them and not the venue. And if the attacker is a man of straw who can’t even pay his own rent, or is otherwise a loser, then tough luck.  (Of course, the district attorney could bring charges, but that’s a different thing altogether.)

So, when it comes to preventing attacks upon comedians for doing their jobs, there, sadly, seems to be no effective way of making that happen, given that there isn’t much that can be done to the event venues where such incidents happen. Nor in fairness can one say that the venues are in a position to prevent such occurrences anyway.

Well, so are we now in a new era where it is open season on comedians who offend people by their material? The good news is no: for all the buzz surrounding recent events involving Rock and Chappelle, there doesn’t appear to be some sort of noticeable trend of attacks on comedians to a degree that is out of the norm for their line of work. The new aggressiveness is more of a society-wide problem. There seems to be a new climate of incivility and extreme behavior from members of the public that is manifesting itself to the detriment of working people or staffers in public-facing jobs, whether they be airline employees, restaurant workers, transit workers, and yes, comedians, too. One explanation is that thanks to the pandemic and the resulting lockdowns, people seem to have been cooped up for too long and thus to have gotten just a bit more on edge than usual and, naturally, appear to be acting out more. Perhaps social scientists can tell us the expected trajectory of the extreme behaviors that we have been witnessing lately, but it is doubtful that they will become a “new normal” and, for what it is worth, comedians seem to be in no greater danger from hyper- agitated members of the public than other working people in public-facing jobs.

Speaking of the world of comedians, it is certain that getting confronted by offended people for what they have said onstage is an old problem that goes with the territory of standup comedy: sometimes the confrontation happens onstage, sometimes off stage. As far back as the 1970s New York comedy scene, for example, Joe Piscopo infamously had his nose broken by mobsters at the Improv, with a chipped tooth and black eye to boot, while a few weeks later Jimmy Brogan got confronted and “was scared to death” by a fearsome mobster after he got offstage at Catch A Rising Star and was forced by his would-be assailant to admit that “he wasn’t funny”. (“I apologized like a madman,” Brogan reportedly said.) So, between the cancel culture activists and those actually rushing the stage at them or confronting them afterwards, comedians are no strangers to folks who want them to shut the heck up. But the show must go on, even if the circumstances be different. There’s no canceling comedy. This too shall pass.

***

*Editor’s Note: At the moment the author is seriously working hard to finish writing a new book on a rather tight deadline. So please bear with us if upcoming posts do not appear as regularly as they should during this, hopefully, quite short period. However, in the meantime, please do dig into the many other posts contained in the archives, which are readily available for your reading pleasure. There are two “categories” of articles: “Comedy Legal” and “Other Controversies.” You can find all of them at the “Categories” box on the sidebar. Please keep reading!

Joke Theft? SNL’s Michael Che in the Cross Hairs

On By carlunegbuIn Comedy LegalLeave a comment

Well, there we go again with the joke stealing thing: another accusation, another comedy star, another lawsuit. This time Michael Che’s number is up in the plagiarism altercations of the internet age. In case you missed it, the Saturday Night Live funnyman has been accused of purloining (okay, stealing) jokes from a TikTok video performer and now both Che and his partner HBO Max have been dragged to court. And the TikToker is asking for more than just money.  

But first, here’s the story: Kelly Manno is a TikTok performer who posts videos on the said platform covering various everyday situations like taking a home tour, grabbing fast food with kids in the car, carpools by moms and more. Last year around August and September, she released two TikTok videos which she claimed garnered many hundreds of thousands of views. The videos titled the “Homegirl Hotline” involved a fictional service which allows people to request a so-called “homegirl” to help them take care of personal problems in their lives. (In one of the TikTok skits, after being called in to help an upset woman get even with a cheating boyfriend, the assisting “homegirl” threw out the bad guy’s clothing from the woman’s upstairs window, then drops a label that reads “free shit” over the clothes strewn on the lawn downstairs before proceeding to puncture the tires of the guy’s SUV truck that was packed downstairs.)  Typically, after the “homegirl” deal is struck, the customer would express their gratitude by saying “Thank You, Homegirl”.  

Now enter Michael Che and his HBO Max comedy series titled That Damn Michael Che. One of the episodes of the series contains a sketch entitled “Homegrrl.”  There, a father’s young son is attacked at a building lobby by an agitated woman who claims that the boy had stolen something from her and was hiding it in his diaper. During the attack, another woman intervenes and punches out the woman who had lunged at the kid and then apologizes to the kid’s flustered father who then replies, “Thanks, Homegrrl!”.  It is this very line uttered by this father character in Che’s sketch that Manno claims infringes her copyright in the phrase “Thank You, Homegirl Hotline” which was uttered by the characters in her own video.  So, in her lawsuit, Manno is alleging that Che has willfully infringed her copyright in the video and is seeking serious money damages plus a court order (or injunction) stopping Che and HBO from continuing to use their sketch.      

Now let’s consider what the copyright law says about all this. For starters, one cannot obtain copyright in a work unless the said work is an “original” work that has been affixed to a “tangible” medium. Obviously then, Manno’s work here, whatever one might say of its quality, is “original” in nature (assuming, of course, that she didn’t lift the stuff from somebody else). Plus, TikTok as a platform qualifies as a “tangible” medium where works being presented for copyright protection can be situated. Therefore, at first blush, Manno’s “Homegirl Hotline” skit passes the copyright test and will be recognized as a “work” in which her copyright exists.

So, now that she’s sitting pretty as a copyright holder, how about Che? Did he, in fact, infringe her copyright? Well, not if he came up with his own work entirely on his own, in which case we will be dealing with a mere coincidence (which is okay) rather than a willful appropriation, which is not allowed. And of course, if we’re talking about willful infringement, we must assume that Che indeed had “access” to Manno’s work. (For folks in Manno’s position, one of the blessings of the Internet age is that proving “access” of this kind is a cakewalk because, hey, we all suppose that anyone can access anything posted for public consumption on a platform like TikTok.)

  Setting aside the question of coincidence, could the two works each enjoy copyright protection despite their apparent similarity?  Well, yeah: one cannot copyright an idea but rather only the particular (think original) way that the person has expressed the said idea. When we’re dealing with words, as in this case, what is or can be protected, incidentally, is the very way the words have been used rather than the all-too-familiar idea of expressing gratitude to someone (whether Homegirl or anybody else) who has done the speaker a favor. Translation: Even if someone in Che’s position saw the thing on the Internet, he can still avoid the copyright problem by simply using different words to express the same good-manners idea of gratitude. (Again, remember, no one can copyright an idea.) So, in the complicated world of copyright law, just proving that the second person had “access” to the first person’s work isn’t even enough.  Between the issues of coincidence, access and similarity of the works in question, the jury in these sorts of cases is dealing with and weighing up a lot of factors, which all makes for potentially expensive litigation and an oftentimes hard-to- predict outcome. 

This case brings to mind another copyright situation from across the pond in Britain, a case that just like the Che’s case, involves a lesser-known person going after someone with a higher public profile, as well as the same issues of coincidence; access, and the use of similar ideas and expressions. Only this time the dispute is between two actual working standup comedians, and funny enough, the dispute has led not to a copyright violation suit by the complaining comedian but rather a defamation lawsuit by the comedian who allegedly stole the other guy’s joke. (Feel free to call it the “smart fridge case”, if you like.)

In the British case, both comedians are making a joke about not wanting to buy a smart fridge, out of fear that said fridge would actually bother them with messages when then they’re away from home hanging out with their friends. One comedian (Darius Davies) claimed he first made the joke on the comedy club circuit prior to the second comedian (Kae Kurd) making the same joke on national TV.  Kurd, whose time on TV with the joke seemed to have garnered him newfound celebrity status (a prestigious talent agency rep plus a national tour) did sue Davies for defamation for essentially calling him a joke thief in a viral post that aired the accusation.

Although Davies has not filed a countersuit for copyright infringement against Kurd, the circumstances that existed between them before Kurd went to court present the same old copyright issues of coincidence, access and similarity of ideas/expression that we see in Che’s case. Indeed, they’d already argued over these issues (without any resolution) prior to the matter landing in court. At the moment, the parties are reportedly taking the traditional path of trying to resolve matters out of court. Makes sense in the circumstances.

 Returning to Michael Che’s case, it seems that the British situation offers clues as to the likely path out of the dispute: an out of court settlement. For a comedy star like Che, it may not be the best use of time and money to be wrangling about possible joke theft with a lesser-known quantity like Manno. There’s probably no path to a happy win for Che nor for HBO Max. If one were to take a bet, the odds are better than even that they’ll choose to just settle this pesky matter out of court and be done with it. But we’ll see how it all ends.  

Editor’s Note: At the moment the author is seriously working hard to finish writing a new book on a rather tight deadline. So please bear with us if upcoming posts do not appear as regularly as they should during this, hopefully, quite short period. However, in the meantime, please do dig into the many other posts contained in the archives, which are readily available for your reading pleasure. There are two “categories” of articles: “Comedy Legal” and “Other Controversies.” You can find all of them at the “Categories” box on the sidebar. Please keep reading!