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!