Category: Other Controversies

Debates and Conversations in the Public Square

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

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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!

Lewis Black and his Posse: Comedians at the Copyright Barricades

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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?

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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!

Understanding the Politics and Rise of Right-Wing Comedy: The Missing Links

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One remarkable development in our current cultural moment is the growing emergence of conservative comedy as a powerful force in our social conversation. Contrary to other explanations so far offered for it, this essay attributes the rise of right-wing comedy to the intense polarization that has occurred in our politics and culture over the recent decades.

At the forefront of this conservative counterpoise to the more dominant liberal comedy is TV host Greg Gutfeld courtesy of his eponymous show Gutfeld! on Fox. According to Nielsen data, Gutfeld has bested the left’s leader Stephen Colbert in viewership numbers in the late-night comedy space in the most recent period.This despite the significant fact that Gutfeld’s show runs on cable rather than the more available network TV channels.

In their article on the subject, professors Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz suggested that the growth of conservative comedy was due to “shifts in media industry economics and political ideologies.” (“How a Conservative Comic Greg Gutfeld Overtook Stephen Colbert in Ratings to Became the Most Popular Late-Night TV Host”, September 24, 2021, The Conversation.) 

However, the evidence rather suggests that comedy did not become “ideological” until the last two or so decades, with the overall polarization of our politics and culture.  Indeed, it was largely the ideological tenor of latter-day comedy that seemingly transformed the so-called “media industry economics”. 

For his part, comedian Bill Maher rightfully explained that “comedy goes where the funny is, and there is funny on the left now, as well as the right”. (See Real Time with Bill Maher, August 27, 2021)

However, it is a fact that both the Left and the Right have had their share of scandals and absurdities over the last half century and yet no conservative comedian (think Dennis Miller and others), regardless of their talent, had managed to break through to comedic recognition and applause like Gutfeld has done. And it’s not because conservatives don’t know how to do comedy, as Maher further claimed. They actually do.

And so, the question lingers, why now?

Well, fact is, America itself changed, materially. Over the past two decades, the political branch of comedy has tended to dominate the practice of comedy, bringing with it the introduction of ideology and advocacy to the work of comedians. This new sort of comedy has been aptly termed “muckraking comedy”, courtesy of an August 2018 article in Medium co-authored by the Paley Center’s senior curator Ron Simon and this writer, titled “The Brave New World of Muckraking Comedy.” In explaining muckraking comedy, the article stated, “Once facts were facts and jokes were jokes. But the two have merged with comedians now wanting to change hearts and minds and not just release a guffaw. Funny now investigates and persuades, with the hopes of knowing laughter too.”  Comedian Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show on Comedy Central is considered by many to have birthed this new (muckraking) era in comedy.

Once upon a time in American society, say the 1960s and 1970s, comedians simply stayed in their lanes and rendered the jokes to entertain their audiences and mostly kept their politics to themselves. And that was in keeping with the country’s mores at the time. Even a political scandal as big as Nixon’s Watergate was not perceived by most comedians of that era as offering comedy gold; nor did most Americans see it as that much of a laughing matter, as confirmed by a 1973 article in The New York Times which noted that “Watergate just isn’t a laughing matter for most of the nation’s standup comedians”. (Watergate Comics Find the Joke Is on Them,” by Roy Reed, September 8, 1973).  “When they subpoenaed the President, that’s not comedy,” said Ken Barry, a comedian from that time.

To understand the “new normal” in American comedy, try imagining the probable reactions of leftwing comics if, Donald Trump, say, were to have faced a political scandal so huge as to force his resignation from office. Given recent suggestions in some quarters of a “national divorce” between Red and Blue America, it is hardly surprising that Americans now seem to have trouble being able to laugh at the same jokes. It is this sort of polarized environment that has created the golden opportunity for conservative comedy to answer the needs of people on the political right who hunger to “own the libs” and to laugh heartily at their expense. Accordingly, right-wing comedy of the muckraking variety has simply joined the fray, not so much to displace left-wing comedy as to stand in opposition to it in the service of its own political constituency. Gutfeld’s operation has seemingly emerged as the flagship of this movement, one that appears poised to wax even stronger in our current political and cultural moment. 

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!

Confronting Trump and Nixon: Comedy’s Changing Perspectives

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In the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack few would dispute the assertion that Donald Trump is the most controversial president of our lifetime. Surely, he seems to bring out the very worst in his detractors: the mainstream media loathes him and he in turn famously berates them as “the enemy” of the American people. The comedy community makes a feast of trump jokes and, as some comedians have noted, the Trump jokes are literally writing themselves. To say the least, these jokes can be pretty tough stuff and are clearly intended to hurt mightily.

It is worth stating at this point that despite Trump’s departure from power, the current moment can still be fairly regarded as the Trump era, thanks to the continuing impact of the phenomenon of Trumpism in our cultural life.

The controversy of the Trump era recalls another president in America’s modern history: Richard Nixon. Aside from his frosty, adversarial relationship with the media, Nixon, in fact, created a so-called “enemies list” of people to be hunted down by the government; predictably, the list included not a few members of the media. Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein calls the Nixon’s presidency a “criminal presidency.” Ultimately, Nixon was forced to resign the presidency in disgrace. Yet, it seems rather noteworthy that the comedy community of Nixon’s time did not go after him with anything resembling the venom and virulence with which Trump is assailed by comedians of his era. Question is, what accounts for the different reactions of the comedy community to the two uniquely controversial presidents?

America in the Nixon Era

As comedy legend Dick Cavett noted, the comedian [in that era] simply set out to think about an event and try to find some humor in it. A classic example can be seen in one of Cavett’s jokes about Watergate. In it, he cracked that the White House “plumbers” in trying to do their job of plugging leaks instead opened a Watergate. Speaking of his experience with Watergate, Cavett said, “I set out to do an entertaining talk show, never dreaming that I’ll get up to my neck in a national scandal.”

Cavett’s comments aptly capture the way comedy was done in the period before the contemporary era. Back then, comedy saw itself in a different role in society: it stayed in its own lane where the whole act was about making people laugh with whatever subjects would do the trick, whether the subjects were drawn from the political arena or elsewhere. Thus, comedians did not directly venture into the politics of the day to take sides in the political controversies of the moment. (Despite its apparent ideological bent, even the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which many would consider the outlier in that era, hewed closely to the goal of provoking laughter albeit at Nixon’s expense. The show neither wore its politics on its sleeves nor betrayed a burning desire to help the political opposition.)

Perhaps there was a good reason that comedians opted for that approach: their audiences, somehow, seemed to want it that way. Consider, for instance, the Watergate scandal, the biggest disaster of the Nixon presidency. According to a 1973 article in The New York Times (“Watergate Comics Find the Joke Is on Them,” by Roy Reed, September 8, 1973), most comedy audiences across the country, with the exception of a few isolated spots like New York, did not find Watergate jokes all that funny. “Watergate just isn’t a laughing matter for most of the nation’s standup comedians,” began the article, which went on to note that, “even scarcer than anti-Nixon Watergate jokes at the clubs are pro-Nixon jokes. Indeed, an informal nightclub survey didn’t turn up one of them.” From all indications, it was indeed a different time in the culture: “When they subpoenaed the President, that’s not comedy,” said Ken Barry, a comedian from that time.

Enter Trump and the Muckrakers

In today’s divisive political climate, it is difficult to imagine a comedian expressing the sort of sentiment expressed above by the comedian in the Times article. The simple reason is that we now live in the era of “muckraking comedy”, an overtly political and weaponized comedy that is news-based but lacks the commitment to objectivity that news professionals feel obliged to practice. The essence of this genre of comedy, which has been growing for the past two decades, consists of holding a viewpoint and using the vehicle of comedy to advance that viewpoint. As comedian Bill Maher rightly observed about today’s comedy audiences, “they’re there more to clap for the opinion they already believe in than to laugh. That’s what changed,” he said, adding, “It became more important to cheer for your team than to actually have a laugh.”

To be sure, the old laughter-based comedy of Cavett’s generation of comedians still exists today. However, in contemporary pop culture and the political climate that surrounds it, such comedy, clearly, has taken a back seat to the far dominant and more appealing genre of muckraking comedy, which is what reels in the all-important ratings. Given Trump’s outsized impact on the news cycle and the intense loathing of the man by those on the left, any left-leaning comedian of any significance today can only ignore anti-Trump muckraking at his or her own career peril. For instance, during Trump’s time in power, NBC’s Jimmy Fallon was forced to confront this new reality in his late-night competition with CBS’s Stephen Colbert: thanks to anti-Trump muckraking, Colbert the new-kid-on-the block in late-night comedy did seize the late-night ratings crown from Fallon, for at least three consecutive seasons through 2018-2019, when Colbert snagged a hefty 3.82 million nightly viewers compared to 2.44 million for Fallon and 2.04 million for Kimmel, according to Nielsen data.

Fallon’s troubles began in September 2016 when he famously mussed Trump’s hair during the latter’s appearance on his show, a gesture interpreted by angry audiences as him “normalizing” Trump. Over the three – year period since then, Fallon’s audience numbers have plunged whereas Colbert’s have spiked. Needless to say, Fallon has since learned his lesson and dutifully joined the anti-Trump muckraking party as a matter of sheer self-preservation. Samantha Bee is another leading comedian of the muckraking era who has reaped the benefits of anti-Trump advocacy. Acknowledging the role of outrage in her comedy, Bee noted in an interview with Canadian TV journalist Rosemary Barton that in her comedy world she found that “people care about the world” and aren’t so interested in jokes about celebrity antics anymore.

Under the prevailing circumstances, hardly any left-leaning muckraking comedian today particularly cares to either hide the political undertones of their act or the fact that they’d be glad to take down the Trump presidency if they could. And sometimes, it can get downright personal, to boot. Case in point: Bill Maher’s New Rules segment about Trump’s supposed narcissism (See Real Time with Bill Maher episode of September 21, 2018). In the six-minute span of the segment, Maher lamented how narcissism has rendered the president a stupid person who considers himself infallible and is therefore unteachable and can never be corrected. He likened Trump’s brain to a cell phone with a full mailbox where one can call but cannot leave a message.

Though more noticeable on the political left, muckraking comedy, by its nature, is a phenomenon that also exists on the right of the political spectrum. Thus, the muckraking comedy era isn’t all anti-Trump. To the contrary, the former president does indeed have some powerful muckrakers in his corner. Fox’s Gutfeld! a classic muckraking show, which according to Nielsen data is the current late-night ratings king, is a case in point.

In a nutshell, Greg Gutfeld, the show’s eponymous host, is the political right’s answer to what happens on the political left, complete with both his unabashed defense of Trump and the (correspondingly) brutal sarcasm he heaps on Joe Biden’s person and presidency. He joined the late-night fray this past April.

Making sense of what may not seem to add up

If the foregoing makes anything clear, it is that comedy’s reaction to the Nixon and Trump presidencies is a tale of two eras in comedy, which at bottom reflect a change in cultural attitudes. This cultural shift, coinciding with the transition from traditional to muckraking comedy, explains why Nixon and Trump, both right leaning and uber-controversial politicians could have been treated so dramatically differently. Whereas the audiences of one era preferred that comedians not take partisan political positions, the audiences of the other era rather wanted to be entertained with jokes that espouse an ideological point of view and would reward comedians who play the part. In this scenario, one can see that Nixon avoided the assaults of muckraking comedy simply by having existed in an era when the phenomenon did not yet exist. Trump’s presidency, however, was quite literally born into the era of muckraking comedy and he simply couldn’t avoid its harsh spotlight if he tried.

Therefore, to those who wonder about the disparate treatment of two personalities-of-a kind by the comedy community, one simple observation should suffice: Were Nixon were in power today, it’s a safe bet that he’d probably be treated with as much hostility as Trump is facing. Not least because Nixon remains the only person ever to resign the presidency, thanks to the worst political scandal of modern America.

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!

The Brave New World of Muckraking Comedy

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By Carl Unegbu and Ron Simon

These crazy times have demanded a new brand of comedy. With the news more insane than any joke a comedian can devise, this new comedy has partnered with journalism. Once facts were facts and jokes were jokes. But the two have merged with comedians now wanting to change hearts and minds and not just release a guffaw. This is comedy with a Pulitzer purpose, as the New York Times recently noticed. Funny is no longer funny, as Sid Caesar would say. Funny now investigates and persuades, with the hopes of knowing laughter too.

Comedy interacts with Journalism. Murrow meets Mirth. It has been developing over twenty years, but has reached its apex with Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. We like to call this new humor, muckraking comedy. Back at the turn of the twentieth century citizens were prompted to act because of so-called muckraking reporters, who scoured the filth to discover the truth for its readers. Our leading comedians now get dirty with the transgressions of politics and culture to bring some type of cleansing illumination to its audience. Laughter is the first step of the way to action and enlightenment. You might remember Upton Sinclair from school; his novels prompted legislation in Congress. Now you can see an electronic version of The Jungle nightly with such comedy muckrakers Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert.

Political Jokes Then and Now

Yes, there have political jokesters like Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. But they just wanted to release tension and basically affirm the status quo. Take this classic joke by Hope in the sixties: “President Kennedy is just winding up a nonpolitical tour of the 11 states he lost in the last election. He wanted to see how they’re getting along without federal aid.” Kennedy could be any politician. Funny to all sides, but ultimately harmless.

Oliver wants more. He posits: “Is anything about Trump funny anymore? I don’t know. Somehow the world’s most objectively laughable human has become a comedy graveyard where laughter goes to die.” Oliver recognizes that good old-fashioned inclusive humor is now hopelessly dead. The comic arrows must now be laced with some sort of poison. The world and its leaders are muck and your mission after the laughter is to change it.

Creating Muckraking Comedy

Well, this new muckraking comedy has transformed the process of creating jokes. If you are going to attack, you have to ensure that your jokes are as accurate and factual as anything in the New York Times. Comedy staffs now feature journalists and fact-checkers, reviewing every word to affirm it is true and factual, as well as funny. Lawyers also assiduously review punch lines to ascertain any possibility of defamation. The danger of muckraking comedy is that your targets will always be out to get you. Not to outwit you, just sue you.

Most people credit Jon Stewart as the trailblazer of this phenomenon in comedy thanks to his revolutionizing Comedy Central’ s The Daily Show. However, this new genre seems to have attained maturity at the hands of John Oliver in the weekly production of his own show HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Taking advantage of the weekly intervals between his shows and the absence of in-studio guests, Oliver, an alum of Daily Show and a protégé of Jon Stewart, is able to do a deep dive into an individual issue each week. Investigative reporting with savage laughs.

Oliver Takes on the Coal Industry

In this award-winning report on the coal industry, Oliver follows the journalistic principles of the muckrakers of old. He begins generally with the Trump Administration’s relationship with the coal industry. He then specially zeroes in on the safety practices of Murray Energy and the fatal collapse of the company’s mine in Utah in 2007. The piece was a smart indictment of the coal industry, worthy of Upton Sinclair, but with a large talking squirrel. His satire led to a defamation lawsuit by the company’s boss Robert Murray, which was ultimately dismissed by the court. Think how much research and comedy writing went into this piece, seamlessly intermingled.

We plan to explore ramifications of this radical muckraking comedy in future blogs. But first we want to understand the roots of the phenomenon. We had a conversation with one of its unsung heroes, Daniel Radosh. Radosh was a journalist for such publications as Spy before he became a writer for the Daily Show hosted by Jon Stewart and then Trevor Noah. Here he explains how journalism is injected into the satire, as well as the comedic differences between Stewart and Noah.

Now journalists play a very crucial role, something that Radosh considers a big legacy of Jon Stewart’s writing staff. As he puts it, “The Daily Show’s DNA” is becoming widely adopted as research and fact checking become commonplace in satirical writers’ rooms, the definition of muckraking comedy.

*This article was originally published in Medium, under Paley Matters. The co-author Ron Simon is curator of television and radio at The Paley Center for Media. Simon has been an associate adjunct professor at Columbia University and New York University, as well as a former chair of the Peabody Awards jury.

*For more interesting information about humor at large, visit Feedspot for the Top 100 Humor Blogs on the web. (https://blog.feedspot.com/humor_blogs/)

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. Please keep reading!

Spy Magazine and Today’s Brutal Political Satire: An Origin Story?

On By carlunegbuIn Other ControversiesLeave a comment

A remarkable feature of today’s political satire is what appears to be its “snark and insult” character. By most accounts, it wasn’t always this rough and mean.

Perhaps the most persuasive theory on how we started down this brutal path is that the now defunct Spy magazine from the 1980s and 1990s put us on it.  Paul O’Donnell, a writer at Mediabistro.com, reportedly declared that “We’re all Spy now.”

The obvious question that arises is whether there is anything to this legacy theory?

For starters, when Spy debuted a generation ago, during the excesses and glamor of the swaggering ‘80s, it made no secret of its ambition: to take the baton to the noggins of the rich, famous and/or powerful and of course to try to take them down a peg or two. Indeed, as if to serve clear notice (to anyone listening) about the magazine’s intended brand of journalism, its maiden edition in 1986 was captioned JERKS.  In it, the magazine proceeded to ridicule individuals that it considered the “Ten Most Embarrassing New Yorkers.” Quite interestingly, this list included Donald Trump, who the magazine would, in due course, famously describe as “a short-fingered vulgarian’. Not one to be outdone in the insult department, Trump in turn dismissed the magazine as “a piece of garbage.”

For sure, any casual observer at the time could have easily noticed the magazine’s signature style and tone in dealing with its famous subjects, with its unabashed snark and insult bent. A piece that ran in its March 1988 edition could perhaps give those unfamiliar with its work a good sense of the magazine’s modus operandi. The said piece dealt with the subject of people who doubled as managers/boyfriends to their clients and it ran under the (appropriately) provocative headline “Behind Every Great Woman is a Drunk Man (With a Wispy Mustache).” The piece was accompanied by photos of three separate couples, with matching captions to boot. The first photo was captioned “Yesteryears’ Cyndi Lauper and husband manager Dave Wolf”; the second photo’s caption was “Tina Turner and Ike, In Between Spectacular Beatings”; and the third caption read “Twiggy and Nigel “Justin de Villenueve” Davies”.

In that same piece, the writer also wondered in a separate passage why a [then] 24-year-old beauty like Jenny McCarthy would be dating her manager Ray Manzella who the writer claimed resembled “a mangled Ted Danson”.  McCarthy herself was not spared the writer’s vicious ribbing and was described as a “breast-augmented and armpit sniffing former Playboy model”

So, anyhow, that’s the sort of stuff Spy was doing back then. Now what are the political satirists doing today? Well, first, it is not hard to notice that the current practice of satire has steadily become a “no-holds-barred take no-prisoners” business that often carries with it a clear point of view reflecting an ideological slant to the debate on social issues. For instance, shows like The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (previously Jon Stewart), Last Week Tonight with John Oliver or The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which are arguably the dominant actors on the scene, make no secret of their left-leaning point of view. From the right flank of the ideological field, Greg Gutfeld’s eponymous new show Gutfeld!  (on the Fox network) is joining the party and his stock in this regard is rising steadily. To be sure, these are all news-based shows that hit pretty hard on the events of the day and the people involved in them.

Concerning the legacy question, what can barely escape notice is the obvious parallels that exist between Spy and today’s political satire, not least the shared attitude of critical or even snarky take on their respective subjects.  In fact, anyone who follows contemporary political satire probably won’t have much trouble recognizing the strong presence of Spy’s signature snark and insult in the work of the satirists. And for that matter, this phenomenon seems so infectious that even non-satirists are playing the game, too.

For instance, Trump himself, a favorite target both of then Spy magazine and today’s satirists, deploys this shared tactic of snark and insult in dealing with his opponents both in and outside the political arena, whether he is mocking handicapped people; belittling political opponents based on their physical stature or denigrating female enemies as fat pigs or ugly. Indeed, during the 2016 election, as James Poniewozik of the New York Times rightly observed, he habitually treated political campaigning “like a roast, “

Yet there are those who don’t exactly feel comfortable with the notion that a legacy exists between what Spy did in its day and what today’s satirists are doing: Daniel Radosh, for one.  Having worked as a reporter for Spy then and is now working as a senior writer on The Daily Show, Radosh is someone who can perhaps be described as a rare common link between the two worlds at issue.  As Radosh sees it, what Spy did and what, for instance, The Daily Show does, are different things in the sense that the former is journalism, albeit humorous journalism, whereas the latter is comedy, news-based though it may be. Perhaps a distinction without a difference?

Apparently not in the opinion of Radosh. He explains that what Spy did was genuinely based on the principles of journalism, where professionals would actually dig up facts and do a reporting of the news, albeit with an “attitude of playfulness, rebellion and irresponsibility which was what made it fun.” Thus, at all times they, as journalists, had to be responsible with the facts. On the other hand, he notes that The Daily Show as a news-based comedy show often relies on the facts already dug up and reported by the journalists and tries to make a joke from them. (Radosh, however, acknowledges the long form storytelling and reporting on John Oliver’s news-based comedy show as an exception to this journalism versus comedy dynamic.)

So, given the above, what does one make of the link between Spy and today’s satire?  Well, it’s obvious that Spy’s signature snark-and-insult tactic is practiced on both the left and the right in their work, not only against their targets but also in their ideological feuds with each other. In a perverse way, therefore, Spy can claim credit for starting us down this road in our political satire. Whether or not one chooses to use the term “legacy” to describe this phenomenon may well be a matter of perspective. Yet it is perhaps fair to say, though, that anyone looking to place the viciousness of our current political satire in its proper context might do well to take a look at what Spy magazine did in its day. Well, so there you have it!

***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. Please keep reading!

Seriously, Can Comedy and Cancel Culture Live on the Same Planet?

On By carlunegbuIn Other ControversiesLeave a comment

Comedy is at a quite different place today than it was just a generation ago.

 In that simpler time, comedy was essentially about making people laugh, whether it was slapstick humor or one involving social commentary.  Then society as a whole started to change, beginning in the 1960s, with the push to create a more just and less oppressive society. Thus began our society’s journey to its ultimate destination, namely, our present era of “political correctness” (PC), which requires all of society’s speech to respect the sensibilities of its oppressed or vulnerable groups. In so doing, PC has tended to create around said groups a zone of protection from offensive speech.  

More consequential yet in our new PC society, especially for comedians who make their living by talking, is the emergence of a rather virulent and oppressive offshoot of PC known as “cancel culture,” courtesy of the confluence of social media, woke culture and the relative decline in the importance of comedy clubs in the career advancement of comedians. As the name implies, cancel culture simply “cancels” people for expressing offensive or objectionable opinions in the social conversation; it also cancels places and institutions for representing said offensive ideas.

In the current architecture of the cancel culture phenomenon, “wokeness” functions as the litmus test for cancellations while social media is the forum for the trial and execution of convicted offenders of the woke orthodoxy, a regularly updated and sometimes unpredictable code of conduct.  Over the past two or so decades, as one might predict, especially since the advent of Twitter, the so-called PC brigade has increasingly weighed in on just how far comedians can freely swing their bats in exercising their art form. In other words, they’ve taken a position on what sort of “material” comedians are permitted to use for their work.

Hence, over the said period, several comedians have gotten into trouble for literally running the red light of political correctness, including Tracy Morgan (gay jokes); Dane Cook (Aurora, Colorado theater shooting); Bill Maher (cowardly US soldiers vs. brave terrorists) George Lopez (Kirstie Alley’s weight problem); Gilbert Gottfried (Japanese tsunami jokes) and Tosh. O (rape jokes).

Not surprisingly many in the comedy community find this state of affairs simply unacceptable. Lisa Lampanelli’s May 2013 guest column for the Hollywood Reporter (“How Political Correctness is Killing Comedy”), for example, aptly captures the prevailing sentiment of the comedy community on this matter: fundamentally, most comedians believe their art form is subjective in nature when it comes to what jokes appeal to different people and that to deny an artist the chance to explore his art is like forcing your beliefs on him. 

So, the question arises, can comedy and cancel culture co-exist with each other on the same planet?  As uncomfortable as it might seem, the short answer is, well, they’re going to have to.

For starters, political correctness, to be sure, seems to have some redeeming qualities, considering our society’s history of oppression and the relative permissiveness of our laws in that regard. True, there is always the risk of the pendulum swinging too far in the direction of cancel culture. Yet, PC in its good moments might actually have a salutary influence upon the civic life of any modern society. For instance, in America, the First Amendment, which is a wonderful gift that we enjoy, nonetheless gives protection to so much hurtful and, arguably, unnecessary speech that might well be homophobic, xenophobic, racist or misogynistic. Perhaps in those circumstances, it may not be such a bad thing for PC to occasionally step in and try to civilize our society.

Take the Don Imus controversy in 2007 concerning the Rutgers University basketball women, whom the late former radio host and humorist had attacked without any provocation as “nappy-headed hos” during an infamous episode of his show “Imus in the Morning.” Though to his credit Imus later apologized for his wrongheaded actions, the fact remains that he was well within his First Amendment rights when he lobbed the rather gratuitous attack on the hapless ladies. In fact, prior to the firestorm that followed his attack on the women, Imus was known to tout his irreverent show as the “First Amendment at its best and its worst.” 

Now what’s the way forward in this apparent standoff between these two warring contingents, none of which is entirely blameless. Well, the starting point here is to recognize that cancel culture isn’t going anywhere soon. Under the circumstances, therefore, it is comedy more than the cancel culture squad that has to adjust to the “reality of the times”, not least for the very simple reason that comedians actually have a job to do and a living to make for that matter. Speaking of which, it must be noted that comedy is now a mature art form at a brilliant “golden age” moment, where the rewards of success are literally astronomical compared to its past.

More importantly, since comedians are doing comedy not for themselves but rather for the broader society, they must consider their “shtick” as something of a service or product being offered for sale in the marketplace. As a matter of sheer economics, it is no more a winning strategy for a comedian to push comic “material” that the audience, owing to changing sensibilities, won’t find funny than it is for a salesman to be offering goods that his prospective customers won’t buy owing to changing tastes.

For good or ill, navigating the waters of cancel culture has become a cost of doing business today in our society and must be accommodated as such. Not least because political correctness and cancel culture are not directed at comedy alone: they set down rules of general application touching every segment of society, including politicos and corporations.  

In the end, the good news for talented comedians with a healthy imagination and creativity is that there is still a lot of game on the ground, meaning that there is yet so much funny stuff out there in the real world that can be said without necessarily burning down the town or breaching the proverbial “red line” drawn by contemporary society, however debatable the said line might be. Besides, in real life anyway, one cannot simply say whatever one likes any more than one can do whatever one likes.   So, there you have it!