It used to be that nothing was off limits when it came to comedy. Everyone realized that comedy was just that…comedy. Not to be taken seriously. Comedy was that one area where you could let down and enjoy yourself and destress. Hence, “comic relief”.
Obviously, we don’t all agree on what’s funny. What’s funny to me may very well not be funny to you. However, you have the right to make a joke, to poke fun, or laugh at whatever you’d like. If I don’t like what you’re joking about I don’t have to listen. There are particular comedians whose humor is offensive to me. If they come on TV, I just change the channel. For example, Robin Williams, when he was alive, early on, was really funny. But later his humor became dirty and sacrilegious. Consequently, I stopped watching him. The same with certain sit-coms.
The above being stated, I would never have tried to stop them from making jokes or laughing at what I thought wasn’t funny However, that’s not the world we live in today. The woke, cancel culture now censors comedy. You just can’t joke about things that are deemed, politically incorrect, offensive, or off limits. Let me give you a few examples.
If Don Rickles was alive and doing his stand up today, he would be castigated and cancelled. If you’re not old enough to remember Don Rickles, let me fill you in. He poked fun at everyone, Blacks, Italians, Hispanics, Hungarians, Irish people, and Jews. By the way, he was Jewish. I’m sure if gay, transgender, LGBTQ+++, was a thing back then he would have poked fun at that too.
He would pick out someone of one of these groups in the audience and insult them on live TV! I don’t ever remember anyone who happened to the unfortunate recipient, offended. They were laughing as hard as everyone else. Rickles made a good living at insulting people for over six decades. He once said, “If I were to insult people and mean it, that wouldn’t be funny. There’s a difference between an actual insult and just having fun.” However, that kind of “fun” is not be tolerated today.
In 1974 Mel Brooks directed a Warner Bros movie entitled, “Blazing Saddles”. It would be labeled “racist” and banned today. Even now you’d be hard pressed to find an unedited version.
The film contains a copious number of jokes about sexism and racism. The basic premise is an 1800 era small western highly “racist” town finds out that the new sheriff they’ve been waiting for is….black. Only “black” is not the word used.
In an article on Fox, by Cortney O’Brien, she quotes comedian, Karith Foster. “Blazing Saddles”… is a classic film,” Foster told Fox News Digital. “Here you have this old, Jewish guy, who kind of came up through the Borscht Belt, who understood the power of hyperbole, of irony, of sarcasm. I think there’s a reason why most of the most prolific artists and comedians are Jewish and Black. They are people who come from some pain. And he is a genius at understanding the absurdity of things. Which is what a lot of comedy does – it points out the absurdity of things like racism, and sexism, and homophobia.”
Back in the 1980-1984 SNL had Eddie Murphy as a cast member. Eddie often would do skits making fun how many viewed his race. You should check out Eddie as Mr. Rogers. Again, the point was, how stupid it was to view someone of another race that way.
In the early 70s there was a sitcom called “All in The Family”. It featured Carol O’Connor as Archie Bunker. Jean Stapleton played his ditzy wife, Edith, Sally Struthers his clueless daughter, Gloria, and the ultra-liberal, hippy looking Rob Reiner played his son-in-law “Meathead”. Archie was a bigot, highly predigest, middle aged white man. It was so funny to watch the episode of when a black family showed up at the door introducing themselves as his “new neighbors”. It was funny because it was so absurd! The didactic lesson was, look how stupid and ridicules it is to be a bigot and racist. You don’t want to be like Archie.
In the book, “Against the Great Reset”, Harry Stein writes, “we’re divided today by what we laugh at—or allowed to laugh at—as by anything else. And even the lowest-level Hollywood dummkopf understands, along with the H.R. departments of many financial behemoths and international conglomerates all in on the Great Reset, that those who question woke values are small-minded, intolerant, and bad, and most definitely not funny.”
It’s just too bad that comedy today has to put a, figuratively speaking, a strait jacket on to be acceptable. Comedy came to a tragic end when we allowed woke radical ideology to dictate to the rest of us what’s funny and what is not. How I wish we could go back in time!
I’ll leave you with the opening song sung by Edith and Archie in the opening of every episode of “All in The Family”. “Those were the days.”
“Boy, the way Glen Miller played.
Songs that made the Hit Parade.
Guys like us, we had it made.
Those were the days
Didn’t need no welfare state.
Everybody pulled his weight
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days
And you knew where you were then
Girls were girls and men were men.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.
People seemed to be content.
Fifty dollars paid the rent.
Freaks were in a circus tent.
Those were the days
Take a little Sunday spin,
Go to watch the Dodgers win.
Have yourself a dandy day
That cost you under a fin.
Hair was short and skirts were long.
Kate Smith really sold a song.
I don’t know just what went wrong.
Those Were the Days”
(Lee Adams, lyrics. Charles Strouse, music). (Bold mine).