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Last week four stand-up comedians were disinvited from a comedy club in Seattle, right around the corner from the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” or CHAZ, a glorified squatters’ camp created by antifa and BLM “peaceful” rioters during the 2020 “summer of love.” The four comedians fell afoul of neighborhood wokesters who complained to the club’s management in order to “ensure the programming stayed aligned with the socially diligent enclave’s ethos.”
Such stories have become so frequent that many people just shrug off the seriousness of their implications. But comedy is not just a type of entertainment, or a matter of taste. Comedy is much more than that: it is a critical part of the political institutions in governments in which citizens are free to speak publicly, and have the right to hold their leaders accountable to the people and, in the U.S., the Constitution.
Censorship, “cancel culture,” speech codes––in short, punishing the speech that one faction strives to silence for political gain–– all strike at the heart of our freedom and unalienable rights. Indeed, from the time decades ago that the “politically correct” Nurse Ratched feminists started scolding “sexist” jokes by saying, “That’s not funny!”, the woke have insidiously intensified their war on humor and the First Amendment.
The political heritage of comedy arose with the creation of constitutional rule by citizens in the ancient Greek poleis, particularly in Athens where citizenship was extended to the non-elites as well as to the rich and noble. This epochal development required extensive adjustments to the old order of aristocrats for whom ruling the state was a birthright, what Pindar, the celebrator of aristocrat achievements in the Panhellenic games, called the “splendor in the blood,” the inherited superiority of talent, charisma, wisdom, and character needed to be leaders of men.
But enrolling citizens without rank or wealth created a much more complex and diverse polity. The old elites were relatively homogenous in terms of wealth, manners, and education. Elite critics of the Athenian “poor,” as they were often called, like Plato or the earlier poet Theognis (6th century B.C.) have left a copious catalog of antidemocratic insults and complaints about the Athenian dêmos or “common people,” which provided the foundation for the subsequent 25 centuries of antidemocratic criticisms against politically empowering the masses.
Theognis, for example, wrote that “those [common people] who before knew nothing of lawsuits, nothing of laws,/who lived on the range, far out from the town, like wild deer/these are now the Great Men . . . . Our former nobles/are Rabble now.” And unlike the cultured elite, have no virtue or innate wisdom, but “only one virtue:/Money.”
Another critic known as the “Old Oligarch” later targeted the idea of political equality for citizens. Hence the Athenians, he wrote, “have chosen to let the worst people be better off than the good,” and “they have everywhere assigned more to the worst persons, the poor, and to the popular types than to the good men.” Among the common people “there is the maximum of ignorance, disorder and wickedness.”
Given this elite disdain for the majority of citizens and the notion of any sort of equality, several principles and institutions developed to level the political playing field. All magistrates, for example, at the end of their one-year terms, had to make an “accounting” of his actions, including money spent, to a board of citizens. Also, any citizen could accuse a magistrate of abusing his power, and if his accuser was convincing, the unlucky magistrate could face a trial, with several hundred citizens acting as judge and jury––and with the possible penalty of exile or even execution.
The most critical means for holding power accountable, however, was free speech, the ability of any citizen in good standing to address the state’s officials and assemblies without fear of punishment, no matter how uneducated or ill-mannered he may be, and to be treated the same before the law. The early 4th century orator Demosthenes wrote, “As every man has an equal share in the constitution generally, so this statute [equality under law] asserts an equal share in the law.”
Another important tool for enforcing political equality and accountability to the citizens was theatrical comedies. These productions were part of a religious festival, attendance at which was a right of citizens as important politically as voting. Given the wide variety of education and economic class, there were few restrictions on the content and language.
The favorite targets of comedy were politicians, orators, military leaders, or anyone who became prominent and thus prone to hubris. To remind them that they were no better than any other citizen, they were ridiculed and insulted by name in comedies attended by thousands of their fellow citizens, and subjected to vicious slanders and accusations of corruption, usually of an obscene nature.
Scatological jokes and gags were also common, as were brutal homosexual slurs. Apart from making people laugh, this obscenity underscored an important foundation of the radical democracy: no man, no matter his wealth, birth, or success, was free from the passions, vices, appetites, and moral failures that define all humans, and often lead to tyrannical excess.
Finally, the tradition of free and open speech protected comic poets from any attempts to silence or censor them. The 5th century powerful demagogue Cleon, a favorite target for Aristophanes during the Peloponnesian War, after one of the poet’s particularly brutal and slanderous plays, demanded that the Council silence him.
But they refused, honoring the traditional political role that comedy and its obscene personal attacks played in criticizing men with power and checking their ambitions to aggrandize more at the expense of their fellow citizens. Aristophanes, by the way, followed up his free-speech victory by writing yet another play making vicious fun of Cleon, and gloating over his failure to shut him up.
Over the last 50 years, in America comedy has been subject to more and more restrictions far more pernicious than the quaint, pre-Sixties proscription of sexual subject matter and vulgar language. The rise of identity politics––a classification system that assigns privileges to some citizens based both on the accident of ethnicity or sex, and on the sufferings of their ancestors––has created a whole class of citizens whose feelings and sensibilities must be obsessed over and catered to, mainly by silencing and shaming their critics.
Add these restraints to the general therapeutic bent of our culture––the notion that being made to feel bad or insulted is a crime that needs punishment––which exacerbates the perceived injuries to the hyper-sensitive “snowflakes.” Whether sincere or a tactic for aggrandizing more power and influence, today the standard of the irrationally sensitive must be followed by everybody, even at the expense of our First Amendment rights.
These conditions are obviously deadly for free speech, especially comedy. Transgressors are canceled, like the four comedians in Seattle, or programmed to censor themselves. What the ACLU, once a champion of free speech, used to call the “chilling has effect” has spread wider and wider.
Given the dysfunctions in our technocratic, relentlessly hardening “soft despotism,” we need the freedom to address those problems as we see fit, and to use the power of laughter to puncture the arrogant pretensions of those assaulting our unalienable rights and freedoms.
Sophocles once said, “Free men have free tongues.” We need more comedy and satire, more laughter and scorn, more mockery and ridicule of the pompous, self-righteos scolds, and push back against our crisis of political accountability, inequality under law, and usurpation of power by the “woke” commissars. That’s how we’ll keep our Republic.
Too many Whining little liberals who get their stupid little feelings hurt rhen cries to their Lawyer
Thank you for that wonderful perspective from the ancients… and no, that’s not a swipe at your age.
Comedy is a prime example of why I love YouTube so much. Never in the history of mankind has one been able to listen to or watch thousands of hours of the finest comedians, living or deceased, on so many diverse topics, without having to actually go into the arenas in which they performed.
I’m channeling Redd Foxx, given you noted the tactic of scatologic humor … thinking that if he were alive to witness this omni-directional destruction of his beloved America, that he’d say to the Leftists… “You gotta wash your ass.”
The CEO of Meow Wolf Santa Fe is the wife of Senator Martin Heinrich (NM). While Heinrich was head of the Albuquerque City Council, his main supporters in promoting his Far-Left agenda was Emil Shaw, head of the NM Communist Party. When Gerry Bradley, head of the NM Marxist Educators for Socialist Action proposed a raise of the minimum raise, it went to the voters who defeated it, Heinrich’s Politburo passed it anyway bypassing the Will of the Voters. NOW READ ON TO ADD CONTEXT. (If a Muslim, LGBTQ, Black, entertainer was canceled due to their positions, would the ACLU sue?)
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STATEMENT FROM MEOW WOLF-(from article but read on)
“Yesterday, we canceled a concert at the House of Eternal Return,” reads a statement Meow Wolf Vice President of Public Relations Kati Murphy issued to SFR. “Two hours before the show was set to begin, we found ourselves without adequate staff to safely manage the sold out crowd. Meow Wolf will always prioritize the safety of our employees and our guests. We are in the process of refunding ticket holders.”
Members of Santa Feans for Justice in Palestine, Santa Fe Jews for a Free Palestine, the Santa Fe Democratic Socialists of America, Showing Up For Racial Justice in Northern New Mexico and the Santa Fe Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine say they asked Meow Wolf to call off the concert and planned a protest at the venue because Matisyahu has been an outspoken supporter of the Israeli campaign in Gaza.
“Local activists, advocates and community members inundated Meow Wolf with calls and social media posts throughout the day preceding the event until the Meow Wolf phone line was disconnected,” reads a joint statement from the groups Thursday.
https://www.sfreporter.com/news/2024/02/15/meow-wolf-calls-off-matisyahu-concert/
Thanks, Steve. An art director I once chatted with referred to the “city different” as “Santa Fantasy.”
New Mexico is the most beautiful state, but governed by the worst people
This is unsurprising since the ideologies favored by the woke- Marxism, Islam, transgender ideology, feminism and Greta Thunbergesque climate change ideology are not only mutually antagonistic in many ways (try having a Pride Parade in Tehran, Nablus or Pyongyang) but are known for their complete lack of any sense of humor. They think “irony” refers to pressing clothes.
Did you hear about the new Olympic event? FISA Warranting. It tests skill in kicking down doors. The F.B.I. is favored for the gold metal over veteran teams from China and Russia. “We’re Number One!”
Mr Thornton, thanks for that ever so illuminating article.
We must never willingly give in to our rights to “Free Speech”.
My saying is, ” lets agree to disagree”
Do not follow Political Correctness, its a Marxist tool to shut down free speech. In other words they do not want to hear the TRUTH.
Didn’t Sigmund Freud say that “There are no accidents and no jokes” (although he likely said it in German or, as Obama would have it, “Austrian”)?
And the original Ayatollah Khomeini said that “There are no jokes in Islam,” if I remember correctly. Swell.
Worked with a mid-level sales rep, who was meticulous in his shiny shoes and classy attire… but when he tried to huddle up and be buddies with the five line workers, he walked away in a huff saying “I don’t like sarcasm”… Yup, American Freedom was built on a LOT of sarcasm.
Yes you are right.
Ruhollah Khomeini > Quotes > Quotable Quote
Ruhollah Khomeini
“Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. Islam does not allow swimming in the sea and is opposed to radio and television serials. Islam, however, allows marksmanship, horseback riding and competition.”
― Ruhollah Khomeini
And it also allows cross-dressing, elderly, bearded men to take centre stage and steal the show…
Ruhollah Khomeini puts the “fun” in “fundamentalism” — or maybe that should be that he puts the “mental” in “fundamentalism”. In either case I’m not laughing. I don’t dare.
And raping little girls.
I don’t know my Greek history, but I’m going to go out a limb, and wonder out loud if the Greeks freedoms were destroyed, by angry mobs who used freedom to destroy freedom?
“Comedy is not pretty.”
— Steve Martin
“socially diligent”: that sounds very like the Hitler Youth, the Stasi, the Red Guards…
If you want to know who REALLY holds power in a society, look at those that you are either not allowed to or seriously discouraged from making fun of
Would Rodney Dangerfield be cancelled today for making offensive jokes insulting himself?
It’s gratifying to hear the heritage of us “deplorables” dates back to the birthplace of western civilization and the ancient Greeks.
Q. Where do Homeless Liberals go to live? A. The Whine Cellar