Comedy and the Culture Wars

Josh Landy
Is there comedy so offensive that it shouldn’t be allowed?

John Perry
Do some jokes encouraged bigotry and hatred?

Josh Landy
Or can edgy comedy actually be good for society?

John Perry
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

John Perry
I’m John Perry. We’re coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Josh Landy
…continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus, where I direct the Philosophy and Literature Initiative and John taught philosophy for 40 years.

John Perry
Today, we’re thinking about comedy and the culture wars. Which reminds me of something I heard: a rabbi a priest in an imam walk into—

Josh Landy
Oh no no no—let’s not start the show with an offensive joke!

John Perry
Oh! You misunderstand—I was gonna tell you what they thought about Avicenna! What makes you think it was a joke? You haven’t even heard how it goes. You young people are way too sensitive. When it comes to comedy, you’re ruining it for the rest of us.

Josh Landy
Like the rest of you “unwoke” old white guys—that’s who you mean ? Look John, come on, there are real reasons to be sensitive about comedy. It can reinforce prejudices, it can normalize bigotry.

John Perry
Don’t be silly. Come on, you got to give people some credit for knowing the difference between a joke and real intolerance.

Josh Landy
Do we, though? I mean, think about Norm Macdonald. He he said he had to drop some of his jokes because (I’m going to quote Norm Macdonald here) “a lot of people are idiots. You don’t want to have a joke be misunderstood and then someone goes and beats up a trans person.” You know what I think Norm Macdonald had a point.

John Perry
Well, I don’t want to disagree with you. And I certainly don’t want to question the authority of Norm Macdonald, or the issue of people being idiots. But I’m worried about censorship. I mean, where does it all end? I don’t want comedians feeling like they can’t tackle important controversial topics because someone somewhere might get offended.

Josh Landy
Well look, I’m totally in favor of giving comedians freedom to tackle all kinds of sensitive topics—I’m totally on board with that. But they just have to be punching up, not punching down.

John Perry
By that you mean you only want comedians making fun of the rich and powerful?

Josh Landy
Yeah, exactly.

John Perry
Oh, *yanwsville*. That’s going to make for some very safe and very boring comedy.

Josh Landy
What, so you want them to make fun of the disabled minorities, women, that kind of thing?

John Perry
It’s not as simple as that. Comedy is noise making fun of people. For one thing, sometimes it’s just upsetting existing preconceptions, asking difficult questions, messig up mental categories. It’s a lot like philosophy or art. You know, people were deeply offended by Impressionism. And now look, there’s a Monet in every doctor’s office—you can’t get a colonoscopy without seeing water lilies.

Josh Landy
That’s quite a visual, John! Look, I gotta say, I really like your idea of a kind of comedy that unsettles our categories. That’s great. But, you know, I’m worried even then, even when comedy isn’t attacking people, there could be a danger. I mean, think about the movie “The Producers,” a comedy about the Nazis. Some people found it hilarious. But you know, if you’re someone who lost family in the Holocaust, maybe you wouldn’t find it funny at all. Maybe you think the film trivializes the suffering of millions.

John Perry
Well, you might think that, but by my experience, you’d probably be wrong. I mean, I don’t need to tell you. There’s just a long and glorious tradition in Jewish culture of what we might call gallows humor. And you know why? Because comedy is the only thing that makes life bearable.

Josh Landy
You know, as a Jewish guy, I’ve got to say, I agree with you there, John. It reminds me that great joke about the Jewish mother and the homeless guy where he says to her, help me out, lady, I haven’t eaten in three days. And she says, force yourself!

John Perry
I’m deeply offended, Josh. That’s funny, and it shows that you actually agree with me.

Josh Landy
Well, not entirely, John. I still think some jokes are just off limits. But I will admit that there’s a lot to digest here—no pun intende).

John Perry
Well, so you’d better force yourself—pun intended—to think about what happens when comedians violate boundaries, and then face a backlash. We send our roving philosophical reporter Holly J. McDede, to see if the push for political correctness is really ruining comedy. She files this report.

Dave Chappelle
My parents did just well enough so that I could grow up poor around white people.

Holly McDede
Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special, “Sticks and Stones,” is controversial. For example, he says he doesn’t believe the men who’ve accused Michael Jackson of molesting them when they were boys.

Dave Chappelle
Even if he did do it… You know what I mean? I know more than half the people in this room have been molested in their lives. But it wasn’t no Michael Jackson, was it?

Holly McDede
Some people have called for Chappelle to be blacklisted or “cancelled.” But crossing the line like this isn’t anything new

Peter McGraw
People have been offended by by comics since there were comics.

Holly McDede
Dr. Peter McGraw is a psychology professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and an expert in the scientific study of humor.

Peter McGraw
Laughter sits in this sweet spot between totally benign, something that’s just purely okay, and something that is totally a violation, something that is just wrong.

Holly McDede
McGraw says what has changed, though, is the feedback is louder because of social media. But no one has ever really agreed on the ground rules of what’s offensive

Peter McGraw
Because what is wrong and what is okay is seen through through a person’s own lens, how they end up seeing the world.

Holly McDede
So I decided to ask a few comedians and improv artists how they see it: whether they feel like audiences are often too easily offended.

Tony Sparks
My name is Tony Sparks, you can find me rummaging around the Tenderloin. In the 80s comedy—if you look at anything comedy in the 80s it’s all racist, sexist, ageist is just terrible. But now you have to kind of walk the line. So you can say anything that and you never know. You never know the pain that people have gone through and they are carrying it. So you might be saying something you might be talking about unicorns. And they go like, “what is he saying about me?” You know, I mean, it is not even directed at them.

Janet Coleman
I’m Janet Coleman. I’m the author of the book on “The Compass,” which is the improvisational theatre that revolutionize dAmerican comedy. My only gripe is the offense taken by male comedians about not being as free as they once were. to degrade women and gays and trans people and people of color. I think there’s a line to be drawn—the humane line. If you limit what can be done and said, just as an artistic exercise, it might prove fruitful if you can’t be cruel or can’t be this or that.

Larry Dorsey Jr
My name is Larry Dorsey Jr. Going up here, San Francisco, I always say San Francisco’s so racist they stopped believing racism exists, right? So I’ve had a lot of times where people come up to me and say a black joke. And they don’t understand the historical significance or why that joke is it had even came to be. We have to talk and educate these people who may be ignorant. And then also if they do not want to change, we have to be willing to say, okay, as long as you’re not out here, like, trying to kill people, we have to be willing to accept people with different point of views.

Holly McDede
There are comedians like Hannah Gadsby who are pushing boundaries precisely by being more sensitive and introspective. In her standup special, “The Net,” Gadsby begins with jokes about being told she’s not lesbian enough and regularly mistaken for a man.

Hannah Gadsby
I wouldn’t want to be a straight white man, not if you paid me—although the pay would be substantially better.

Holly McDede
But then, in a twist, she declares she’s decided to quit comedy. She’s tired of making fun of herself and people who identify with her. She says that can be damaging in a different way.

Hannah Gadsby
Do you understand what self-deprecation means when it comes from somebody who already exists in the margins. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak. And I simply will not do that anymore—not to myself, or anybody who identifies with me.

Holly McDede
“The Net” ended up being a hit because people crave that vulnerability from a comedian, not just cheap punch lines. Then there’s people like Louis CK. After he was accused of sexual harassment, he went on a comeback tour and told more jokes about masturbation. At the end of the day, if you want to make people laugh, you need a good sense of timing and the ability to read the room.

Hannah Gadsby
Just jokes, though—clearly, justjokes.

Holly McDede
For Philosophy Talk, I’m Holly J. McDede.

John Perry
Thanks, Holly for that interesting and from a variety of perspectives—that was really great report. I’m John Perry, with me is my Stanford colleague Josh Landy, and today we’re talking about comedy and the culture wars.

Josh Landy
We’re joined now by Jeffrey Israel, who’s a professor of religion at Williams College, and author of “Living with Hates in American Politics and Religion: How Popular Culture can Defuse Intractable Differences.” Jeff, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Jeff Israel
Thank you, Josh.

John Perry
Jeff, edgy or hateful comedy just seems, off-hand, like an unusual topic for a professor of religion. What got you interested in that topic, so interested that you decided to write a book about it?

Jeff Israel
Well, that’s an excellent question. I think when I was in college in the 90s at Oberlin College, I was very interested did in the language of identity and the politics surrounding identity, and how Jews fit into it. And there was a line of response, I think, to larger modern problems of group identification from Jews, that is, I think, comedy. And that comedy and stories about anti heroes, “schlemiels” in the Yiddish context, was in a way of response to a kind of deep problem of politics for Jews.

Josh Landy
I love that way of thinking about that, appeals to the way that you know, my own sort of cultural background. But let me just ask you quickly, you know, where did that lead you? Where did you end up coming down on this question? John, and I were arguing earlier about whether there’s really a place in society for edgy controversial comedy. What did all your thinking about this lead you to believ?.

Jeff Israel
So where I ended up is that the deeper idea is play, and the importance of play in liberal democratic societies with humor and comedy being a particular kind of play. And basically, what I wanted to what I want to say is that space and time for really rough, sometimes nasty, sometimes perverse play is enormously important to liberal democratic societies. And because of that, really rough, nasty, transgressive, perverse, comedy is also really important.

John Perry
It’s important to have it.

Jeff Israel
it’s important to have the time and the space for it.

John Perry
Now except you would agree that comedy about old people really, really, really out of balance. I mean, you think just because I’m pushing 80, I’m biased about it.

Josh Landy
So tell us a little bit more about that. I love this idea of yours about playspace. Right? It’s like a separate space where somehow it’s safe to try out things or experiment with things or I don’t know, what is it? Is it about like inhabiting positions that it gets it out of your system? What’s What’s your view about this?

Jeff Israel
Well, so to start with that last comment, because it helps to differentiate it, it’s not what you might call purgation theory, which says that we need time to let off steam. It’s that actually part of thriving as human beings is playing is doing something it kind of in a kind of set aside time and space, where things don’t mean what they normally mean. And you do them not, for instrumental reasons like to accomplish some goal that you might do efficiently, more efficiently, some other but just to do it just to have those feelings. And a lot of the stuff we want to do we want to play with is nasty stuff that is the product of historical injustice and oppression.

John Perry
So comedy is a form of play, but a very specialized form.

Josh Landy
Well, there’s a lot to dig into here and we’re gonna get back to it just a second. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about comedy and the culture wars.

John Perry
Do you think anything goes when it comes to comedy? Or are there some topics that really shouldn’t be joke about, like old age? Can comedy actually help us to live in harmony together?

Josh Landy
Satire, censorship, and social harmony—plus your calls and emails, when Philosophy Talk continues.

The Smiths
That joke isn’t funny anymore. Too close to home and too near the bone—more than you’ll ever know.

John Perry
Too close to home and too near the bar. An old man walked into a bar. He fell down and died.

Josh Landy
That’s not funny, John.

John Perry
Not funny. I agree. That’s not funny. But who gets to say whether a joke is funny or just hateful? I’m John Perry. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that laughs at everything…

Josh Landy
…except your sense of humor. I’m Josh Landy. We’re thinking about comedy and the culture wars. Our guest today is Jeff Israel from Williams College, author of “Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion.”

John Perry
Jeff, just before the break, you were saying that you think edgy comedy has social benefits. But don’t you think the opposite is also true that it can be socially harmful?

Jeff Israel
In a sense, yes. But that’s not really how I’d want to frame it. So I think that the way to look at comedy if we’re using this sense of special place for and time for play that I’m describing, is to allow it to be pretty autonomous. So that what happens in the time and space of Play doesn’t have an inherent meaning. So all sorts of things can happen there all sorts of emerge. Emotions can emerge for the audience and for the performer. But their meaning is really a question that comes after the fact that’s external to the playing to the laughing to the feeling of mirth, and comic amusement.

Josh Landy
So you’re saying, there’s that there’s the moment when you’re actually watching the show, you know, you’re watching the TV show, you’re at the comedy, but then there’s the discussion that happens afterwards. And I think about all in the family, which you write about so so brilliantly, that, you know, Norman Lear, part of his idea was to start conversations, right. It’s not that the work, the political work that show was supposed to be doing wasn’t supposed to happen in the half an hour when you’re watching the show. It’s supposed to happen afterwards, when people are sitting around and having the conversation is that is that an approximation of what you’re saying?

Jeff Israel
It is. And I also think it’s important because you don’t want to think that you know, what’s happening in that moment, or think that it goes in any particular direction, I think we have to sort of take a certain amount of responsibility for the way that those kinds of moments become instrumental in our commentary after the fact, because people don’t and Norman Lear talked about this all the time, actually, when people would argue with him about on the family, he’s, you know, he was trying to be funny it was, and what he thought was funny was gonna hit hard, it will write it, that’s where the funny was, and he knew that something would come after, but the political consequences would be in that coming after, in the thing in itself.

John Perry
So let me give you an example. Stephen Colbert. Now, Stephen Colbert is an important part of my life. I don’t want to disclose my political point of view. But my wife and I make it through the day, watching some CNN watching some, you know, CBS watching this, that and the other thing and and you know, what, what kind of breaks the depression and allows us to get to sleep as Stephen Colbert. But he is nasty. Now, arguably, he’s hitting up I mean, but what’s going on? What’s going on there? I don’t think we’re just playing we’re we’re, we’re taking his meaning very seriously. How should we think of that?

Jeff Israel
Well, so there’s a couple options here. One is to read it as satire, which is something a little bit different than the kind of humorous playing that I’m talking about. Satire is an attempt to achieve a political goal using rhetorical elements of humor and comedy, etc. Right? The playing that I’m talking about has is sort of self sufficient in its meaning, you want to feel the emotions of outrage. But it’s not obvious where those go. And you could even allow yourself to feel somebody else’s outrage about things you don’t even care about. In the moment of humorous play. Now, nothing that the tricky thing is, is that it’s not obvious that anything in particular is satire or humorous play this again, this process of framing, deciding that well, this is playing and this is not playing this is instrumental, that unfortunately, because it’s very difficult is also a responsibility, I think of democratic citizenship, one that we don’t articulate as such. And it’s been my goal to try to make more salient, which is how to frame the different times and spaces that we navigate and that those are always inevitably contestable and can’t be resolved.

Josh Landy
That actually actually gets us to an email, we receive it from Bob in Richmond. Bob asks, what is it that makes it funny to attack the right people in certain settings when it would be inappropriate and others that seems to go to what you’re, you’re just saying, Jeff?

Jeff Israel
Yeah. And I mean, it’s hard to ask the answer that because it’s usually very specific to the setting. What makes it funny. So I guess one way to answer it is to say that one of the things that happened with humorous play as I think of it is you are developing the performer of the artist is developing a relationship and curating a sense of who they are and who the audience is, and then making judgments about the kinds of incongruent ease and surprises and other sorts of things that are going to create comic amusement and that are going to sort of make it feel worth it.

Josh Landy
Yeah. There’s there’s so many judgments to make right? I mean, I you know, one of the jokes on that Chappelle special that the holly mentioned in the in the setup in the in the report, Dave Chappelle said, this is Atlanta. I’m sure there’s a lot of gay men here tonight with their wives. And that’s a joke where, well, who’s the joke on you know, is it Atlanta? Is the South is it are homophobic society, or is it closeted gay men? You don’t in a case like that. You don’t even know who the target is. You don’t know if he’s punching up, he’s punching down. He’s punching sideways. So I’d like your thought that actually maybe We have a lot of interpretive work to do.

Jeff Israel
Yeah. And I think that’s a great example of actually quite a pretty interesting joke in the sense that or at least illustrative of something that I would want to bring into this conversation, which is that there’s a quality that it kind of dissolves. John was talking about this, it dissolves categories of dissolved assumptions and clear markers. And that feeling of being dissolved and, and having things break down is something that I think people want and they want about particular things. Right, right. And so I think, a, but at the same time, and I do want to answer your email, or with something important, which is that you can something being say, let’s say too edgy, can be an aesthetic flaw. And if you’ve ever sort of been joking with people and or telling a story, and or reading something, or hearing something, and it just goes a little too far, and then it just fails. It’s just not as fun. It’s not funny, but it’s more like putting too much gray in a painting, right? The color balance is off. It’s not because inherently gray is a bad color. But they the artists made a misjudgment about how much gray you can really put into it before you grade the whole thing out.

John Perry
So Jeff, you said satire is one thing. And the kind of play humor is another thing, but they’re both humor. So as a philosoper, what do they—what’s the essence of humor? You discuss this in your book, but say a little bit about it here.

Josh Landy
Easy question.

John Perry
Yeah, you only spent three chapters on it.

Jeff Israel
I mean, I think it’s a very complicated thing to answer. But I do think that the best way to think about it is in terms of incongruency. That, and there are lots of different kinds of humor theories. I know you’ve done shows on this in the past, I’ve listened to them on theory of comedy and humor, and you know, some people talk about in terms of relief, or in terms of registering a sense of superiority. But I think something that the incongruency theory can do married with an idea of play that I offer is that what you’re doing with comedy is often sort of setting things aside in this framework. So you’ve created a special framework where things are set aside for special kind of non instrumental activity. And in that context, you’ve offered something in Congress or deflationary, or there’s been some kind of action that juxtaposes things oddly and interestingly and surprisingly, and that feature in that context gives you a kind of feeling of mirth, a sense of levity, and fun. And when you have those factors, you have usually what we’re calling humor and comedy, and that.

Josh Landy
That’s a great definition. Yeah, you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about comedy and culture with Jeff Israel from Williams College. And we have Ed from San Francisco on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. And what’s your comment or question?

Ed
Okay, well, I don’t know, I had a kind of a complicated situation on the using of word it was, I was driving an Uber and I had a black customer, and we were getting along fine. And this guy was gonna want to be Movie Maker. And it was a big fan of Eddie Murray. And I quoted him something from Eddie Murray that I thought was funny. I used to Edward, and were doing it. And he basically was telling me that I didn’t have the right to use that word in retelling retelling the story. The story was a complicated use of the word where he was trying to pretend he was a brighter getting into a hotel. And he claimed, well, you’re not you’re not letting me in here. Because I’m an inward I thought it was a clever thing on both sides on fake liberalism, and sometimes that black people have been known to use the fact that they were oppressed to gain things. So what I’m wondering is, was I a racist?

John Perry
I would say there’s two questions here. One, is there something objectively wrong about such a joke? And second, was it a good idea is Uber driver was somebody tell a joke is the and we’re pretty sure the answer is as a last question is no, it wasn’t such a good idea. But that’s just my advice.

Josh Landy
What do you think, Jeff? I mean, you know, there there seems as though it’s reasonable to say, There are jokes that some kinds of people get to say and that other people get to tell them other people don’t. Does that seem right to you?

Jeff Israel
It does. And I think something about my view about this, I think might be helpful to introduce here because I think I’m afraid that it was probably it was a terrible idea to introduce this in the context of that kind of interaction in kind of public context where your driver and you know—

Josh Landy
With no offense to Ed, obviously he meant well, found it funny.

Jeff Israel
We’re all doing our best but but but I think it’s Really important that that two tracks are going at the same time if you’re going to have time and space for really nasty play with really nasty words like that word, right. And that other track is a book called political track, where when we’re interacting with people in everyday life, especially in, in, in sort of social, economic political life, as we normally talk about them, we really have to be careful to figure out how to be respectful, and really appreciate each other’s shared stake in in a very difficult life under very unjust circumstances that we all live in. So that kind of space, it’s really important to be careful and thoughtful with how those interactions unfold, precisely because the more the safer people feel, in public life, in those kinds of contexts, the more openness there is to playing around with things in the times and spaces of play.

Josh Landy
Sothat does strengthen what you’re saying earlier, right. Because the idea that, you know, they’re I mean, you think of some joke, some jokes are meant to be recycled, like viruses, they, they spread, and everyone tells them and retails other jokes, that seems like the point of them is to have them in a safe space in this space where one person gets to say it or one category of person. So it sort of supports your earlier point about a play space.

John Perry
Way back when I was a graduate student in the 60s, the big professor was Max Black, who was Jewish, and you know, gotten out of Poland during the war, and so forth, and so on. And nowadays, slurs is a very big topic and fuzzy back then it wasn’t, but he had a graduate student working on slurs. And graduate students said, Well, he was gone fine with his dissertation. And he was, you know, he had, he used all kinds of words, we had to quote them the N word and so forth. But once you use the K word, you know what the K word is? I suspect I do. Yes. Well, K ik E. And Max bikes had no you can’t use that word in your dissertation. So I mean, this was an incredible liberal person could up with intelligent person, Max black, one of my idols, but it’s just hard to understand from the outside, how such a word can hurt now, with the N word, my folks, and we’re talking 1950s here really forbade us from using the N word. And I remember once my grandfather used it, I was just utterly shocked.

Josh Landy
And I think that that does go to something. And it’s a worry that people have about this kind of comedy. Yeah. So even if the comedy is with the best of intentions, and told by the people belonging to the social category, and so on, the worry might be, look, this kind of normalizes this, it makes it seem like Well, maybe it’s okay for me to talk like that to maybe it’s okay for me to use words like that, or have thoughts like that, or something like that. Or at the very least, maybe it makes it seem like this is just something you can laugh about, as opposed to something very serious.

John Perry
Well, I mean, my own family is biracial. And I tell my children, both black and white, don’t use the N word I tell my grandchildren don’t use the N word. But I say this with confidence that they won’t pay much attention. So, but still, it just I think those words are better retired. And maybe if African Americans or Jews feel like they should use them. In closed groups, that’s okay. But you know, to hell with those words. That’s what I think.

Jeff Israel
Yeah, I think there’s a contextual question to ask here, which is, you know, what kind of moment are we in now? I mean, there. There’s a there’s this sense, I think of that some people describe have a kind of encroaching sense, seriousness and politics of purity and what have you with respect to these things. And I think we have to remember that the context is a world a political world that feels like it’s really breaking up that so people feel deeply and profoundly insecure people who were already located under structures of oppression and injustice, feel, you know, if maybe there was some sense in the Obama years that there was progressive momentum. I mean, in the Trump years, this just it feels like things are collapsing. So this is a terrible time, really, to be experimenting with edgy stuff as you as you’ve been calling it, because people just really feel very legitimately threatened. And I think we shouldn’t underestimate the extent to which people who would feel more secure in in public political life feel more fundamentally respected by are our basic institutions really actually would be open to a lot more than we, we fully appreciate. Because people like to I mean, this as a scholar of religion, I’m always putting this into the context of the wild and crazy stuff that people like to play with, right? The sacrifices, right?

Josh Landy
And what we need is a I love your point, if we had a better society, we could maybe handle a lot more experimentation but in the society we’re living in now maybe we need to be a little bit more careful. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re thinking about comedy in the culture wars with Jeff Israel from Williams College, author of “Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion.”

John Perry
We often think about what comedian should do differently. But is there anything we should do differently? How do we become cooler consumers of comedy?

Josh Landy
Laughing smarter laughing harder—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Joan Armatrading
I love when you call me names.

John Perry
Can’t edgy comedy do better than simply calling people names, nasty names. I’m John Perry, an old codger an old fart. And this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence and your age. I’m Josh Landy, our guest is Jeff Israel from Williams College. And we’re thinking about comedy and the culture wars. And we received a call from Greg in East Palo Alto. He said, he’s interested in the asymmetry in the use of what he calls qualified words and says if people can only joke about their tribe, for example, like people can only joke about white people and so on. Then, you know, where does that get us? Why should these certain kinds of jokes be limited to a particular group?

John Perry
Is it the jokes being about groups that is the limitation or just the jokes using certain groups?

Josh Landy
No I think it’s separate from the word the wording is just a separate thought would be look, Jews get to tell Jewish jokes. But you know, other people even leaving aside bad language, right? So other people always get to tell Jewish joke. Maybe not maybe sometimes that’s offensive. And why is that? And should it be that way?

Jeff Israel
I think there’s a it’s important to look at the cases where people are able to use do do joking about things that are not presumably within their purview in terms of which groups they’re identified with and what have you. So I think it I mean, for instance, one thing that I’m thinking of is both Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy did all sorts of bits with Jewish characters, you know, doing mock Jewish voices. I mean, this is great old Jewish guy character in coming to America. Right. And both come comedians used to play with Jewish material, basically, right. And I think there is a way in which I hear people talk about this colloquially, and I’ve heard comments, comics, talk about it, there’s a capacity to earn it. And the ways that you earn it, and it’s, it’s increasingly going to be rare, because it’s gonna be really hard to do the things necessary to earn it, which are building real trust with the groups that you’re sort of where you’re playing with their material. You have to build that trust. And you also have to build a kind of trust as an artist that you have the ingenuity to do it well, to do it, masterfully, to do it. So it lands, and it works. And it has lots of light, right? So I think comedians, who who build trust with the communities and build a kind of artistic trust, are able to do it. But again, we live in times with is a profound crisis of social trust. So of course, it’s going to be hard. And I want to play I want to throw this out there because I think it’s important. There’s another provocative hypothesis here, which is that the better we are doing, the better we’re doing in terms of having just institutions, the the uglier and nastier. The comedy and horror and other kinds of playing, we’re going to see will look like, and I think if we look at times, and this is again, a hypothesis that a historian or social scientist of some sort could look at, right, I think and this was certainly case with Jews in mid 20th century, Jews felt particularly comfortable in America. And that’s when they were most antagonistic and perverse and transgressive.

John Perry
Yeah, I think that’s inightful. Do you have any advice for comedians, including philosophical comedians? You know, come on, you know, if Lenny Bruce were alive and and talking to you, what would you tell him?

Jeff Israel
I would never want maybe his life I don’t know, to an artist. I will answer by saying that I think I mean, if this goes to this, sort of why I get it, I love art. I love artists, I love to see somebody doing a performance. So when I love that somebody would do that with their life, and inhabit that world of that time and space of play for us with us. And so what I want to say is, is to just, you know, be free, and do something brilliant, do something great, do do something. virtuosic, because will love it. And there’s a goodness, there’s an intrinsic goodness to that. And there can be other extreme to goodnesses. That after interpretation could embed certain kinds of important values in new and vivid ways. But just the goodness itself, I think is worth holding up. And so I’d want to say, if you can do that, do it, do it. Do it provocatively,

Josh Landy
Well how about audiences? We have we got an email from JoAnn in San Francisco, who asked the question kind of on the other side, you know, what, what should audiences be like? She says, Do you think in these days of political correctness and the Internet, we have less of a sense of humor, innocuous things go viral? And people are so quick to anger? You have to be so careful. And that can be very limiting. So what about that? Do you think? Do you have any advice for audiences of comedy?

Jeff Israel
Well, I do want to say that that that people should try audiences should try to have as capacious as possible a sense of what can happen in the domain of play. But at the same time, I when I, we, I think we have to be forgiving of ourselves and others, that these are very scary times. The world has been a scary place for a long, long time. Maybe always, I think, but but there are differences. And they’re the one feels junctures and we’re at a juncture that that just feels very heavy with unknowns. And so I want to say, be as capacious as possible, help build just institutions in our society, so that then we can be as nasty as we want to be in the domain of play, and do those two things at the same time and learn how to tell the difference?

John Perry
Yeah, I think there are some limits, but it’s hard for me to intellectually say what they are, but I have my reactions. For example, in with regard to the Trump presidency, it’s really offended me that people are so hard on Eric. You know, he’s really made fun of nasally on Saturday Night Live? Well, I mean, what is what does Eric done now? Maybe he’s done a lot, maybe no more. But even before we knew much about it, I mean, what did he know? What you’re worried about, John? I mean, they can make fun of Trump all they don’t wind, or, you know, or Baron. They don’t do that so much. Or Tiffany, who’s just kind of keeping her. So, but I don’t know what the principles are, I think are some principles. And of course, there’s the issue, though, you know, if you run for political office, you’re fair game. That’s an old idea. But is your family for a game? Maybe Don Jr. is because he’s a loudmouth.

Josh Landy
But I think that’s an important question where the limits are. And I also think another important question is what what all could we hope for, from comedy from a social stamp? And we’ve talked about punching up, we’ve talked about that kind of critical capacity of comedy to make fun of powerful people when you know, they have it coming to them. We’ve talked about starting conversations, right. And we’ve talked about offering consultation, maybe even cases where there’s nothing else you can do. You should probably laugh, right. But, but I wanted, you know, before we get to the end of our show to ask you, Jeff about a really intriguing fourth possibility if you talk about modeling a certain kind of ambivalent love, which reminds me of something can tell us to talk about this begrudging tolerance, right? Maybe we will never have mutual recognition. But hey, begrudging tolerance is better than disdain. So, can you talk a little bit about that, Jeff, like, what? How can we get this special kind of love out of comedy out of edgy comedy.

Jeff Israel
I’m so glad you asked it that way. Because this is exactly what I was thinking. That this is an enormous part of this book that I’ve written an ideal of political love. And basically, what I’m trying to say is that the kind of political love that we need to pursue is the kind of political love that survives the irreconcilability of these kinds of emotions that live in our play lives. So that even that the very best America that we can imagine will be a place where people are carrying into it, the legacies of historical injustice. So even in the best America that we can imagine the time and space for play will be full of nasty stuff of reliving, repeating and so when we survive our rough playing together still hold on, to see each other as people owed fundamental rights and entitlements, as human beings and as members of this political society, if we can have a love that can include ongoing resentment, a love that can even include a kind of playing with hate, and not forgiving and grudges, if we can have the mature political love that does these things at the same time, that sees the, the, the, your neighbor, as someone who is profoundly owed real compassionate and just institutions, and at the same time, allows you and even shares with you sometimes a raucous time and space of play, where we ritualize and play with all of the nastiness that we that’s baked into who we are unpleasant. Yeah, exactly, that if we can do that, if we can have that kind of political love that survives and includes our irreconcilable resentment, then we can have something sustainable, that that’s probably I’m suggesting the best we can do.

John Perry
I would say that I don’t know what advice to give comedians, but I would give nasty people the advice. Try to be funny compare Sean Hannity and Stephen Colbert. They’re both really nasty, but one’s a lot easier to take.

Josh Landy
Well, on that note, we’re gonna thank you so much, Jeff. It’s been a really not just enlightening, but also amusing, stimulating and a conversation that really brings everyone together, I hope.

Jeff Israel
Thank you so much, Josh and John, I’ve really appreciated the time.

Josh Landy
Our guests has been Jeff Israel, professor of religion at Williams College and author of “Living with Hates in American Politics and Religion: How Popular Culture can Defuse Intractable Differences.” So John, what’s your thinking now?

John Perry
Well, I think humor is a very interesting topic. And we had a very interesting guest, somebody we should look at, at the phenomenon of the compulsion to be funny, which isn’t just comedians, but lots of people like I have such a compulsion really well, but in my case, the compulsion is simply duty. I see the aesthetics of humor is something that needs to be shared. But I think some people have this compulsion out of insecurity or the need to be loved or the idea that nobody’s gonna pay attention to them if they just say what they think they have to make it funny, then that’s maybe an interesting thing—so I’ve been told.

Josh Landy
Definitely not you or me—impossible. Well, John, this conversation continues at Philosophers Corner at our online Community of Thinkers, where our motto, with apologies to Descartes, is Cogito ergo Bloggo: I think therefore I blog and you can become a partner in the community by visiting our website, Philosophy Talk dot ORG

John Perry
So you’re putting Descartes before da Shoales, eh? Okay, so if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments at philosophy talked about ORG—we might feature it on our blog. Now for a man who talks so fast, maybe it’s even offensive—it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales. This crazy old world keeps changing every day and yet remains strangely the same. I blame the media, which now includes the Internet, giving us two mediums, the Mainstream Media, also called Legacy Media, and social media. Each uses the other for content, and does not pay for it. It used to be that journalism had bureaus, maybe they still do, I don’t know, the foreign policy desk, the beats, the night desk, staffed by hard bitten guys and gals who’d do anything to get the story. What they weren’t was funny. Among themselves, yes, maybe quick with a cynical quip over too many drinks, but they kept that stuff out of the news. Now they’re all on Twitter, they’re sober, and it’s kind of embarrassing. Everybody’s a comedian. And back in the day comics stuck to jokes. They wore baggy pants and killed time as the strippers changed heels. You had to work for the laughs. That meant cheap shots, blue language, dirty jokes, anti-immigrant humor- funny Swedes, Italians, Germans, Jews, Mexicans, African Americans, and, of course, white people in black face, just to mix surrealism with racism and ruin American culture for a hundred years or so. On the bright side, somewhere along the line, the audience started paying attention to the jokes. Radio made comics famous. Strippers moved to Las Vegas. The jokes became safe, and covered familiar ground. It was Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s golf game, Jack Benny was tight with a buck, then Johnny Carson mocked Ed’s necktie. Hard hitting comics were few and far between. After his death Lenny Bruce became a legend and the topic for a Broadway play then a movie, with Dustin Hoffman, remember him? So now we can listen to Lenny Bruce routines, and it’s research. It’s archival. It’s YouTube, the graveyard that celebrates everything ever televised ever. We had Mad Magazine to parody the movies, Tom Lehrer to write sardonic songs that were almost like show tunes, and show tunes with lyrics changed to make fun of Lyndon Johnson. We had the First Family lp, which made fun of JFK, then onward and upward to National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, Spy. Zines and comics gave us all new contexts and willingness to laugh at everything from grandma to Viet Nam to apple pie. Comedy is based on things we will recognize and remember. Which means, saying “More cowbell” will always be funny. But there’s a shared context that changes all the time. And the context caretakers have changed as well. TIME magazine, for example, was a keeper of the cultural template, slightly out of phase, the zeitgeist as it was six months ago. TIME might not all see the movies, but it would let you know what movies said about the culture, according to the editor, a bald white guy with a pipe, who always had a brief essay in front of the magazine that nobody ever read. All that has changed. The internet has had a devastating effect. With the Internet, we are read even as we read, making each of us our own bald white guy with a pipe, who knows all we need to know about Harry Potter whether we’ve read the books, seen the movie, or not. It no longer matters. Because the Internet also tells us what it thinks we want to hear and targets us with the content generated to keep us paying attention. So we have all become divided into weird little cults with our own little indie jokes. And yet we are still one people! There’s a market for Trump jokes. And anti-Trump jokes are an out of the closet industry. Yet you can sell Maga hats and hats that make fun of Maga hat on the SAME website! Calling something politically correct is something we ALL agree is funny. We are easily disturbed, but we can still make edgy comics successful, like Louis CK, or back in the day, Dick Gregory. We don’t make jokes about the portly boss chasing the buxom secretary around the desk any more. We make jokes about Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. More at stake, same jokes. We think we’re more woke. Or even more woke aspirational. Doubt it. We hope that humor may prevent a civil war, but civil war seems unlikely. It’s not just north and south any more. It would be Bakersfield versus Oakland. Dallas versus Austin. Country boy versus city slicker. Laid off factory worker versus riled up hippie. Fa versus antifa. Could be funny. Skip the Civil war, go right to the reenactments. Ongoing tournaments, nationwide. We can put aside our differences long enough to form small teams, then beat each other up for money. That’s what America is all about.I gotta go.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2020.

Josh Landy
Our executive producer is Tina Pamintuan.

John Perry
The senior producer is Devon Srolovitch. Laura Magire is our Director of Research. Cindy Prince Baum is our Director of Marketing.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Meryl Kessler, Angela Johnston, and Lauren Schecter.

John Perry
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University and from our partners at our online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed or mis expressed on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

John Perry
Not even when they’re true and reasonable! The conversation continues on our website, Philosophy Talk dot ORG, where you too can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m John Perry.

Josh Landy
And I’m Josh Landy. Thank you for listening.

John Perry
And thank you for thinking

All in the Family
You don’t want to get uptight about it, Mr. Bunker—there ain’t nothing to be ashamed of being Jewish. But I ain’t Jewish! Look at that, look at that—see the way he uses his hands when he argues? Very Semitic gesture!