From The Comic's Comic

Don’t believe the hype: The self-delusion is very real

We’re just having a laugh here, aren’t we?

A comedian says funny things and says things funny.

For work, income and the paying off of bills, a comedian does this for a specific audience.

Look, I’ve Googled it again for your convenience.

And yet, some get it twisted. Particularly for the sake of defending themselves or their friends or their business partners.

They want to be seen as something more. Or something less. Much less. Sometimes, somehow, both, or all of the above! It depends upon how they’re attempting to rationalize their behavior. So when critics of Joe Rogan and his extremely lucrative, widely-listened-to Spotify-exclusive podcast (“The Joe Rogan Experience”) began circling Rogan and Spotify like vultures, using his misinformation-spewing guests or proclivity for using racist slurs against them as bait, it stood to reason that the comedians and guests who have benefited from Rogan’s podcast and friendship in the past would rush to defend him.

Of those, comedian and sitcom creator Whitney Cummings (2 Broke Girls, Whitney) sparked the most hysterical pushback on Twitter, thanks to her own defense of Rogan and those like him, writing on Sunday: “Comedians did not sign up to be your hero. It’s our job to be irreverent and dangerous, to question authority and take you through a spooky mental haunted house so you can arrive at your own conclusions. Stay focused on the people we pay taxes to to be moral leaders.”

The first thing I thought of after reading her first sentence: Nike’s TV commercial from way back in which Sir Charles Barkley, Knight of Rebounds, declared “I am not a role model.”

But Sir Charles understood his own professional duties. Somewhere in the middle of Whitney’s Tweet, she lost her own thread.

Initial replies merely re-quoted Cummings and slapped a silly photo or series of photos over or next to it, elevating it to meme status.

Then comedians took over and had their fun with her premise pitch: “It’s our job…”

What is the job of the comedian?

This comic strip exposes the hypocrisy of comedians with podcasts succinctly enough.

Mike Drucker, a co-head writer for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, posed it like this:

Some took to the tropes of the hack stand-up comedian.

Some examined the financial aspects of working as a comedian

Some got very specific

Some had fun with “modern-day philosopher” idea

Some reminded us that it’s still a man’s world and that’s bad news for women in comedy

Some went meta

Some looked deep inside their selves and didn’t like what they saw around them

Yedoye Travis, whose stand-up credits include EPIX’s Unprotected Sets, and whose writing credits include the reboot of Saved By The Bell, posted a whole thread worth reading.

it’s a comedian’s job to appear relatable enough for you to laugh at what we’re saying. that’s it. it’s not to be offensive or be “truth tellers” or any of that bullshit. just to make you laugh. and pretending to have no power/agency is a huge part of that…

it’s why chappelle can’t give up on this idea that black men are the only oppressed people in the world. because he professionally has to look like a victim, and he’s amazing at that part of it until you hear the implications of what he’s actually saying…

for the record, it’s also why identity has such a strong grip on young comics, it’s an easy way to appear relatable on both culture and social standing (read the combahee river connective statement btw they literally invented identity politics and this was not their goal lol)…

it’s incompatible with the hierarchical structure of society where comedians can have massive amounts of power and influence in their private or corporate circles but still have to present themselves as relatable in their art…

that’s why Ellen’s special was notable. she’s too rich to still be doing stand up. it’s literally called relatable. it’s the real reason steve harvey won’t do another special, not fucking cancel culture. how relatable is it for your daughter to be dating killmonger lmfao…

it’s why so many comics rightfully quit stand up when they get too rich or famous. cause there’s no middle class in this shit. ray romano got a pass cause he had a fucking sitcom about being a family man but check his net worth and I bet he’d tell you himself it doesn’t add up…

chappelle pretends to not know what “punching down” means because it’s pulling the curtain back too much. if people realize you have to reposition yourself at the bottom of the social hierarchy to make a joke work, it’s over for these rich dudes…

we’re all professional overton window movers, for better or for worse, so fucking question joe rogan and especially question the people who are just defending him cause he made them rich. maybe it’ll break them out of this spell they’re under cause this shit is bleak.

I mean I’m really sick of this lmfao

YOU SAID IT, YEDOYE!

Why are so many comedians like “it’s our job to be dangerous— but only to to the marginalized and oppressed”?

BECAUSE THEY’RE COWARDS AT HEART and the microphone and spotlight and stage gives them the strength they lack.

Is it any wonder why the Wikipedia entry for “comedian” would also include a separate section devoted to a January 2014 study published by the British Journal of Psychiatry that found comedians scored “significantly higher on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of people who had non-creative jobs” OR that one of the leaders of the study would claim “the creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis—both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.”

Comedians are the looney tunes. Th-th-th-that’s all folks!