{"id":1522,"date":"2014-11-07T20:44:56","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T20:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattralston.net\/?p=1522"},"modified":"2014-11-11T05:06:02","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T05:06:02","slug":"why-arent-comedians-funny-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/politics\/why-arent-comedians-funny-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Aren&#8217;t Comedians Funny Anymore?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E0BZWApjtTU\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Since when did comedians start taking themselves so seriously? The word &#8216;comedy&#8217; is built into the profession. If you wanted to spend your time parsing words and getting self satisfyingly angry maybe you should have become a preacher or district attorney&#8217;s assistant or something.<\/p>\n<p>I think there is a dangerous precedent being set in America when this group, of all groups, is seemingly eager to evoke censorship, and its ironic and sad. First I have Adam Richmond sending me cease and desist letters because I mused about his sexual assault trial (I repeat, Adam Richmond was charged with sexual assault) and now this.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote a little ditty about why I thought that NYC catcalling viral video <a href=\"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/politics\/the-problem-with-that-catcalling-video\/\" target=\"_blank\">had a few glaring inconsistencies in it<\/a>, and chimed in on a discussion with a bunch of comedians. What can go wrong there? Comedians should see all sides of an issue, right? That&#8217;s what makes them funny, right?<\/p>\n<p>At this point, some idiot fellow comedian\u00a0<strong>threatens to put me on a list! <\/strong>Yes, a list of comedians she plans to stop from getting work, supposedly in cahoots with her co conspirators in the industry.<\/p>\n<p><em>We shall overcome&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately there are so many others like this one. Judgmental liberals. The all accepting crowd who will accept you as long as you know their talking points. The open minded ones who support Neo-McCarthyism. Yes!<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the thing: You don&#8217;t get to tell people what to think. Just because someone isn&#8217;t thinking the exact same thing as you does not mean they are automatically wrong. I don&#8217;t know when people started processing thoughts this way but I think it has something to do with the self esteem movement which has led to a bunch of narcissistic assholes who think that they, and not you, are entitled to an opinion.<\/p>\n<p>Take this Catcalling video, produced by an organization called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ihollaback.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hollaback<\/a>, whose stated goal is to &#8220;End Street Harassment.&#8221; Do you know how they plan to do that? They want to make it an illegal punishable offense for a guy to holler at a woman while on the street.<\/p>\n<p>Right. Because that&#8217;s what we need. This video was produced in New York City, where Stop and Frisk is a frightening unconstitutional reality. I&#8217;m writing this while shit&#8217;s about to go down in Ferguson and the police are driving armored vehicles and pointing their weapons at the people they swore to protect, and this group of geniuses wants to allow cops to punish people for saying &#8220;How you doing this morning?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I guess they certainly know their target audience.<\/p>\n<p>Catcalling is stupid. I don&#8217;t agree with it. But it should obviously not be illegal. We have harassment laws. We don&#8217;t need more laws. Imagine how this Catcalling Law would be enforced. Essentially every guy (I guess it would have to discriminate) would be at risk of legal citation any time he interacted with any woman in public.<\/p>\n<p><em>Officer, that&#8217;s my friend Amy! We went to college together, I was just saying Hi!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sign here.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It goes against the First Amendment. But that&#8217;s okay, only certain people should have access to that right?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure Hollaback! knows there is no possible way to apply this law. Are they a shill organization using a naive fan based talking point to encourage suppression of speech? Maybe.<\/p>\n<p>Disagree, I don&#8217;t care. Just don&#8217;t tell me I can&#8217;t have an opinion.<\/p>\n<p>Where would comedy be if our preceding generations of comedians acted like this? It wouldn&#8217;t exist.<\/p>\n<p>Comedy can&#8217;t exist in a Totalitarian State, which is why there are no comedy clubs in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n<p>So, stop ruining comedy you fake liberal Draconians who are going to vote for Hillary without even knowing her policies or your local congressman.<\/p>\n<p>Keep getting in Facebook flame wars about youtube videos while the banks take this country down and the police presence swells, but just know you&#8217;re fucking it up for all of us.<\/p>\n<p>And above all, HAVE A FUCKING SENSE OF HUMOR. You&#8217;re a comedian. Act like it.<\/p>\n<p>Where&#8217;s that higher love we keep dreaming of? <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/leahmansfield\" target=\"_blank\">@leahmansfield<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since when did comedians start taking themselves so seriously? The word &#8216;comedy&#8217; is built into the profession. If you wanted to spend your time parsing words and getting self satisfyingly angry maybe you should have become a preacher or district attorney&#8217;s assistant or something. I think there is a dangerous precedent being set in America &#8230;<a class=\"post-readmore\" href=\"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/politics\/why-arent-comedians-funny-anymore\/\">read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[768,770],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1522"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522\/revisions\/1532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}