Comedians Appalled by Lack of Humor in College Students
When you go through life angry over every perceived injustice, you become a very boring person. Comedians know this and a new documentary explores the topic.
Campus Reform reports.
Comedians ‘appalled’ by humorless college students
A feature documentary delving into the intersection of comedy and free speech traces the origins of the outrage culture against offensive comedians directly to college campuses.
Nearly 400 people attended an advanced screening of Can We Take a Joke? Tuesday night at the Newseum in Washington, DC, which was sponsored by a diverse array of organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Charles Koch Institute, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Flying Dog Brewery, and the National Coalition Against Censorship.
The screening was followed by a Q&A panel with the producers and director of the film, comedians Gilbert Gottfried and Karith Foster, and free speech lawyers and activists.
The film traces the silencing of “offensive” comedians, from the jailing and death of Lenny Bruce to Jimmy Kimmel being forced to apologize for an off-color racial joke. Such outrage culture, the film says, often begins on college campuses where students try to avoid hearing ideas they don’t like.
Greg Lukianoff, the president and CEO of FIRE, said during the panel that he is “appalled” by the things he sees on college campuses.
“People are not able to be offended…it’s growth stunting,” he stated, “We have to realize there’s value to being offended.”
Multiple poignant examples of chilling speech on college campuses are displayed in the film. In one instance, Washington State University administrators paid students to attend another student’s comedy show so they could purposefully interrupt the performance.
Chris Lee, a black student comedian who created the show “Passion of the Musical” said the entire point was “to offend everybody…it was satire.” Lee eventually earned the title “Black Hitler” among his peers and on the internet for continuing the show and refusing to apologize.
Karith Foster, a comedian featured in the film, told Campus Reform, “I had such an amazing experience in college, it was a learning experience and I grew so much, so when I started hearing about my friends who were comics who were told they couldn’t do certain jokes…I was appalled.”
Comments
Yes comedy is sometimes offensive, but the question is not why is it offensive but why is it offensive to you.
“…outrage culture, the film says, often begins on college campuses where students try to avoid hearing ideas they don’t like.”
The continually offended millennials and PC police who are afraid of what makes them laugh or cringe are the reason we have such problems communicating in this country. If you are not black don’t speak of black matters, if your not white don’t talk about how to fix white problems. How many people automatically dismiss any rational thoughts from a person that has a southern accent or speaks with an inner city slang but if the person sounded like you then you would dovetail your thoughts with theirs?
We have locked ourselves into the mentality of you can’t have an opinion if you haven’t walked in someone else’s shoes. We assign moral authority to a subject to only those groups that are affected. We have stifled ourselves and it’s no wonder that relations and tempers are worse then ever before. When you build a team to work on a project you don’t get all the same type of people. You can’t have a team of Alphas or thinkers nothing will get accomplished. The best teams have a mix of people; workers, thinkers, leaders, visionaries to come at a problem from different angles and have people that will be willing to get dirty and get the work done.
America is too afraid to talk amongst ourselves for fear of offending someone and spending more time defending ourselves then accomplishing anything. This has to change, Freedom of Speech means just that, the freedom to speak your mind and share your ideas with out a fear of being ostracized and being labeled “offensive” and yes that also means hate speech. If you ban what some people label “hate speech” then you can’t talk about it, you can’t find the root cause of it, it just goes into the darkness and festers into something worse then speech. Let everyone speak their mind and you will truly know them not what they show to be PC.
Sorry couldn’t stop this is an excellent investigation.