...a young progressive decides Jerry Seinfeld needs a lecture on the recent history of comedy. 'Let me tell you about this guy called George Carlin...'
The upshot of the lecture is that it's great if comedy is offensive, as long as it offends only the right people.
"Go ahead and offend me! I can take it! . . . Wait, I mean, offend that guy. He doesn't have his head right at all. I need to go huddle in my safe space."
ReplyDeleteI find his chosen examples of comedians working today to be less offensive than embarrassing. I mean not that I find myself embarrassed because (as they seem to suppose) they so well expose my flaws and wicked thoughts. Rather, I mean that I find myself embarrassed for them, and not least because so often they think they have struck a solid blow when they have utterly failed to grasp their subject.
ReplyDeleteA good example from a couple of years ago: Sarah Silverman on the 'Black NRA.' I couldn't watch this and not be terribly embarrassed for her. You just have to think, "You really don't know anything at all about the history, do you?"
Remarkable. I guess they really think the point of the NRA is to keep the black man down. I found myself completely in sympathy with the guys in that video. If I were they, I'd want to be armed, too. To tell the truth, I have no idea how Second Amendment opinions break down along racial lines.
ReplyDeleteI had completely forgotten that video and surprised to see I commented on it at the time.
Remarkable. I guess they really think the point of the NRA is to keep the black man down.
ReplyDeleteI can absolutely confirm that. A recent discussion on a friend's social media page started with him (a Chicago liberal) stating that perhaps there was something to this whole "2nd Amendment as protection against government tyranny" thing in the wake of the events in Baltimore. I (unsurprisingly) said (effectively) "welcome to the fold". But it was friends of his (who I do not know) who then stepped in and said, "yeah, if only the NRA was actually interested in gun rights, they'd want to get minority support". I pointed them to Colin Noir and the NRA's minority outreach programs, and they acted like this was some kind of trick or parody or something. The responses seemed to be of the lines "but... but... but... racism!" Based on nothing but their uneducated assumptions.
So yes... it is a firm liberal belief that the NRA is actually against blacks owning guns. Though, to be fair, there indeed WAS a period of time when they supported gun control measures, so long as those targeted "inner city" weapons (the old "Saturday Night Special" laws).