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York Times last week: “When you’re workshopping [material], a lot of stuff is bumpy and awkward. Especially when you’re working on the
edge, you’re going to offend… Just look at some
of my material... ‘Niggas vs.
Black People,’ probably took
me six months to get that
I think
thing right. You know how rac- it’s our job
ist that thing was a week in?”
to go too far.
Comedians like Rock take a
That way we
sensitive subject and hammer
know as a
on it until it changes shape,
society what
becomes funny. If you can find
too far is.”
humor in racism, you make
— Jeffrey Ross
it manageable. Take the adage about getting over public
speaking by imagining the audience naked; imagine
a group of klansmen naked and what do you have?
Whatever it is, it’s not particularly threatening.
Jim Norton, whose standup special, “Please Be
Offended,” came out on June 30, put it this way:
“We take these knots in society — like, you know
how you get a knot in your neck — and our job
as comedians is to take our knuckles and kind of
work it out.” Jeffrey Ross, who made headlines
just this week at Comedy Central’s “Roast of
Roseanne” for telling an Aurora-related joke, suggests that allowing that process to happen serves
a greater good. “I think it’s our job to go too far.
That way we know as a society what too far is.”
Then there’s Daniel Tosh and the rape joke heard
round the world. At the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles — the same club where Cook was recorded —
Tosh responded to a female heckler by saying it’d be
funny if she got raped by five guys at that moment.
One outraged blog post later and Tosh became the
poster boy for a national debate about sexism, rape
culture and whether rape jokes can ever be funny.
great night for you.
You haven’t gotten
this much attention
since you shot all those
people in Aurora.”
He continued: “I’m
kidding! You’re not
like James Holmes.
At least he’s doing
something in a movie
theater that people
remember.” The roast,
which airs this Sunday,
cut the joke from the
TV broadcast. Cook
later apologized on
Twitter for his joke,
while Ross said he’d
crossed a line, but
defended the material.
Daniel Tosh
A Tumblr post titled
“A Girl Walks Into
A Comedy Club”
described an incident
in which Daniel Tosh
allegedly made a
female audience
member the subject
of a rape joke, saying,
“Wouldn’t it be funny
if that girl got raped
by like, 5 guys right
now?” Tosh later
apologized on Twitter
for the joke.