Sick Comedy

[question everything]

Sick Comedy
By NIKKI FINKE
LA Weekly

In my opinion, the real news behind Seinfeld’s Michael Richards spewing “n”-word racial epithets after being heckled during a recent standup routine at the Laugh Factory is this: Many of today’s comedy clubs have become cesspools of hatred. Inside them, racism, ethnic prejudice, religious bigotry, homophobia and sexism all masquerade as humor. Anyone who’s been to the clubs and heard the acts knows this to be true. This isn’t Lenny Bruce’s let’s-make-a-First-Amendment point, either. This is just garbage. Yet, in most cases, the audiences or the club owners and managers rarely intervene to take out the trash. (Though at a news conference, Laugh Factory club owner Jamie Masada claimed, “This is one thing we don’t tolerate,” and banned Richards until he expressed remorse, which he did on Letterman Monday night.) Creepily, this crap sells. And not just in the clubs: MTV’s Yo Momma gets good ratings though it celebrates jokes about how “yo momma” is so fat, so stupid, so poor, so ugly, so nasty, so lazy and whatever other disgusting stuff its contestants can conjure.

I’m not saying humor in the clubs should be as sanitized as the pablum by Leno or Letterman or Kimmel. (That’s why Dane Cook is popular: He’s got nothing to say, and especially nothing to say that’s offensive.) But we’re now in an atmosphere where, because of the proliferation of profanity-peppered acts with distasteful subject matter, some clubs outside L.A. and N.Y. are rating their shows G, PG and R as a marketing tool. (There’s also Christian comedy, but let’s not go there.) Still, in the top clubs, an atmosphere exists where anything goes, so no one should feign surprise that those comedians could cross the line between what’s acceptable and what’s offensive.

I’m told Jerry Seinfeld personally arranged for Michael Richards’ satellite-feed appearance on Letterman, but not before politically correctly proclaiming himself “sick over this horrible, horrible mistake.” When it comes to the comedy clubs, too many of them are just sick, period. Heal thyself.

http://www.laweekly.com/general/deadline-hollywood/bond-and-gagged/15065/ (and scroll down)

[Kiouni]

1. I get that but not the boycott

on the seinfeld DVD's. Why is jesse jackson calling for a boycott of something that really has nothing to do with the other?

[question everything]

2. Frankly, I disregard anything that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton say

both are opportunistic sharks that would jump on any opportunity to be in the headlines. Have you noticed how quickly they moved from Richards to the shooting in NYC?

Oh, and the same holds for Gloria Allred who is suing Richards.