Comedians aren’t allowed to be funny on college campuses

These bookers explain that before booking a comedian, they request that he or she omit any jokes from their routine which might offend a variety of protected classes: sexual assault survivors, transgender persons, etc. One of these bookers quips, “I can talk about my experience, but I can’t make fun of someone else’s identity.”

The Vice News report offers two opposing takes on the situation.

The first theory is that college students are simply entitled and delusional. In the interview, comedienne Judy Gold, who, like Jerry Seinfeld, refuses to play college campuses, claims young people simply can’t take a joke. She attributes their humorlessness to their nonsensical belief that words are more dangerous than actions. College students demand the world adjust to them when, in fact, they should be adjusting to the world, Gold claims.

The second theory is that these campus crybabies are a small minority of college students who miss the whole point of comedy itself. The Vice interviewer, Michael Moynihan, correctly points out the flawed logic of the “P.C. Police”: College students can’t be more diverse than ever, yet all have the same monolithic opinion as to what is and isn’t funny. He also asks whether or not the whole point of comedy is to trigger people, and whether or not comedians are supposed to work out their own personal trauma on stage through humor.

To these sane and salient points, the bookers answer in the negative and ironically claim that comedians who refuse to stop being offensive will simply not be booked. In short, they defend their censorship by appealing to the free market, something which leftists usually denounce — unless it serves their purposes.

But make no mistake, this is not about the free market catering to the majority of students’ preferences, nor is it about protecting students from “retraumatization.” It is about stomping out any kind of fun and creating a reign of terror on campus. As George Orwell said, “every joke is a revolution,” and the best means of ensuring the continued rule of the P.C. Police is by policing humor itself.

The Left understands that to laugh at a person is to gain power over them, or at least take away any power they have over the one who’s laughing. They also understand that they can’t take themselves seriously as morally crusading Social Justice Warriors if they’re able to laugh at themselves. Therefore, they must never be an object of ridicule or the butt of a joke — even if this means making comedians unfunny or banning them completely.

Maybe the free market will right things in the end. If humor is banned from universities, the rule of campus crybabies might become so intolerably bland and totalitarian that their peers might finally stand up to them.

Might. But not yet.