The title of this column is a line from the terrific movie Moneyball. In it, Billy Beane (in an outstanding performance from Brad Pitt), the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, is angered when he sees his players are having a good time in the locker room despite being in the midst of a losing streak. So he asks, “Is losing fun?” When the players sheepishly respond, “No,” he asks the question.
Beane, of course, had a good reason for his fun-skeptic outburst. But, unfortunately, there is a strain within the Left that doesn’t want you to have any fun, and it has nothing to do with losing baseball games.
When Ricky Gervais released his Netflix special SuperNature, if you’d relied upon the fainting couch reports following its release, you’d think Gervais did nothing but stand on a stage and scream, “I HATE TRANS PEOPLE!” at the audience for 60 minutes.
Naturally, the “reports” were all about Gervais and the “transphobic” material he brought to the stage, much in the same way that people did after Dave Chappelle’s Netflix specials. They made some jokes about transgender people, so, “What are you having fun for?”
The idea that anything is off-limits in comedy strikes me as odd. In a new book, The Rise of The New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun, Noah Rothman of Commentary dedicated an entire chapter to this phenomenon (the book is very well done in balancing the puritanism of the liberal movement and the history of puritanism). He spoke to Noam Dworman, the owner of New York City’s Comedy Cellar, who said the times have changed, and not for the better. “Neither the right nor the left had such a hair-trigger in the old days.” He noted that self-censoring comedians won’t take stand-up comedy forward but will make it go backward.
He’s right. In my high-school years in the mid-to-late 1980s, I’d watch a taped broadcast of Rascals Comedy Club in West Orange, New Jersey, on a local cable station three days a week. Many of the then-young comedians went on to successful and lucrative careers — some of them long-term, such as Jerry Seinfeld, and others a smash for a while but more modest these days, such as Andrew Dice Clay.
Clay’s career was so prominent in the early 1990s that he sold out arenas. His act was raunchy, so much so that he attracted the ire of women’s groups, religious groups, the NAACP, and politicians. Unfortunately, he also drew the ire of one George Carlin. By then, Carlin’s comedy was no longer edgy, and he began to transform from a cantankerous comedian into a grouchy old scold. He went from the guy who sees an open window and remarks, “There’s a nice breeze in here,” to the guy who says, “Hey, close the window. It’s drafty in here!” He waxed poetic about comedians not “punching down,” which came off as pretentious and, worse, envious.
Rothman’s book often touches on the issue of professional jealousy in different industries when problems come up. Unfortunately, it is no different when it comes to comedians. Chappelle did not only get criticized by the woke Left, but by other comedians, such as purposely unfunny stand-up Hannah Gadsby and transgender comedian Dahlia Belle.
When it comes to stand-up comedy, nothing should be off-limits. A comedian’s job is to make people laugh, and sometimes, that laughter comes at the expense of someone else. One of the best at this is comedian Bill Burr. In one show, Burr said a woman asked why men get paid more to do the same job as a woman. His response was, “I’ll tell you why. Because in the unlikely scenario we’re both on a Titanic, and that thing starts to sink, for some f***ed up reason, you get to leave with the kids, and I have to stay.”
It’s not only the tension but the slight element of truth to such jokes that make it so funny. My wife and I enjoy messaging each other reels in which husbands and wives create these silly scenarios that come off hilarious despite their outrageousness due to that kernel of truth.
There is enough seriousness in the world. Watch what you want, and don’t worry when someone asks, “What are you having fun for?”
