When two Chinese nationals were arrested in Berlin for making Nazi salutes yesterday, Chelsea Handler tweeted “wouldn’t it be nice 2 have laws here for people who think racism is funny?”
2 Chinese guys were arrested in Berlin for making nazi salutes. Wouldn’t it be nice 2 have laws here for people who think racism is funny?
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) August 7, 2017
But if racist jokes were really criminal, the clueless comedian would be locked away right now serving at least a couple of life sentences. Her holier-than-though schtick is a bit hypocritical considering she’s made a career out of off-color comedy.
Imagine quickly Handler’s humorous dystopia in real life. It’d be a world where hecklers become comedy police, where the offended sue for damages, and where no one is laughing. In that universe, Asian, black, and red-headed people in particular would be waiting to press charges against Handler.
As soon as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt announced their split, she figured it was funny to take shots at the couple’s children adopted from Cambodia and Vietnam. Because, you know, what’s funnier than a broken family?
Angelina Jolie has filed for divorce from Brad Pitt… he wants the China; she wants Pax and Maddox. ##sorrycouldnthelpmyself
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) September 21, 2016
Before that, Handler cracked wise when African actress, Lupita Nyong’o, won an academy award, quipping that Jolie had already “filed adoption papers.” Apparently unoffended by racism at the time, Handler insisted that she wasn’t racist because “I date a lot of black people, so that would be a difficult thing to explain to them.”
Even the Irish aren’t safe from Handler apparently. “Along with the 97 percent of women who can see,” she wrote, “I have never been attracted to redheaded men.”
If there’s truth in kidding, the obvious takeaway here is that Handler can occasionally be an unfunny hypocrite. That doesn’t mean she should be shamed, let alone arrested, for poking fun at social norms or exploding racial taboos. After all, prudes seldom make good comedians, political correctness always ruins comedy, and liberal hypocrisy comes in threes.
Looking through Handler’s material, it’s difficult to see when she stopped pushing the envelope and started pedaling political correctness. And that’s the takeaway. Ultimately, the audience, not the law, decides what is and isn’t funny.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
