well, of course not every one but I had to do it for the title

Chapelle obviously
Atlanta pushed back against it
Kendrick Lamar sure sounds like he aint with it
Michael Che

I wonder how Black women in comedy feel about it?

Has twitter ruined entertainment?

But they're supposed to be creative. It seems they should be thinking of better ways to express their points than shaking their fists at clouds.

probably doesn't care for being under the microsope

and I'm not sure if it's going to work.

and its mostly the Michael Che season 2 that made me realize it since the whole season is about being canceled.

But, for the sake of typing on the internet, here's all this:

The Black friends that insisted with all their heart I watch Che's first season have all been really, really lukewarm on the new season while I was still pretty into it. And pretty much as a chorus, it's been because they felt he was too sensitive about being canceled. I tried to point to how many of the actual skits (ie. pretty much all of them) are begging to be canceled, even from the very beginning with the timely abortion clinic bit, and how a lot of the comedy of the new season is building off this idea of being painfully unfunny to an SNL audience, but...


Then I also think about having similar conversations w/r/t the new Kendrick album and last Chappelle special specifically before he ruined my reaction to it with his own follow up jokes or whatever you'd like to call 'em...


Are we/me actually becoming less reliable because we/me have been conditioned to want Black entertainment to be dangerous? Does the danger feel less abstract sometimes because of Twitter and 24 hour news cycles?


I think the idea that comedy is being gutted by "cancel culture" is farcical because I'm laughing as much as I ever have at people being funny for pay, but I do get why these guys specifically feel a weight. (Sidebar: Even if you're a madman like Bill Burr, as long as you don't Louis C.K. your female friends I think it's harder to worry about white grievances while, as most comedy shows, playing to white audiences - this might also be really stupid).

I often leave the bar at night thinking back on my favorite jokes among friends and wondering how long it would've taken a stranger with a camera phone out to ruin my life if they felt it'd build their clout. And I'm just telling jokes to kill time between one shift and the next with people doing the same.


Anyway, went on a slight tangent, but...I was really struck by this conversation I had tonight with those dudes who essentially forced Damn Michael Che Season 1 on me, and loved it enough they not only watched it once on their own then once again with me then scattershot over the year at multiple little hangs when we needed background comedy...only for me to get to this new season right away, love it, and then hear a pretty mediocre response from the same guys as they slowly approached it.

Maybe that doesn't even have to do with the idea of cancellation, but my gut reaction has been that this is the first time in Black comedy where the comedians are addressing fear of their takes as much as or more than the takes themselves.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

because that is what twitter is doing.

I agree in crimes and assaults but this “lets see of you were progressive 20 years ago” is weird af.

How many of us were ahead of these movements 15 years ago?

I just had a guys trip and part of the fun of getting together with these guys I've known 20 years is we can tell all the fcuked inappropriate jokes and comments we want. We know it really doesn't mean anything. And it goes beyond jokes its also talking about things you really just can't talk about with anyone else. From marital sex to work stuff.

I've wondered for some time are there some people who just don't have a public versus private persona where they talk at home the same way they talk at work?



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

...there's an ep in the recent season with Liam Neeson and maybe others who seem to be included to make a statement about celebs that were "cancelled"

I learned this from the OKP "Atlanta" thread. Never saw any of the eps of "atlanta"

whiners on one end who think any type of push back or call for accountability is cancel culture, and scolds on the other who are quick to pounce and lecture you on why "cancel culture" doesn't exist.

seems most people one some level don't like it but don't want to align themselves with the first group, or deal with the second.

https://www.vulture.com/2021/06/watch-katt-williams-says-there-is-no-cancel-culture.html

usually twitter mobs reinforced by mass media outlets clutching to relevancy at the expense of Black MEN usually.

Nobody actually gets canceled anyway.

Chrisette Michelle is probably the closest to being "canceled", but let's be honest that she was not being checked for before the #Trump thing.

Mofo's out there still playing R Kelly records and he had a sex tape of him pissing on a 15 year old girl 20+ years ago.

"Cancel Culture" ain't really a thing.

but ppl in power ain't used to being checked, and thus all the caterwauling about it.

I'm honestly surprised these dudes still have the gall to even bring it up.

It doesn't apply to all comedians.

All he said was take those shots but be aware that if might offend someone and thats okay. But again that doesn't apply to everyone especially newer comics on the come up all the way to guys who are in the middle.

not liking "cancel culture" makes perfect sense

Rosie Perez tried to cancel Spike Lee and Jennifer Lopez tried to cancel Wesley Snipes.

Kevin Hart is crucified but Amy Schumer, Rogan, and Sarah Silverman are perfectly acceptable. Intersectionalism at it's finest.....

Yall bring up Bill Cosby everuly second but conveniently ignore Matt Lauer, Les Mooves, and Trump's historic infractions.

Then again it's not their job to go after white men or women...

Don't even get me started on the free pass the lgbt community gets either.

Cancel culture is blatantly racist.

But this shit is a purity test applied most viciously to those who the "cancelers" are most closely in alignment with as far as social issues go.

Like I don't hear calls for canceling Ron De Santis, Supreme Court, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, etc.....all people that are VIOLENTLY opposed to people being able to live. The same energy is not present for fighting them.

I mean to hear people say Chappelle is enabling violence against a community, while he literally said "if you think this means you should beat on someone because they're trans, then you need to fuck off and don't come to my shows," yet those who are ACTUALLY LEGALIZING violence against the community get crickets......

We know why tho.
They disproportionately targeted Black males.


Or maybe it's more like dress codes...

No white tees
No Jordans
No sagging pants

But as they turn you away for your white tee, you notice 5 white guys inside with white tees on.

American society is rife with "rules" and "regulations" that pretend to be universal but are only applied consistently to Black people, Black men in particular.

Bouncer told me 'no tank tops' at the door. No problem, I planned for this. Went and grabbed my button-down from the car a block away. Come back, bouncer is like 'ok, cool. You can go in. Thanks, man.'

I swear right after he said that, a couple of white guys came stumbling out the door laughing (apparently to go smoke). One of them had a tank top on.

Bouncer got apologetic-as-fuck, lol.


>But as they turn you away for your white tee, you notice 5
>white guys inside with white tees on.

a whole ass sweater

Just making shit up as they go.

really isn't anything that is THAT subversive to talk about anymore.

I actually watched part of Chappelle's last special and I noticed that it was less funny than I remembered. A lot of the time he didn't try to tell jokes, he just tried to say the most f'd up thing he could say. I t reminded me of the last CK louis special I saw, dude is just saying things trying to get a rise out of people.

But nothing is really shocking anymore really. I think we won the cultural war on censorship in my lifetime. I've watched 2livecrew go from being subversive shit you use to sneak to listen to, to being the same content as a Pop Smoke Love song you hear on the radio.

So when sex, religion and all the other taboo stuff is no longer taboo, what do you talk about?


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

but I think it was obvious what Dave was doing when he ended with the “things I can’t say and can say on Comedy Central.

overall though, I think Dave summed it up perfectly. His main problem.. is white people, lol.

...I'm noticing that folks in my age bracket have become the same type of rigid-thinking people that the hippies-turned-boomers became. A lot of these folks don't seem to realize what they've become.

I think it's a perspective issue.

These same people react with strong emotions to topics such as politics, vaccines or firearms, so there's definitely topics out there. These folks aren't open to humor that goes against their viewpoints tho.

The same way folks older than us reacted to some of the things that went against their viewpoint.

I wonder what young (20s) folks have popping in their underground circles tho.


>really isn't anything that is THAT subversive to talk about
>anymore.
>
>But nothing is really shocking anymore really. I think we won
>the cultural war on censorship in my lifetime. I've watched
>2livecrew go from being subversive shit you use to sneak to
>listen to, to being the same content as a Pop Smoke Love song
>you hear on the radio.
>
>So when sex, religion and all the other taboo stuff is no
>longer taboo, what do you talk about?

I seem to remember my parents being stuck in their ways and telling us to deal
with it. When an elder says Oriental and we see Asian they look at us like “I said what I said”

I’m sure some things changed and hippies got more conservative once they grew up but it feels like the internet has opened up a whole new world for looking back at old content with new eyes and actually demanding accountability.

Hell.. OKP is where I first heard about people saying shit like “Eddies comedy doesn’t hold up” 25 years later.

When I first heard Redd Foxx records I was shocked but I wasn’t on some “Take Sanford & Son’s off the air, this is a problem!!!”

The internet and blogs has turned everyone into a reporter too so a lot of these campaigns are just ways to get their name out there.

Can you ever think of a time when comedians just stopped doing colleges because of the poutrage? People rushing the stage to take out comedians in the 70’s for a joke?

Maybe its always been like this and we just have phones to record it all but I think people are just quick to look for a reason to be upset.

So you know exactly what people said. I think what gets lost is the context of the times. Folks need room to grow and adapt over time. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt if they've at least put in some effort to understand the world we live in now.

from when he was hosting Def Comedy Jam, and though i was dying with laughter the whole time i was thinking "man, he couldn't say NONE of this stuff today."

He was joking about Todd 1's girlfriend who was MC Lyte.

At the end of the skit he said, "And I used to fuck her". Everybody laughed.

People posted it and said, "What happened to the good old days of comedy?'

All I kept thinking was, did anybody ask Lyte how she felt about that shit then and how she feels now with that shit reappearing online 20+ years later?

i mean, not gonna lie, i was laughing but my next thought was the same as yours "damn, wonder how Lyte feels and if her and Martin ever spoke on this cuz that was pretty fucked up."

Hip-Hop already has a certain view of female MC's. Even with Lyte being considered one of the 5 Greatest Female MC's of All-Time, I'm sure it had to hurt being reduced to a piece of ass and the butt of a joke. Let alone her man cracking up and rolling in the aisles.

And I figured this out 10-15 years ago before this whole cancel culture thing.

My dumb ass bought the box set sold late night and when I finally got it I couldn't finish the first DVD.

If Cancel Culture means you can't do Def Jam today, I am all for it.


There is an effort to make more old school black comedy a thing today (See Earth Quake on Netflix) but there is a reason that type of comedy isn't big today.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

between societal changes and a lot of referencing current events, it's more times than not a product of its time.

it's a trip what holds up and what doesn't. Eddie Murphy's gay stuff is often brought up, but i was listening to his Rocky/Italians bit, and damn its perfect (i'd throw his "White Like Me" sketch in there too).
But even there, or in clips you pull out from the past of your favorite comedy bits, it never hits like the first time you heard it, you'll chuckle and appreciate it. but bust up laughter is so involuntary.

to me that makes it worse when people try to dig up old clips and hold that comedian to today's standards instead of just accepting its of its time. It's part of why i thought the Kevin Hart saga was so silly. It would be one thing if he was like i stand by what i said, but he had already apologized. he just didn't feel like he should have to go on interview after interview making performative penance over it.

why would you watch Def Jam looking to see what holds up and what is offensive today?

movies than he was doing stand up.

fundamental relationship type stuff that translates to everyone

i watched some not too long ago on HBO Max and i was thoroughly entertained

One of the shows I’ll throw on at any time and let it ride, when nothing else is on TV. Always entertaining, even when I know the episode by heart.