the wokerati are killing free expressionIn a wide-ranging interview with the New Yorker, legendary comedian Jerry Seinfeld explains how the hard left has killed comedy. By imposing standards of wokeness, or political correctness, on the material comics use, so-called progressives are restricting what they feel able to say.
Seinfeld is, of course, right – and celebrated British comics of the standard of John Cleese and Rowan Atkinson have made the same point, as did the great Barry Humphries. But the point Seinfeld makes is not relevant solely to the world of entertainment. It evokes the wider issue of freedom of speech — which appears to be under threat in every so-called liberal society one can think of —and it stems from a politically– rather than morally–induced obsession to prevent anyone being caused offence.
In his widely acclaimed book, High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain (2013), distinguished columnist and intellectual Simon Heffer reminds us that the Victorians had their own code of avoiding offence. Certain things, mainly to do with sex or other forms of depravity, were not discussed in front of women or children, for example, and it was considered vulgar to mention money.
Now, though, the taboo subjects are related solely to questions prevalent in identity politics:
someone’s race, gender or sexuality being the prime subjects deemed literally unspeakable. In the working men’s and comedy clubs of Britain until the 1990s, a stand-up comedian’s routine consisted almost entirely of jokes making fun of the Irish, black people, women (often mothers-in-law) and homosexuals; jokes about people identifying as a different gender did not exist because most comedians did not imagine such people existed, and neither did their audiences.
Club audiences hooted with laughter; not because they were packed with those who were cruel, bigots, homophobes or chauvinists, but because the jokes were funny and, importantly, they self-evidently meant no harm. They did not incite violence or prejudice against the minority being laughed about; and they were inevitably included in routines that contained a large quantity of jokes about stupid white men.
Now, that last group is just about the only one about which a comedian can publicly joke.
Or, in the Australian case, it’s primarily people on the right spectrum of politics who are the targets of comedian jokes. As Gerard Henderson has observed, ABC satirists – Mark Humphries, Charlie Pickering, Shaun Micallef – have all too often sneered at political conservatives, while the Green Left is rarely subjected to ridicule.
The rest is here:
https://www.cis.org.au/commentary/opinion/no-offence-but-the-wokerati-are-killin...
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