Comedians obsessed with 'wokeness' are the ones ruining comedy

there's nothing less funny than old lazy jokes about cancel culture that we've heard before

Over the past 10 years, we’ve had to listen over and over to the argument that “wokeness” and “cancel culture” are ruining comedy, because “you can’t joke about anything anymore”. For me, it’s always been an easy argument to dismiss, due to having a brain that works and a heart that exists. I’m not here to defend wokeness from the claim it ruins comedy – it demonstrably doesn’t – but I am here to declare that anti-wokeness definitely does.

It might surprise you to learn that even though I am a lesbian woke to the point of insomnia, I genuinely believe that people can joke about anything, if it’s done right. But I am also a comedy writer, a comedy lover, and what I will never ever believe, is that you can wield the sentiment “you should be able to joke about anything” to justify the most hack, unfunny, mean-spirited, boring jokes that have ever existed.

Earlier this week, comic Nikki Glaser became the first woman to host the Golden Globes in its 82-year history. It’s an insanely hard job for any comedian to walk the right line in a live awards show, but she did a great job and received pretty much unanimous praise, delivering jokes like:

“Squid Game is a show where people starve themselves while ruthlessly competing for the ultimate prize. Oh, wait, no, sorry, that’s this show.”

“I did not know much about Wicked going into this year because I had friends in high school. I loved it so much. Everyone loved Wicked. I loved Wicked, my boyfriend loved Wicked, my boyfriend's boyfriend really loved Wicked.”

Previous host of 3 Golden Globes, Ricky Gervais, who was obviously entirely unbothered by this, chose to spend the whole evening posting previous clips of his own jokes, as well as some he would have said instead of Glaser’s. Here’s a couple:

"Justin Timberlake was convicted of Drink Driving. If he’d have gone to jail, he’d have heard the words ‘Sexy Back’ a lot more often”

"Kevin Hart said that being at one of Diddy’s parties was uncomfortable, as he wouldn’t leave him alone. Eventually he had to shout 'Imma Midget, not a child.”

God, I’m ROFLMAO. Sure, he was probably just posting off the dome because he’s insecure and wanted attention, but those jokes suck. Someone call the Golden Globes and get this modern genius back on STAGE. If you are thinking the jokes he actually worked on for the Globes were better, here’s a standout:

“Dame Judi Dench defended Cats saying it was the film she was born to play because she loves nothing better than plunking herself down on the carpet, lifting her leg and licking her own minge. (Coughs.) Hairball. She’s old school.”

Okay.

The most controversy came when he hosted in 2016, and joked about Caitlyn Jenner (who had been involved in a fatal car accident the previous year), saying:

“I’m going to be nice tonight. I’ve changed – not as much as Bruce Jenner. Obviously. Now Caitlyn Jenner, of course. What a year she’s had! She became a role model for trans people everywhere, showing great bravery in breaking down barriers and destroying stereotypes. She didn’t do a lot for women drivers.

The joke got pushback, focused largely on Ricky referring to Caitlyn by her deadname. Ricky had the chance to take a small lesson from the pushback to that joke, to listen to trans people, and slightly refine his joke to make it better and not hurtful. But he wasn’t interested, because that would require growing as a human, and putting in effort. Instead he doubled down, confirming his true colours two years later, when he revisited this situation in a special:

“But I’m willing to learn. I found out my crime was that I dead-named her. I’d never heard that term before a day after the Golden Globes. And that was saying her old name, and even acknowledging she used to be a man. But she did! I saw him on the Olympic Games!”

Then he launches into extended bit where he deliberately deadnames her over and over and over again, acting out a scene in which Caitlyn goes to see a doctor, is manly, and discusses wanting her “pole vault” and “shot puts” gone. That’s the entire thing. These jokes are not upsetting to me because they are edgy; they are upsetting because they are nothing, at the expense of something.

This successful professional comedian had two years to ruminate on how to respond to the backlash, and he came up with… this? He claims to understand what the hurtful part was, and not only doesn’t give a shit, but goes harder with a surface-level, stupid, obvious, unfunny joke. A mean-spirited, small-minded joke. This is your hero?

How does anyone who respects comedy begin to defend this? How can you possibly respect his recent specials, where he tests whether his audience can “take a joke” by coming out with things like:

“Comedy should punch up. You should never punch down.” Sometimes you’ve gotta punch down, like if you’re beating up a disabled toddler. Know what I mean?”

Surely anyone can see that these are about as edgy as a slug. If your instinct is to defend these as out of context or better when performed, I have put myself through watching and I can tell you that they aren't.

Gervais is resting on his laurels so hard they are now unrecognisable as laurels. In his specials where he obsesses about trans people or says racist things, he loves to claim he’s playing a character, or being ironic, or that we’re too stupid or sensitive to get what he’s doing. What I am, actually, is extremely fucking bored.

It’s not just Gervais, there are a bunch of high profile comedians who have decided to take this path, the road more travelled. These are not untalented people, they are not unfunny people who have had no success. They are previously funny people who have become deeply lazy, and stand for nothing except exploiting divisiveness to make more money.

In Jimmy Carr’s 2024 special he did a substantial “bit” which started with:

People say, “You can’t joke about anything these days.” Watch me now. We’re gonna kick off our evening with some short, edgy jokes, get the measure of each other, see if we’re gonna be friends.

He then proceeded with a list, including these:

“I bought my girlfriend a bath bomb. I say that… toaster.”

“I was in a grocery store a couple of weeks ago. They had a special on. He was collecting the carts.”

And then:

The first few weeks after the birth of the child can be incredibly tough, so pro tip, to avoid postnatal depression, try not to see your wife naked.

Toothless.

Gervais and Carr and the rest of the anti-woke crowd like to claim that even though you can’t say anything anymore, THEY will be brave and defiant and forge ahead - to deliver these weak old nothings. They aren’t pushing boundaries, because those jokes crossed the boundary so long ago it’s now a gentrified area. It’s even more pathetic because for straight white men like Carr and Gervais, there is zero risk in actually trying edgy comedy. It bums me out to see comedians no longer caring to progress their craft, and resorting to lazily kicking out at marginalised people for a few easy laughs. Then when pushback comes, they proudly claim to have offended the woke, they are being silenced, and like bulls to a red rag, the free speech warriors jump madly into the ring – regardless of the quality.

Often people who complain about cancel culture are not actually mad about cancel culture, they are mad that they are expected to work harder, be smarter, find new approaches. Comedy is meant to evolve with society, and with the audience. It’s not courageous to bushwhack backwards down a path that’s already been cleared.

And this pattern of laziness and incuriosity is trickling down as a tactic for people who are trying to build their careers. Some comedians are now joining the movement before they even get any notoriety, in a desperate attempt to gain some. Rising Tiktok star Matt Rife recently caused controversy when, after a career of releasing crowd work videos in which he is (allegedly) handsome, he released a catastrophically bad stand up special, which started out of the gates like this, talking about a waitress with a black eye:

My boy, who I was with was like, “Yeah, I feel bad for her. I feel like they should, you know, put her in the kitchen or something… where nobody has to see her face, you know.”

And I was like, “Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye.” So… [laughing]

Following the all too familiar pattern, after that “joke” he says he was just “testing the water, seeing if y’all are gonna be fun or not. Just wanted to see.” Just wanted to see if the audience would like not only a domestic violence joke, but one that is at least three decades old. After the backlash to the special, instead of listening and learning, Rife doubled down, taking the trodden, so trodden, so very trodden path.

In the last couple of weeks we have seen this with Australian Biddy O'Loughlin, who received media coverage (because her mother is Fiona O’Loughlin) when she was “cancelled” for a “joke”. It is disgustingly racist, so be warned:

“A lot of woke people we know in Alice Springs call it Mparntwe these days. I think it's highly highly disrespectful. The traditional way to say Alice Springs is “Alapring” - and you have to say it with a mouthful of methylated spirits”

This is deplorable, and as a joke it is also shockingly bad. It is based on old prejudices, and it sounds like Biddy got it from her Joke Book for Racist Uncles (1979).

Biddy, who is also extremely transphobic (coincidence!), is now trying to build a career out of the backlash she got for that disgraceful joke. She has the support of Graham Linehan (former comedy writer and now one of the world’s most obsessive transphobes) as well as many Twitter users who care soooooooo much about good comedy and just happen to also be obsessive transphobes, or are men with Australian flags as their profile pic who talk longingly about the days of Rodney Rude. Biddy fled to Sky News (where else?) to complain, saying, "I do think we are losing our ability to joke about sensitive topics because of cancel culture."

First of all, you can’t be cancelled if you didn’t have a career to begin with. Secondly, how can anyone in their right mind believe that was just a “joke about a sensitive issue?” What are you talking about? You aren’t worried about losing the ability to joke about sensitive topics, you’re worried about losing the ability to say dipshit racist things. Wrapping racism in an old joke doesn’t make it not racist, and it certainly doesn’t make it funny. We aren’t losing our ability to joke about things, we are losing our ability to tolerate someone going on stage, saying something bigoted and not funny, and then whinging about cancel culture.

Biddy goes on to complain to Sky News that people have only seen a couple of minutes of her set: "I've got dumb Dad jokes, fat jokes, one liners, women's rights jokes and these so-called 'edgy' jokes.” Sorry mate but we sampled one of your jokes, obviously the one you thought was best and funniest because you released it, and it absolutely sucked. In so many ways. I don’t like the chances for the rest. Especially since I looked at another set of Biddy’s online, and her first joke was “my pronouns are fuck/off”. Another decade-old joke. Come on now.

This is what really blows my mind about all this. People are whining and frothing at the mouth to be able to “say what they want,” and what they desperately want to say is… the same old jokes we’ve heard over and over for years.

If these people have so many edgy opinions about society and its downfall, if there is so much there to delve into, if there is an army of enemies, why are the jokes so unoriginal, uninspired, and dull? You are really going to fight for the right to be racist or homophobic or transphobic on stage, you are happy to deeply upset people for your cause, and this is the kind of comedy you are going to deliver? There is so much scope to make funny jokes about liberals and woke people, and the myriad ways people like us suck. There is so much material, but it would require consideration, and work.

If anyone complaining that cancel culture is ruining comedy actually cared about comedy at all, they would be pissed off that these people are trying to skate by with underwritten, out-of-date rubbish. This is not about being offended by a dark joke topic, or something taboo. These comedians are not punching down – they are leaning on. They are leaning on hack jokes, leaning on tropes, leaning on the easiest option, doing the least possible, and then conveniently claiming they are restricted by wokeness.

When comedians attempt to begin or extend their careers specifically on terribly written, not funny, unoriginal bigoted jokes, it’s disgraceful, and any actual comedy fan should think so. The people who claim they are being silenced by the woke agenda are impairing their own comedy. Their attitudes are making their world and their work smaller, more insular, more blinkered. They go to the same wells over and over again for the same bad jokes about the same issues, the same boring takes. They obsess over pronouns, over trans people, over queer people, people of colour, over an invented army of woke people that are preventing them from… what, exactly?

Meanwhile, in the land of the actually funny, comedians who aren’t straight white men are dominating, and they are doing it without dusty old joke books. They are doing unique and funny things.

Patti Harrison is a trans woman of colour, and is one of the most interesting and funny and unhinged performers we have, your favourite comedian’s favourite comedian. The last bit of hers I watched was when she sang a song in the style of Stevie Nicks about leaving her baby in the sun for too long and it becoming like a sweet potato.

Vic Michaelis is a non-binary comedian who was just declared MVP of the year for Comedy Bang Bang, the most popular long-running improv podcast in the world, creating characters like a Pokemon trainer and a mime, which is very funny on an audio medium.

Chris Fleming is a lithe gender fluid genius who recently released a bit about society and attractiveness, which included Chris pretending to kick Barry Keoghan to death under a bathroom stall.

And when these comedians do talk about identity, it’s funny and fresh, like Ziwe’s satirical talk show where she interviews other liberals, asking them charged questions to make them uncomfortable, and poke fun at all sides in a nuanced way.

When these comedians tackle sensitive issues, such as Ricky Gervais’ favourite topic of AIDS, they do it in a new way. The show The Other Two features an episode where the cast attends a four-day, multi-part play of ‘8 Gay Men with AIDS: A Poem in Many Hours’, and everyone is too scared of being judged to leave. It is complex and multi-layered and poking fun at both sides and hilarious.

None of these [“woke”] comedians, these fresh, exciting, hilarious people, are sitting around obsessing about other people telling them what they can and can’t say. Nor are the straight white male comedians who have done the work to build their humour on things other than bigotry, and are therefore thriving. These comedians are working hard to make sure their comedy is actually funny. If they want to push boundaries, break taboos, experiment, they remember to put jokes in. They work to make sure it walks the right line, or at the very least they admit when they have gone too far, and keep fine-tuning. They don’t double down. These comedians aren’t ruining comedy, they are respecting the craft.

The ones we need to worry about are the comedians who dedicate their time to scoffing at wokeness instead of writing better jokes. They don’t have anything to say, so they need to make the issue about free speech instead. If someone claims to find this brand of comedy funny, they automatically identify themselves to me not as someone who likes comedy, but as someone who likes getting to be bigoted. If you’re actually manifesting physical laughter at jokes that have been repeated ad nauseam for decades, you can’t claim you’re enjoying them for comedic value. It’s like guffawing and clapping because someone told you about a chicken that crossed a road.

Anthony Jeselnik is one of the most successful “dark humour” comics in the world today, and this is what he had to say:

They say. I'm a comic. I'm allowed to say whatever I want'...but they don't want any pushback, and that's wrong. As a comedian, you want to make people laugh. This is a quote attributed to Andy Warhol that I love, 'Art is getting away with it.' If you put out a special and everyone's pissed, you didn't get away with it. You need to make everyone laugh so that they’re like, 'Yeah, he talked about some fucked up stuff, but we're all happy.' That’s art. Otherwise, you’re just a troll.

There are successful edgy jokes being made all the time, but they are by comedians who haven’t decided to make woke culture their entire focus. By people who are still trying to push comedy forward. By people who respect their craft.

This cancel culture facade that these people continue to piss around behind is just an excuse. Nobody is stopping you from getting on stage and saying funny jokes – except you.

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