I admire that Amy Schumer apologized for her joke about Hispanic men being rapists. Quite a few comedy folks on my Facebook feed feel quite different. To me, the rhetoric that comedians should never apologize is just plain wrong headed. We’re not perfect. We aren’t the word of God. The sun doesn’t rise and set on us. Why shouldn’t we grow as people just like everybody else on the planet, when we realize that our words can be hurtful to others, even when that wasn’t our intention at all. There are jokes I’m not proud of that I slung in the “way-back machine”. Btw - please don’t get me wrong, pissing people off as a comic is the second greatest feeling on the earth, the first being making them laugh. We live for walking the tightrope of being offensive, self deprecating, and salty as f*ck - as to hopefully be a tiny little bearer of constructive social criticism, or at the very least, to get back at family members. And if we can do both of those things with one joke…Christ, I just touched myself and smiled. But ultimately, you gotta be prepared to be stung when you’re throwing out the stingers. She handled it. Kudos.
After writing this and posting it to Facebook, the replies I got ran the gamut from, “Without a movie opening next week, she wouldn’t have apologized. She bowed to her corporate masters. Sad.” to, “A real comedian doesn’t have to apologize for his or her jokes. Always stick to your guns.” Hmm… My thoughts are 1) She is a real comedian. 2) Stick to your guns? Like Donald Trump and Bill Cosby!?! 3) Unless you are living off the grid, we all bow to the corporate masters.
It’s at this point that someone posted “The late great Bill Hicks would never have apologized for his stinging commentary.” adding, “We need comedians who aren’t afraid to rage against the machine, self-censorship is deadly.” Others brought up that “The protection of speech is just as important as protection of viewpoint. The confederate flag isn’t racism. It’s a symbol. Go after the ACTUAL racism instead. You aren’t going to fix racism by eliminating flags any more than you’re going to eliminate other unpopular ideas by going after comic viewpoints of them. Instead, it’s an opportunity to expose the issue itself - not drive it underground.”
A few even mentioned that the grand dame of comedy herself Joan Rivers, never apologized. Yes, that’s mostly true. But then I read that Joan did apologize through a friend to Elizabeth Taylor, who was a favorite target for years. After I had brought that up, one person said, “Yes, for being overly-harsh on her personally. I’ve done that too - to individuals.” My thoughts on this is, if an apology is good enough for one person, it’s good enough en masse.
All growth is basically self-censorship. It’s such a great fantasy to imagine what Bill Hicks would do or say about all of this, and I’m not worried about there being a lack of people to rage against the machine, there’s just too many of us out there. Btw - her joke wasn’t in the vein of raging against the machine. It was a throw-away line for a quick cheap laugh. We are all guilty of it. I honestly look forward to her thoughts on having gone through this. If anything, self-growth always spawns a butt-load of new jokes.. If you have to explain the intention of a joke, you haven’t written it correctly. Trust me, I’m the queen of not writing jokes correctly. Getting rid of “flags” doesn’t erase anything. But here’s the kicker…it’s the right thing to do. And when did doing the right thing suddenly get completely shoved out of comedy? And to all the people who wrote nothing more than, “No apologies, it sets a bad precedent.” My thoughts are this…Amy Schumer is going to have a long and prosperous career, maybe even more so now that she’s made herself more human and vulnerable by apologizing. The only things that sets a bad precedent is not expecting the best of us, to grow on par with the rest of us.
sketch art by Jen AsTheCrowFlies
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