Daniel Tosh Told an Offensive Joke about Rape

Daniel Tosh has made people laugh about murder. He's made people laugh about slavery. He's made people laugh about bear mauling. Even right after all those people watched a video of a bear mauling.

In order to get those people to laugh at the attack, he didn't have to convince them that being mauled by a bear is OK. And he didn't have to convince them that they should be happy that someone got mauled by a bear. To make them laugh, first he had to convince them that altho life is full of pain and fear and there's always a risk of damage and trauma, right at that moment no-one was being stalked by a bear. And he had to be pretty sure that they knew that a round of laughter was not going to conjure two she-bears out of the woods.

Then without that fear, all it took is a little wordplay on race issues, an ironic lack of sympathy, or better yet, some misplaced sympathy—for instance, feeling sorry for the bear when someone defending the woman throws a bottle—and the audience could both laugh at the ridiculousness of the comments, and not be happy that the lady was attacked.

The bear attack was the focus of one of Tosh's "Video Breakdown" segments on his show. After having been attacked by a polar bear, a Russian woman stumbles away in her underwear, pants around her ankles. The first joke Tosh offers up: "See, when you dress like that, ladies, you're asking to be attacked."

That opinion probably sounds familiar. It has become the symbol of blaming the victim. It's the callous and accusatory scolding that too many women have heard after having been raped. This is just a guess, but I believe Tosh uses that line knowing that it sounds harsh, and knowing that the person who says that line seriously, is an asshole. I'm guessing that Tosh also believes that being that type of asshole verges on the immoral dismissal of a woman's suffering.

But here's the important difference: it's the serious, earnest use of that line. The ironic use of that line is by definition, saying it without believing it. And that's what comedians do all the time. Either by exaggerating their views, or by contradicting their views, comedians are pretty much always saying things they don't believe.

But they can still make people angry. Because sometimes people believe either 1) that the ironic statement is sincere, or 2) that even the ironic expression of an idea gives comfort support and power to people who hold that idea earnestly.

And one of those was the thinking that led a Laugh Factory audience member to walk out of a show angrily, and write a blogpost about Daniel Tosh's act. She reports the experience as "terrifying and threatening" and she ultimately judges his jokes as "violent". I can't disagree with her experience. The same way that someone who laughed can claim it's funny, she can claim it was scary. It's almost always stupid to tell someone that they're not feeling what they say they're feeling.

And as for claiming that she was threatened… I would ask her, with honest interest, what she felt the threat was. It's one thing to think you're in danger, and another to actually be in danger, but there's very little space, when you're dealing with a person face to face, between reassuring them to make them feel secure, and simply dismissing their fear and disrespecting the honesty of how they've experienced something.

In this case, the audience member claims that Tosh made very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny. She stresses that he was insistent on this point, and that he also claimed that rape itself is hilarious I'm willing to bet that Tosh thinks some rape jokes are stupid, poorly constructed, simple, obvious, and contrived. Any blanket statement about every conceivable rape joke being funny is fairly considered a purposely ridiculous opinion. And the statement that aside from jokes about it, rape itself is hilarious: are we really to believe that Daniel Tosh finds the act of rape amusing? I don't believe that about him.

She writes that she disagreed with Tosh's supposed opinions by yelling Actually, rape jokes are never funny! It's completely within her rights to share that opinion. Even tho she's not on stage, and no one attended the show expecting to hear from her, I'll go a little farther than supporting her right. I'm going to agree with the importance of sharing her opinion. She claims that

sitting there and saying nothing, or leaving quietly, would have been against my values as a person and as a woman.

I disagree with her claim that Tosh was telling her how she should feel about something as profound and damaging as rape, because I believe that Tosh's jokes are not statements of his belief: they're performances. But because of how she understood the statements, I repeat that it was an honest and important decision she made to disagree at that moment. To reach out in the most honest way she could was important to her sense of self, to her integrity. And if she was hurt by the response, what else could she do but what she did? She left.

And altho I don't think Tosh's reaction (if it was as she reports it) was an important one for him to make (nor was it the only option he had) I believe—just as I do about his other jokes—that it was a valid and acceptable performance. So while I believe she felt threatened, I also believe that if someone had even started walking towards her or had thrown an ice-cube at her, Tosh would've called them out and told them to stop. Call me naïve, but I do believe it. And I'm not going to simply accept jokes about cruelty as direct evidence of a comedian's cruel character.

The problems with communication begin when this becomes a matter of sides, and the two usually unopposed forces, sympathy, and levity, are pitted against each other. I refuse to agree to someone else's stricture that if I feel bad for a person, I can't laugh at a joke that makes light of their experience. Or that if I find a joke about some evil funny, I can't possibly sympathize with someone hurt by that evil.

Often, people who are upset about a joke will criticize any defense that focuses on the character of the performer rather than the effect of the act. It's a little weird to say that defending character is irrelevant, when much of the criticism focuses on motivation and character. So then, what of those criticisms that say something like 'I'm sure so-and-so is a good person, but there is a dangerous result of these types of jokes'?

When the discussion goes there, we're heading into claims about what fear a person should feel at the ability of other people to balance the two values of sympathy and levity. Does making a joke about evil—or laughing, or not expressing outrage about a joke about evil—make that evil stronger? And if the joke is the supposed admiration for that evil?

Some critics of Tosh's reported jokes are focusing on the effect this has. Some have been as specific and direct enough to claim that joking like this about rape makes it seem acceptable. Nobody seems to care that jokes and glib statements about murder are going to make murder seem acceptable. There was no outcry that all the cannibalism jokes of several weeks ago were going to hurt the cannibalism statistics. Some people didn't like the jokes, but it wasn't out of fear of some effect on society. Why not?

Rape falls into a window of evil behaviors that are cruel enough to be clearly wrong and beyond discussion for almost everyone, but are somehow still being negotiated. We could probably put child-abuse, wife-battering, bigotry, and a few other things on the list. And so we get statements, like this one from the @mountain_goats twitter feed

to compare those jokes with "I'm gonna kill you!" jokes is inane. 1 in 5 of the people you know isn't likely to get killed.

It appeals to a sense of risk and personal interest. It's a very attractive argument: An already too common problem, becomes even more likely because of these jokes. So how common does murder have to be before we decide the jokes are too much of a risk? No jokes about accidental shootings? How many people have to be killed on the highway before we get upset at jokes about reckless driving?

But does a performance like Tosh's really make rape more common? Even if we accept the claim that someone might be convinced by a joke to care less about rape, it's a huge jump to say that culture is equally lulled into thinking that 'no' means whatever. Or that joking about rape means not caring about rape. This goes back to the argument of necessary opposition: the belief that vigilance for a value will be destroyed by humor.

When comedy begins to concern itself with reaching the absolute moral certainty of being obviously satirical and impossible to mistake for an earnest statement, it isn't as good. Some of the most precise, thoughtful, intricate, and beautifully constructed jokes have offended and misled audiences. Ridiculous statements can be seen as both hilarious and completely wrong. And often they're even more hilarious when they're structured and presented as almost indistinguishable from honest statements of belief.

Before you go, Remember this…

MEETING NOTES:
DICK: We need a young family-friendly comic. Nothing dirty. Nothing controversial.

ED: Yeah we can find that.

DICK: He needs to tailor the set to our show.

ED: You mean… be not very funny?

DICK: Hey! It can be funny, but he's gotta ruin it with awkward commentary. You know, like when you talk to Johnny and me.

ED: Just any commentary?

DICK: No. he's gotta tie it all in to bloopers and maybe a practical joke.

ED: Who's gonna write this material for him?

DICK: Let him use his own jokes. If he's bright, he'll figure out a way to do the tie-ins.
--

Jerry takes the stage:
Thank you very much. Thank you. Bloopers… You know, I flew in on a plane. Talk about bloopers. You don't want bloopers on a plane. Stewardesses, they uh, they never make a mistake. They're too happy. They do their job. They come out there. They put on their little show. You know, before the plane takes off.

DICK AND ED: [in the wings] This is better than we could have imagined.

Mandy, Presented by The Sims 2

I spent a summer playing the Sims. It's addictive and time consuming. I spent a few weeks getting a good job, building a mansion, making friends, hitting on the hot neighbor, then proposing to her in front of a fireplace. She caught fire and burned to death.

I decided to stop there because my 4 minutes of uncontrollable laughter were going to be impossible to top.

So I started playing The Sims.

This video is about 4 years old. But it holds up because of 1:47.

Aflac's new Quacksperson.

It's been about a week now since Aflac announced their new duck-voice: Daniel McKeague. It's a pretty masterful PR move to make people care about a soccer coach from Minnesota getting a VO gig.

Did they go for a new sound? Did they go for an impression? The first video doesn't make it clear. it's almost a split between Gottfried and Donald Duck. But McKeague explains that he did have an impression in his pocket. "Whenever that ad would come on I would imitate the duck and the kids loved it."

The second video, strangely, sounds like a completely different voice. Not at all Donald-ish or Gilbert-y. I wonder if they checked every contestant's tweets before deciding.

Aflac Claptrap: Amy Phillips Makes a Good Impression

Now that Gilbert Gottfried is out, how many celebrities does it take to say Aflac annoyingly? Six. Or maybe just one. Amy Phillips. The impersonations are good, and she gets extra points for including Rita Rudner.

Seriously, who had the foresight to tell her to work up a Rita Rudner impression? Nicely done.



via @Satiristas

SNL Commercial Parody: Corn Syrup

This is the first SNL commercial parody in a while to make me laugh. Short. Tight. A clear premise that doesn't get pounded to death.

Now, how much would you say final turn/reveal was added as a tag to strengthen the bit structurally as a punchline, versus being added to keep critics from accusing the writers of being one-sided on the issue?

Funny (title borrowed from the author)

A friend who makes me laugh a lot, has told me that he could never be a performer. I think he could go into humor writing. But only if he learns not to get so bogged down with the morality of what he says.

So I watched a little video he made using the xtranormal video template service. And I sent him a rambling note about the power of language to connect and the human capacity to search for the other. He responded: "I was just trying to make a joke."

Yep. We humans are good at connecting.

Here's what struck me about this video. As soon as I started it, I was expecting it to follow the common template of all of these xtranormal videos. Two people talking. One of them sees things as they are. One of them is stuck in a single perspective. The joke comes from the repetition of that perspective no matter what the other person says.

A: I see things this way.

B: There are many other perspectives.

A: I don't care. I like seeing things this way.

B: You need to open your mind to other possibilities.

A: I don't want to. I like seeing things this way.

B: You're not even listening, are you?

A: I like seeing things this way.

This is the standard. Take a quick look at the first one to get a lot of attention, iPhone customer; then the spin-off starring Sarah Palin; and the Stand Up Comedy is NOT Pretty series; and from just last week, So You Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities. They're pretty funny. And there are some good lines in there. I think my favorite is "It's in Alaska, where there are mooses and bears."

The success and draw of the template is probably because of the robotic repetition working well with the jagged and robotic intonation. And the calm frustration, or even anger, of the other talking head is stifled by the monotone delivery, creating a nice tension. But it's time for the formula to be put aside. Let's see if we can make up some funny dialogue that doesn't layer the repetition of lines on top of the repetition of a premise.

Expecting him to follow along in that mold, I was surprised and pleased to see that Casey was breaking free from the flock. (As a professor of literature who's also a political conservative, he's getting used to being the spotted lamb.) Even if I inferred a little too much sincerity in Casey's submission, the lines are pretty funny. And I laughed even when I thought he was serious. Enjoy it.

Stewart Gets All Sincere and Stuff

"I know there are boundaries for a comedian-pundit-talker-guy, and I'm sure I'll find out tomorrow how I have violated them."

The Swagger Wagon

I've always thought Brian Huskey looks like Jason Lee. Except funny. And not as cult-y.

Video Bit of the Week: Better Off Ted Outtakes NSFW

This aren't really blooper outtakes, but just unused takes. Most of them are performed without error, using language that releases evil demons, and is kept safely away from network television.

If you haven't seen the episode that made it to air, it's available on Netflix instant viewing. The simple premise: A company memo is supposed to tell employees they "must not use offensive or insulting language in the workplace." A simple typo changes it so they believe they "must NOW use offensive or insulting language."

Banksy Directs Simpsons Opener

I don't know. Being dark and critical of evil just doesn't seem that countercultural anymore.

And if unicorns don't learn how to fight with that thing, they don't deserve survival.



(We might have to keep updating if copyright issues keep taking down embeddable videos. Let's see how long Hulu holds on to the clip.)

Video Bit of the Week: Charlyne Yi and TMZ

The folks at TMZ are something between parasite and scavenger. Or at least that's how I typically see them. They just roam around looking for bones to pick through. This video shows them being something between a predator, con-artist, and hack comic.

The worst thing about this isn't their misrepresentation of the setup (to the audience) and intention (to Yi): it's that they think it's funny. Despite Yi's complaint, their little stunt might actually help the cause because they give the website and eventually explain the purpose and all that. And who cares if they make Yi look silly? She's being silly. Oxfam doesn't need us to take her seriously.

But they're so proud of their little joke here. And it's just… meh.

Video Bit of the Week: English Teachers — The Series

Tony Gilmore has pretty much set up shop in Japan, directing films, mostly documentaries. In one of his current projects, English Teachers, he's stepping away from documentaries, and into comedy. The web series follows Tom Kellerman through his days teaching alongside a jerk, a martinet, a wannabe ninja, and the new girl.

Jonathan Sherr plays Kellerman as a bumbly curious naif. Kinda like Zach Braff in Tom Cavanagh's body. After only one episode the characters have just barely been introduced, but there's plenty of potential in the characters as they're set up. It'll be worth following, especially if you have any experience teaching English overseas.

My wife taught English in Korea before she started graduate school. She remembers that as one of the best and most pixelated years of her life. She laughs about her mostly frustrating experience with the English program, and the sweethearts she taught. She still talks about going back. "You could eat sushi for sooo cheap!" she coaxes.

English Teachers is on Facebook and Twitter.

From Nameless Media and Productions.

Video Bit of the Week: Kyle Cease Talks Feelings

Kyle Cease is determined to sound driven, confident, positive, and stable. The more I hear him talk about his boot camp, the more it sounds like a support group. It's a community that reminds you to avoid "stinking thinking" and tells you to "Keep It Simple Stupid" and warns that "expectations are premeditated resentments." Kinda like a Comics Anonymous meeting.

Some notable quotes from this half-hour piece:

And if you look at Richard Pryor, you look at George Carlin, you look at— They were thinking about making the crowd realize something.

When you realize you get to do this, it naturally shifts you back into excitement. And you're appreciative of that you're doing it. And you're excited about it and you're passionate about it. And you naturally lose fear. You naturally lose…stage fright. It just goes away.

When you're in the future, the crowd is in the future. So they can't laugh at the setup. So you'll be like 'So I'm driving down the street' and right there you're saying 'Hold on—' versus giving the street its own story. What kind of of street was it?

Do you need alcohol to be happy? Do you need smoking to be happy? Then you're saying I'm not complete enough without these things.

You should be talking to the audience the way you talk to one friend in a bar.

Cease focuses on attitude and performance as not just factors in stage success, but the keys to stage success. It's hard to see how Steven Wright's attitude makes a difference. And Dave Attell's notorious insecurity and self-loathing has hardly kept him from dominating his stages.

It looks like Cease is primarily interested in making comics feel good about their work and themselves. I guess that's nice.

Comedy Structuralism: i.e. Stealing Jokes

Stealing jokes isn't as cut and dry as we sometimes make it out to be. A lot of people joke about giving their kid a crazy name. Everyone knows how horrible an itchy butthole is. And often the only way we talk about it is to fit it into a story that makes us laugh.

My recent post about Dana Gould's show left out some very relevant observations that the comic's comic made a while back, specifically about the parallels between Gould's and Louis C.K.'s act.

I couldn't help but begin making instant comparisons (Boston-area heritage? check! In their 40s? check! No game with the ladies? check! Problems interacting with two young daughters? check!). So I turned off my TV and waited a bit to give Gould a fairer shake. After all, the two men may have more than a few things in common, but they approach their lives and their comedy differently.

Yep, there are lot of very common pieces in both acts. But remember, the pieces are very common. A good comedian can find something new to notice. But even the best will say something that we've thought about. And will complain about something that we too already hate. And will admit something we're all ashamed of. Comedy is part seeing something different, and part seeing something differently.

Who hasn't wondered what really happens when you're under for a root canal. Jerry wondered about it when he went to see Tim Whatley and Sheryl the hot hygienist. And Louie has his suspicions too.



The image of a patient coming up from the gas, and getting a glimpse of the dentist buttoning and zipping up, is familiar.

But they're different jokes. Sure, they're very similar, but you can't deny that the hallucination and the banana and Stephen Root's amazing delivery make this a very different experience.

Cranston creates a slick, confident, unnerved swinger; tag-teaming with his cooperating colleague's hygienist. It's a joke about 'Welcome to our club.'

Root gives us a soothing, tender, 'relax-I-won't-hurt-you' dentist, hiding from everyone. Showing shame. It's a joke about pedophilia.

My belief that Louis C.K. knew about and probably remembered the Seinfeld scene, is not an accusation. It's the opposite. It's a defense of him as a comic who knows and respects and references other comedians. Louie is about a comic living in New York. The show has almost no traditional plot, and it's structured around a stand-up act that is tangentially, thematically related to the action. He's using Seinfeld's structure very differently. And the irreverence that Seinfeld introduced with his show, C.K. has taken further. Knowingly.

C.K. doesn't need this defense, because he's trusted, and I haven't heard anyone accuse him. But there are comedians who are accused too easily. And a lot of fans, eager to show how much they know about their favourite comics, try to prove some worth by pointing and barking at every similarity like a terrier at a doorbell. Go do a word-search if that's how you want to spend your time.

Or write a post like I just did.

Video Bits of the Week: The Value of Old Recordings

Three commercials from years ago.

Remember how the titles of all the Friends episode started "The One with…"? Trying to capitalize on a similar clever device, every episode of Joey started with "Joey and…". Yep. That's how deep they were digging. So it's pretty likely that Matt Leblanc is more embarrassed about Joey, than he is about this Heinz commercial.



The McDLT was revolutionary. It was McDonald's slightly more successful predecessor to the Arch Deluxe. "The beef stays hot, the cool stays crisp." The cool? I had a white jacket like Jason Alexander's. And I too refused to tighten my knit tie, because I had to breathe, man.



And how adorable is young Tina Fey in her sofa-print vest, black tights and pirate shirt?

Rockin' Robin/Smells Like Teen Spirit

when Weird Al points to a good music mashup, people should listen:

Video Bit of the Week: Umbilical Brothers

I first saw this on an HBO Sketch Pad episode/special back around 2002. It was about half as long and didn't include the last segment. I like it without it, but some of the timing and balance on this one is very good.

Video Bit of the Week: Nick Griffin

Nick Griffin has appeared several times on Letterman as well as on Craig Ferguson's little cavalcade. He's a dark comic with some horribly stark views on marriage, happiness, and success. And he's great.

When he did a set for Letterman, they took a look at a line in his set: "…because young girls are filled with sugar and spice and everything nice; and I'm filled with anger and semen and shame", and asked/told him to change "semen" to "prozac". Wouldn't that be a convenient trick. If you watch the video, you'll notice what is probably a stutter before he adjusts to the changed line.

Griffin is probably never going to be happy. And there's nothing we can do about that. One of his best jokes is a response to his date telling him he's just afraid of his feelings. "No, I'm afraid of your feelings. I've got pills for my feelings."

The following was recorded in the West Palm Beach airport while waiting for a flight. Something about it makes me really want to pursue this stand-up thing.

Colbert Shows Ingraham How to Make Fun of Someone

Forget any political points; this was tightly conceived satire. Stephen Colbert straddles his character and reality while embracing Laura Ingraham's attempt to do the same. He uses character to make fun of Obama—agreeing with Ingram's actual political goal—while using her joke against her. Brilliant comedy.