Don't applaud. Either laugh or don't. (At the Comedy Cellar.) Page 4

  This is all terrible for our societal health. We all have a lot of thoughts. Some may be insightful, and some may be horribly wrongheaded. But what we don’t necessarily have is the capacity to tell which are which. To figure that out we might need to share those thoughts with others. Get feedback. Be dissuaded. But today, saying what you think, or even what you used to think, is just too risky — unless you’re Joy Reid or Sarah Jeong, in which case the laws of gravity no longer apply.

  But I don’t think Jeong or Reid should be fired. Maybe Jeong is using ‘white people’ simply to mean the Establishment. Okay. I’d like to see what she has to say about it. That’s a column I’ll look forward to. The habit today is to attack the bottleneck of distribution. The network, the newspaper, Facebook, Twitter. They are expected to fire people, censor them, ban them. Why not just let people say what they want? You’ll live.

  There’s a civics lesson we seem to have learned lately a bit too well: the Bill of Rights does not apply to private behavior. But that technicality should not become an excuse. If the logic that inspired our Civil Rights is sound, then why shouldn’t it apply in our private lives as well? It’s time to reread John Stuart Mill. It’s time for us to decide: Je Suis Charlie Hebdo or not?

  Take Alex Jones. He’s being banned from Facebook, YouTube, iTunes etc. Why stop there? Let’s pressure the ISPs to block him. And if that doesn’t work, why isn’t tweaking the First Amendment the logical next step? What good is locking the door if the windows are still open? Enough with the capillaries, let’s go for the jugular.

  I’ll tell you why. Because the censor will always get it wrong. The cure will always become worse than the disease — and quickly. The Times had a piece recently describing how immigration has brought surging anti-Semitism to France [he links to a story]. My first thought was, imagine if someone had tried to warn of this outcome fifteen years ago. Would it pass Facebook censors? Would it have been called hate speech? This mentality is a cancer. It spreads to the notion that employers have an obligation to make hiring and firing decisions based on someone’s private behaviour, the jokes they’ve told, and maybe even for what they think (if we can unearth them expressing it somewhere). It validates the logic of trigger warnings and micro-aggressions. It’s all inextricably linked. It’s all the same faulty premise. I hate to say it, but there’s an intersectionality to all of it.

  As with free speech, private citizens do not have an obligation of Due Process. But there’s a layman’s term for due process: it’s called ‘fairness’. And there’s a lot to be learned about everyday fairness by studying procedural due process.

  As an employer, I don’t want to be judge and jury of peoples’ private lives. I can’t compel testimony, I can’t punish perjury, I don’t have a forensics lab. I’m going to get it wrong. As soon as I start wielding my power as a club owner to punish personal behavior, I’m going to quickly find myself becoming a hypocrite — just like the New York Times and MSNBC. We have a civil and criminal justice system to punish people.

  People always ask for instance if Louie will be able to perform at the Cellar again. My answer is yes. And hold on a second! I’m not endorsing or even tolerating anything Louie did. But what’s the standard I’m being asked to follow? If I found out that a bartender did such things fifteen years ago, should I fire them? I remember when we once hired an ex-con with a violent past, people admired us for our progressiveness. Mike Tyson was the toast of Broadway. Okay yes, Tyson did his time, but how does a lesser transgressor get a new start? Louie hasn’t worked in a year, is it supposed to be forever? I know of no crime that is punished with career capital punishment. The Comedy Cellar is just not the institution for such decisions. Buy a ticket or don’t.

  I talk a good game, but I fear that if the mob comes for me, I’ll blink. I have a family to support. Other clubs have already suffered boycott movements for much less. We need to change the culture. We need a spirit of the Bill of Rights informing our everyday decisions and demands. We need to refute bad ideas in public.

  Part of the joy of living in this country is being able to make up my own mind about things. At any given time, the greatest of people can see only inches above the heads of their contemporaries. To expect anything more than incremental progress is totally unrealistic. History will show that we are all getting it wrong most of the time — so let’s not be so sure of ourselves. I don’t want to be protected by some elite sitting at the bottleneck of my content.

  There are good reasons to want to hear Alex Jones other than simply because you agree with him. We need it out in the open. Pushing it underground where the outrageous claims and statements are kept within a bubble only allows this stuff to take root. Conspiracy theories spread just fine prior to Facebook. At least on Facebook they can be openly challenged with facts. We talk the talk — ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ — are we afraid to walk the walk? It was a good thing that Roseanne’s tweet came out. Would it really have been better if a bot had prevented it and we had never known? Don’t we learn from all of it?

  I love this quote from Tyler Cowen: ‘As a simple rule of thumb, just imagine that every time you’re telling a good versus evil story, you’re basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more. If you just adopt that as a kind of inner mental habit, it’s, in my view, one way to get a lot smarter pretty quickly. You don’t have to read any books. Just imagine yourself pressing a button every time you tell the good versus evil story, and by pressing that button, you’re lowering your IQ by ten points or more.’

  Mill said: ‘But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race … If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.’

  All I’m saying is please leave the Comedy Cellar out of this.

  CHAPTER 182

  Liza: I was sitting at the table a few weeks ago and an older comic came up to me. He was like, ‘You have to admit, young girls are the worst audience members. You have to admit that.’ It’s like, why are you talking to me? And no, I do jokes for them. They like me a lot. That’s my core audience. You’re an old dude. Are you doing jokes for these girls? Are you catering to them in any way? And then you expect them to laugh at shit when you don’t even acknowledge them? And you think they are the worst for not laughing at jokes that aren’t made for them? So I’m like, ‘No, girls are the best audience for me and old white dudes are the worst.’

  Author: Is that true?

  Liza: It is. They get mad at my material for sure. I have the worst trouble with dudes threatening to kill me, coming back to shows the next day, trying to ruin my bit, folding their arms. Like, dudes are the most upset because … That’s what’s the most annoying about all these white dudes claiming that MeToo’s ruined everything and PC culture’s ruined everything, is they’re the most sensitive and they’re the most offended and they’re the most butt-hurt when anything is said about them. But it’s like, I was just sitting minding my business, and I’m addicted to my phone, I was on my phone, someone just came up and said that to me. It’s like, people just want to start shit with me.

  Author: Who was the older comedian who said that?

  Liza: It doesn’t matter.

  Author: Well I’m speaking to a lot of comedians. Would they get upset if you said their name?

  Liza: Yeah, I’d rather not, it’s like, honestly, they all annoy me.

  Author: And also, you said three male comedians went up in the Village Underground one after another and complained about MeToo, and you went on after them. What was it that you said on the stage? How did you address that?

  Liza: Oh, it was casual. The only thing I remember I said was just, ‘Hey, on behalf of all women, I’d like to apologise to all the men that MeToo has affected. I know i
t’s been so hard on you guys.’ And then I just went into my material. I don’t really know.

  Author: And how did people respond to that?

  Liza: Oh, like, applause break.

  Author: Really?

  Liza: Yeah. Sometimes when I’m like fourth or fifth in the line-up, and it’s just dude after dude after dude, and I come on, you see women’s eyes light up. They’re so excited. It’s like, they relate to me. They’re excited to hear it. Especially because most of the dudes are doing jokes that are bullshit right now. So it’s like, I can’t imagine being a woman in an audience and three dudes in a row talking about how MeToo is hard for them. That’s ridiculous. And that’s another thing. All these dudes thinking that they’re saying shit that’s so edgy and counter-culture and look-at-me and it’s like, no, you’re the mainstream. Like, what you’re saying is not unique. Oh, you think women lie and rape’s not a big deal? Yeah, join the fucking world. That’s the majority. That’s what’s annoying, these guys who think they’re being edgy. It’s like, no, racism is real and it’s every day. You’re not being edgy, you’re being so common. You’re being basic as fuck. And that’s what they don’t get. They think like they’re being so cool by saying this shit and they don’t realise that people hated women forever. You’re not doing anything new. And it would be awesome to have a dude go up on stage … You know what would be edgy, to actually be like, ‘Oh, wow, dudes suck, we need to change.’ Like, that would be edgy.

  Author: And is anyone doing that at the Cellar or at the Underground?

  Liza: No, they think they do, but no.

  Author: I really like the Cellar and I get on with Noam, and I’m quite honest with him I think, but it seems like there’s an older generation of comedians there who want to keep the status quo where they can say whatever they like.

  Liza: No one is stopping you dude from saying it, but audiences are allowed to not laugh. How dare you be entitled. You’re not moving with the culture and people don’t like what you say? What are you talking about? The Cellar’s not stopping you from saying anything. Nothing is stopping you from saying anything. You can perform anywhere. You can do what you want. What are they talking about? People not laughing? Yeah, they don’t like it. If all the women decide not to laugh at a domestic violence joke, they’re allowed to do it. It doesn’t mean they don’t understand comedy and they’re ruining comedy. They just don’t like what you’re saying.

  CHAPTER 181

  The author asks Jay Oakerson about being called in for a meeting with Noam. Jay tells the author he doesn’t want to talk about it. Jay says he loves the Cellar. He says he told Noam he was disappointed that after fifteen years they’d call him in because a customer complained his jokes were racist. Jay says Noam quickly apologised about calling him in and told him to keep doing what he’s doing and not change anything, which he didn’t.

  CHAPTER 180

  Before that, the author phones Noam,

  Author: I mentioned this when I was over, that you called in Jay, and I was thinking about that, because I really liked when you defended Sam Morril and you sent this email saying you can’t decide what a comedian can and can’t say on stage, which is why the First Amendment is so broad. But with the Jay thing, it’s a bit annoying for me, because you called someone in, so there is a line.

  Noam: Because it wasn’t going over. There is no line. Sam said one errant joke and one person complained. It was an outlier incident. Jay was having a series of unhappy audiences. All I did was call his attention to it so that he could, if he wanted to, adjust. And by the way, I believe he did, because it stopped, so I don’t even know what he’s saying. I went down there the other night and saw Jay Oakerson and I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe the level of filth that was coming out of his mouth, but we got no complaints about it. And I’m not even sure what he was saying in that little period. Sometimes when you say it to a person as opposed to generally, people are more likely to get upset. It can be very subtle. Jay’s doing a high-wire act down there in the degree of filth that he wraps himself in, and his genius is in being able to present this stuff in a way which somehow people accept, but there was a little period there where all of a sudden they weren’t accepting it like they always had, and I called his attention to it, and that’s all I said. I said, ‘Listen, I’m just registering this with you, I’m not doing anything, I’m not affecting your spots, I’m not telling you what to do, but you need to know, because obviously you can’t work if people don’t want to see you,’ and that’s, you know … He has a right to say whatever he wants.

  Author: I guess from his point of view he’d say the room was laughing but there was one person in there who sent you an email, and maybe there’d been like an email before.

  Noam: Yeah, but it wasn’t just one email. We were getting a series of complaints about it. It wasn’t just one email. I would never come to somebody about one email or whatever, unless it was something like they’d said, ‘You’re a fucking cunt’.

  Author: So with Sam though, if Sam had got five emails about his alligator joke, you might have considered talking to him about that?

  Noam: If he kept with that joke every night and we were getting complaints about it every night, yeah. I would say, ‘Sam, listen, what are you going to do here?’ I would never tell him he can’t do it.

  Author: But it has a chilling effect on the comedian, doesn’t it? Like, what I think Jay would say is it makes him wonder if he should or should not do a joke from then on, because is it going to stop him from getting booked at the Cellar?

  Noam: Well, he may have to worry about that. I mean at some point that’s up to him. He didn’t get any fewer spots and he’s still as filthy as ever so the outcome doesn’t seem to line up with that having been something he had to worry about. Maybe at that meeting he was, but I tried very hard after that meeting, I even remember that night, I said, ‘Jay, I just want to make sure we’re okay, I want to make clear I’m not telling you to do anything, I just want to put this on the radar because it’s worrying me,’ you know, or whatever I said. But I mean, this is about the audience. I mean, it is. I don’t care if the reason the audience hates a comedian is because he’s bashing Arabs or bashing Jews. That would be me violating the free expression rule. But I do have the right to tell a comedian that, for whatever reason, whether it’s just they suck or because they’re dirty, whatever they’re saying, ‘Listen, there is a clear and evident pattern here that this is turning off the audience.’ It’s not about what he says. I don’t care what he says. He can say anything he wants. I have to be able to tell him the audience is not accepting this.

  CHAPTER 179

  Before that, Leah replies to the Comedy Cellar feedback email,

  I was extremely happy to see this email pop up asking for feedback because, yes, I have something to say.

  I am SO upset by one of the acts that you allowed on your stage last night. It was the last act of the night — I think his name was A.J. His entire time onstage was spent making fun of gays for ‘blowing each other in the bathroom’ and proudly stating that he ‘doesn’t give a shit about politics.’ And while I can appreciate that those comments — while not really funny enough to warrant their stupidity — are his prerogative to joke about as a ‘comedian,’ some of this other content was SO completely disgusting and inappropriate that I almost walked out.

  He talked about a couple doing anal in a hotel and how it was fine because ‘it would just be the Mexican cleaner’s job to clean up all the shit in the morning.’ He then continued to push his fucked up joke by saying ‘here Guadalupe I’m handing you an extra $20.’ Not only is this moment in America a really fucked up time to be making jokes like that (does he read the news?) but his delivery and actual lines weren’t nearly funny enough to warrant such a horrible choice in topic. He also joked about ‘fucking 18-year-olds’, talking in depth about how he liked it when he got to hook up with
those girls while they were really drunk and asking the host/MC if he would like to fuck drunk 18-year-olds as well. So he thought it would be funny to talk about potentially raping and sexually assaulting young girls on stage. Cool. Again, perhaps a poor choice in topic.

  I appreciate that the point of comedy is to ‘push the bar’ but I think we are past a time when men (or women) should be invited to get up on stage and joke about assaulting women. I think we are past a time when men (or women) should be invited up to laugh about immigrant workers when ICE is fucking up our country. The fact that you gave this guy a platform is incredibly fucked up, in my opinion, and I would expect more from one of the greatest comedy clubs in New York City. You have a responsibility to ensure that people aren’t spewing more hate in the world. That really isn’t what we need right now in this country, or anywhere for that matter.

  I hope that this doesn’t read as some holier-than-thou bullshit. I am not one of those psychos who writes long rant reviews on my Amazon purchases, but I was so angry about this that I felt I had to say something. I was also not the only one who felt this way, and the guest that I came with and MANY people around me were shocked and appalled by this pathetic comedian. He also just really wasn’t funny, so even if his jokes were less offensive, he should probably just work on his general skill set.

  Other than that, SO COOL THAT MICHELLE WOLF WAS THERE, and I had lovely service and thought the MC was great.

  Thanks for listening, and I hope you never invite this loser back onto your stage. Perhaps even suggest to him that he reconsider using whatever influence he has and doesn’t joke about sexual assault or rip on immigrants when our administration is making their lives a living hell.

  CHAPTER 178

  Noam: Nobody should ever get fired for anything they say, no matter what, and the only reason to fire somebody should be if, you know, people stopped watching or something. So, meaning like, if I found out that some comedian or someone who was under my thumb in some way said the most horrible things about Jews or whatever it is, I don’t think I’d fire them, I’d just say it’s not my business. I really do. It’s too much. And what’s so terrible about that?