{"id":26913,"date":"2014-07-20T09:44:37","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T13:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26913"},"modified":"2015-02-22T11:13:21","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T16:13:21","slug":"the-struggle-of-progressive-comedians-to-be-funny-without-offending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/20\/the-struggle-of-progressive-comedians-to-be-funny-without-offending\/","title":{"rendered":"The struggle of progressive comedians to be funny without offending"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ricochet.com\/creating-oneness-progressive-comedy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jon Gabriel<\/a> attends a panel discussion on progressive comedy at Netroots Nation. It wasn&#8217;t very funny:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Netroots Nation is an annual conference for online progressive activists. Over the past few days, the group held their ninth annual event in Detroit \u2014 America\u2019s finest example of unchecked liberal policy.<\/p>\n<p>Unbeknownst to the organizers, I attended the conference to see what the other side thinks about economics, education and the midterms. If their presentation on comedy is any guide, conservatives don\u2019t have much to fear.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Left is supposed to be funnier than the Right, damn it,\u201d the panel description stated. \u201cSo why do we so often sound in public like we\u2019re stiltedly reading from a non-profit grant proposal?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This defensive tone was apparent throughout the hour-plus session, brought up repeatedly by speakers and audience members. Much like a co-worker who doesn\u2019t get anyone\u2019s jokes but insists, \u201cI have a <em>great<\/em> sense of humor!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The audience had several questions about what they were allowed to joke about and even how comedy works. A white septuagenarian proudly stated that she no longer tells jokes to black people because that might expose them to unwitting racism. Camp and White sadly noted that her preface of \u201cI\u2019m not a racist, but\u2026\u201d confirms that she is, in fact, a racist.<\/p>\n<p>Another audience member asked how progressives can shut down funny, effective lines coming from the right on talk radio, blogs and <em>Twitter<\/em>. \u201cThe right has short, pithy things to say because they lie,\u201d Halper replied.<\/p>\n<p>She explained that clever jokes by conservatives aren\u2019t actually funny because such people lack empathy and nuance. \u201cProgressives are more nuanced, statistically speaking,\u201d Halper said. The science is settled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jon Gabriel attends a panel discussion on progressive comedy at Netroots Nation. It wasn&#8217;t very funny: Netroots Nation is an annual conference for online progressive activists. Over the past few days, the group held their ninth annual event in Detroit \u2014 America\u2019s finest example of unchecked liberal policy. Unbeknownst to the organizers, I attended the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,28,53],"tags":[238,1020,99,76,593],"class_list":["post-26913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-media","category-politics","tag-offensensitivity","tag-progressives","tag-racism","tag-socialism","tag-socialmedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-705","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26914,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26913\/revisions\/26914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}