Memo to Comedians: Don't Depend On the 'Funny' to Save You

Former comedian Larry Fedoruk thinks Guy Earle, Lesbian-disser, got his just desserts (prosecution by the thought cops, an onerous fine) because he committed what for comics is the ultimate sin--he wasn't funny (Larry's bolds):

No one should be subject to persistent and cruel remarks at a comedy club because of their sexual orientation, or weight, or clothes or, or, or. Some comics, especially those saddled with the job of hosting, make a point of audience interplay. They pick on a few people and often exchange barbs. This however, sounds like it got real cruel real fast.

I haven’t seen or heard what happened that night. As far as I know this show has not appeared on The Comedy Network as: Guy Earle’s Famous Vancouver Lesbian Meltdown. But I can almost guarantee you it wasn’t funny. If it were a clever humorous exchange between a comic and a patron I surmise it would have ended there. The comic would have been cheered, and the patrons would leave thinking “next time we won’t sit in the front row.”

Get it through your head, Larry: it ain't about the "funny." Earle could have been hilarious, uproarious, and the thin-skinned Lesbian could still have taken offence at something he said and hauled his sorry keester through the "human rights" process. (Because members of designated victim groups know that there's a mechanism that allows them to profit financially from their thin-skinnedness--so why not take advantage of it?)

"Funny" won't save, you Larry. "Funny" won't get the gatekeepers of "niceness" to lay off. "Funny" won't preserve your freedom. And guess what? More often than not "funny" makes the gatekeepers really, really angry (laughter being highly subversive and therefore verboten in places where P.C. or sharia or some other totalitarian ideology reigns supreme).

Capiche?

Update: Here's someone else who knows the "funny" won't save 'em and who's disgusted by the reaction of craven, P.C. comics:

Congratulations, Vancouver (and Canadian) comedians. You now have a set of rules when you mount the stage. And here’s the best part: You have no idea what they might be.

Have fun.

When you defend free speech you gotta go big or go home. If you cede any sort of victory (no matter how tiny) to the weasels who seek to curtail your speech, you have lost. If you walk away from a fight like this one saying, as Gregg Scott does, “there still are a number of approaches to take before slandering — [such as] being funny,” then you have handed the folks on the other side of the issue a huge victory. Because there is no way to objectively determine “what is funny.”

Therefore… anyone who mounts the stage is subject to this mushy criteria. And is therefore subject to prosecution/persecution.

It is absolutely essential to fight and scrape for every inch of territory surrounding that stage (and the speech that emanates from it) and declare it free from any actions by the state. Not only is it free speech, it’s speech in the name of art.

These nitwits (the ones who seek to differentiate themselves from Guy Earle… we’re looking at you, Gregg Scott and Charles Demers) mistakenly believe that by throwing Guy Earle under the bus, they’ve created some sort of firewall that will save them should they offend the wrong person...

In reality, they're building their own funeral pyre.

In the words of that famous cut-up: First they came for the Lesbian-dissers. And I did not speak out because I was not a Lesbian-disser...