The left has declared open warfare against a number of things since 2020: free speech, family values, Christianity, parental rights, and comedy spring immediately to mind.
On the topic of comedy, perhaps nothing else has been as vigorously pursued by cancel culture as comedy. Comedians have been canceled with alarming regularity, sometimes even attacked on stage, as Dave Chappelle was last year.
Some who are too big to be canceled, like Chappelle, Chris Rock, and Bill Burr, have survived the storm. Others, like Joe Rogan, simply build their own comedy club and play by their own rules. Still others, like Shane Gillis, don’t recover. It’s a brutal enough business without having to worry about being offensive.
So, why does the left hate comedy? It can largely be explained why the left hates family values, Christianity, and parental rights. In the case of those things, they must be eroded to create chaos and sow the seeds of discord and division so radical progressive ideals can take deeper root. But comedy?
Recently, Elon Musk dove into the subject in an interview with the infamous parody site The Babylon Bee. Musk said: “A lot of people on the left have no sense of humor. They’re not funny.”
That is a simple enough explanation. Saturday Night Live was emblematic of the left’s sense of humor, spending four seasons making cheap political jokes about President Trump. Since then, liberals have had nothing to laugh at, and since they aren’t creative enough to come up with their own material, they want everyone to stop being funny.
Musk dove deeper in his interview with the Bee: “The essence of comedy is to reveal the truth. A hidden truth that people understand intuitively or explicitly, and there’s that moment of revealed, kernel of often unacknowledged truth. And in that unacknowledged truth is the humor. If you’re premised on a lie, you can no longer be funny, because there’s no revealed truth,”
That is a stunning amount of insight from Musk. Elon, with his deadpan, often wry sense of humor, doesn’t relate well to the mirthless left and their disdain for anyone that runs afoul of the approved party line.
Recently on Twitter, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez provided the textbook example of the left’s sense of humor. In the Tweet below, you can see her overreaction to a parody account, which is perfectly permissible, and her unwillingness to address Musk by name, opting for “Twitter CEO.”
FYI there’s a fake account on here impersonating me and going viral. The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility.
It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread.
I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 30, 2023
The grave seriousness with which she talks about a joke account is simply part of a larger issue with liberals. They have no sense of humor. Since they want to control speech, they want to control humor.
Sites like The Babylon Bee, which was famously banned from Twitter before Musk took over, are the bane of the left. The Bee has never been afraid of poking progressives and many of their ridiculous narratives with humor and satire.
The pearl-clutching and virtue-signaling by leftists over comedy just makes many comedians want to go harder. Thankfully we still have Chapelle, Rock, DiPaolo, Elon Musk, and more willing to hold a mirror up to liberals so they can see what we are all laughing at.
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