Offline with Jon Favreau - Jon Stewart, Donald Trump, and How Comedy Changed Politics

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

Jesse David Fox, senior editor at Vulture and author of the forthcoming “Comedy Book,” joins Offline to break down how the internet changed comedy and how comedy changed politics. Jesse and Jon trace how the erosion of broadcast journalism under Reagan created a trust vacuum in America that comedians inadvertently filled. Jesse explains why this trust is misplaced, and the implications for entertainment, political correctness, and authoritarian leaders like Donald Trump. Then the two discuss how the internet has made us pickier about humor, why Elon needed to buy Twitter to feel funny, and why a comic’s success is no longer measured in laughs. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Trump makes people feel bad very often. George Bush made people feel bad, but like not on an hourly basis. Not in your face every five seconds because of social media. Yeah. So there is a sort of like he keeps on doing things and people need help processing it. And comedy is really good at processing things in a way where you leave, if not feeling better, feeling lighter or less burdened by something. And that question of if you should feel less burdened by things is a thing that I think probably was debated also under Trump, right? It's like, well, maybe we should feel bad all the time. And if we feel bad all the time,

we'll do something. That's not proven out, but... I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. My guest this week is Vulture's Jesse David Fox. So, Max is out sick. I'm traveling. We just did our show in D.C. So, this week, we're just going to do this interview, which was a fantastic interview. Jesse is the senior editor at Vulture. He's the host of the Good One podcast. And he has just written a new book, aptly named Comedy Book, which talks about all the ways that comedy, powered by the Internet and mass media, went on to conquer American culture. Particularly, and now is such a presence in the life of millennials and Gen Z and sort of central to how they communicate. It is a fantastic book.

I really recommend it to everyone. And it's sort of a lighter conversation that I think people could use right about now. We talk about humor's role in building trust in media, why it's so hard to make fun of Donald Trump, and what makes Barack Obama's and Jon Stewart's approach to politics so different. Max and I will hopefully be back next week. I definitely will. Hopefully Max will. In the meantime, feel free to send your questions or episode ideas to offlineatcricket.com. Here's Jesse David Fox. Jesse David Fox, welcome to Offline.

Thank you so much for having me. So when I first started thinking about topics for this show, which is about how our extremely online existence explains so much about the world right now, comedy was at the top of the list. And you have written this fantastic book. Thank you. I just finished it last night, and I loved it. And you basically trace the

evolution of comedy over the last 30-ish years, which also happens to coincide with the rise of the internet. I want to get into all that, but I want to start with your reason for writing this book, which you lay out in the first chapter. No matter how much comedy grows in popularity and societal value, there still exists a strong apprehension about appreciating it on its own terms as an art form. This needs to change. Why do you think that apprehension exists? And why do you think it needs to change? Sure. Yeah, I think part of it is the history of how stand up and comedy in general has grown. It grew up through low culture spaces and it was not necessarily performed in the same places arts were necessarily performed. And so there's highbrow is so there was sort of that thing where you sort of they're not a respectable artist and then you had a sort of self-deprecation quality of comedians that i think maybe got it through the maybe the 1980s of why comedians wouldn't

take themselves seriously and then there was a sort of like anti-intellectual masculine feeling about comedy that like treating it seriously was you know it's like i'm trying to think of a way that not using their parlance that would be not appropriate for this podcast but you know like you know like stupid this is like nerds shouldn't be doing this this is for like tough grizzled guys like us you can't take this seriously it's just jokes whatever i say is. I have to do a voice. All of it. And those people created a value system and dominated the culture so much that comedians were just like, yeah, yeah, don't worry about it. And I think there's also a fear

that if you took it seriously, that it wouldn't be funny anymore and i didn't believe it right i think there's two things which is like one i grew up i'm a millennial and as i write about the book millennials are sort of a generation that grew up where comedy was around much more and we didn't know comedy was not something you took seriously i was i'm trying to think of how old i was on the daily show so i was like 15 or so when john sewer took over the daily show and was like, this guy's providing me information that I would not get otherwise. I'm not going to watch the news. I'm 15. Even though Jon Stewart was like, we don't provide anyone the news. I was like, yes, at least me. A lot of other people too. Yeah, a lot of other people. And then like, as you know, I have

statistics in the book, he's quite good at it. And just in terms of how well people retain information. And then John ascended and you're like, seemingly comedians are serious. And then it just kept on happening where they were taken more and more seriously. And yet people still were like, can we take the art form seriously? It's like, we are doing it already. We just need to create a vocabulary of how to do it. So that's why I wrote the book. Yeah. And I think it's really valuable. You said a few different theories about why we laugh and enjoy comedy before landing on the one you find most persuasive, which is known as play theory. Can you talk about what that is and why you think it offers

sort of the best explanation? Yeah. You know, it starts because I try to disprove the idea of you can't cut up the frog, which is a E.B. White and Catherine White idea. And I start by saying, like, their idea of what humor was or what comedy was when they wrote that in the 1940s ultimately is not the same thing we think of when we think of its comedy. Like comedy, modern comedy is a much more recent tradition. And so as a result, I looked at the joke theories that were available then.

And there's incongruity, superiority, and a third one I can't remember. But they're all binary. They're all like a thing was like this, then a disruption of some sort. And then you laugh because of that. And then you are either laughing or you're not. And if you go to a comedy show, you know, the experience of a rolling laughter. Right. And, you know, the experience of people laughing, not just at the end of a sentence where the punchline is. And play theory grows out of sort of theory of evolution, right? Darwin was essentially like a proto-play theorist. And basically, it's the idea that like comedy, the art form of comedy,

is not about before and after. It's about the state. You are in a state of receiving comedy, and jokes are just the way to be in that state. They are not the reason you laugh. You laugh because you're in that state. It's the same reason why you laugh with your friends so loosely. You'll laugh at loved ones just being themselves. It's because the trust and the comfort you have with them is what facilitates laughter. Comedians are just professionals at creating that. Yeah. I mean, it read to me, and especially as I went through the book, like play theory and the reason we laugh and the reason we enjoy comedy is born out of the just longing for human connection. Yeah. Yeah. And it's born out of the longing for primate connection, right? It's not like we're the only animal that laughs. Many animals laugh.

Previously, people didn't think that was the case, but most primates laugh. Rats laugh. It's possible that dogs and cats laugh. Now, they don't make the ha-ha-ha sounds. They don't have the vocal cords for it. But they experience that. It's the same thing if you, like, watch how a baby laughs, right? The reason primates laugh is what they call rough and tumble play, which essentially they play at dangerous situations.

But because it's not actually dangerous, they laugh. And that ability to sort of play with sort of complicated ideas and dangerous ideas is ultimately why we have comedy as well as why we laugh as well. You cite this 2012 survey that showed millennials view humor as the number one factor in their self-definition and point out that if you look at social media behavior, comedy is now pretty central to how millennials and Gen Z communicate in a way that just wasn't true with previous generations. Why do you think that happened? I think it is, comedy is very useful at speaking in short clips, right? Like essentially not not literally like clips, like literally like Twitter was a limited amount of characters and comedy.

The sort of glibness that hypothetically can be in comedy is good for speaking shortly. And then same thing with memes. They sort of communicate a lot of information in a very limited amount of space. And then that is mixed with people who are funny, are succeeding. So that becomes the like, oh, I got to be like that. Right. So it's like Elon Musk is probably the most extreme example. Right. He sees people being funny, doing well on Twitter. And he tries and being funny. He's not funny enough to succeed in the same way. So he had to buy Twitter to essentially rebuild it. So what he thinks is funny is how Twitter values people. Now all the comedians are gone. So he has no one to compete against. So it really is like, comedians didn't know this, they just, you know, they just realize it's just the byproduct of things comedians were good at anyway, and like what social media values or what succeeds at social media.

I hadn't thought about that with Elon, but I guess you could say, you know, he bought the platform possibly to spread around his terrible political views that no one really asked for, but also because he like wanted people to laugh at him. He just he wanted like a big platform for his dumb jokes that he was in memes that he was stealing from other people. Yeah, there was I can't remember. There's a while where he's like trying to compete with the onion like i do think there are a type of person that finds comedy like mystifying in a sort of weird way where they also think that they're smart enough that they're like i could

figure it out like when you look at other joke series that are much more binary like it fits in that it's like odd jokes and jokes are like this. So if I do this, I will be perfectly funny. And like ultimately, there's nothing he can do that do that because what actually creates humor is the ability to create spaces where people want to laugh at you and not laugh with you, not laugh at you. And I don't think he has that relationship with people in that way where actually if like people liked him more than like his dumb means like, yeah, that's my dumb friend Elon. But instead, it's like this villainous like Bond villain Elon, who also is like shooting off jokes while he's like completely trying to control the universe. with sort of, you know, the rise of social media is that we don't have this monoculture anymore, where 76 million of us are watching the Seinfeld finale, like you pointed out in the book. And that means, you know, we're not all talking about it, connecting over it, sharing the comedic experience together. On the other hand, you know, you point out that now comedians don't need their

own television show. They can be successful with big social media followings, podcasts. How do you think that shift has changed comedy as an art form? Yeah, I mean, it's extremely radical. I mean, and both good and bad, right? There is a thing of a lot of the things that are holding back comedy was that people would go out on a friday or saturday night and go see comedy in a way that you would not do that you wouldn't be like i'm going to the theater like what's the play you decided i'm just going to theater i want to see a play and i'm just gonna go or music you wouldn't just go to a concert and then be mad when they're like playing rock music and you're like well i like jazz why aren't they playing

jazz but people have been doing that to comedy shows for the last 50 years. And what the internet did was allow people to find comedy they liked. And as a result, allow comedians to play to people that actually like what they're doing. And then it could be more true artists, whatever. The sort of downside of that is then people who are now playing to an audience who gets what they're doing, their comedy is then being spread out without any context to people who have no idea what the hell they're talking about and who can't even perceive what they're doing as comedy at all like you'll see on twitter what was once called twitter like a clip of a comedian doing the thing and then people like this is not funny people like this or whatever it's like well clearly thousands of people like it but the thing that you are not

a part of is the main thing that comedians are doing is creating the sort of context in which what they're doing is funny. And so much of what is great about what has happened in comedy is because of the internet. But it's hard because so much of what the internet is or has become is so

antithetical to how comedians have to operate that it is in the book I try not to say it's i try not to be doom and gloom about it but i it is scary to be like anytime i see a clip even if a comedian i don't like out of context i'm like it's not only that you're being unfair to this comedian but the receiver is not even under is so on so confused why they're talking this way. Well, on the other side of it, I have been wondering whether it's still even possible to have sort of a monocultural comedy experience. And it was interesting. You talk about Saturday Night Live sort of, you know, the only thing that's left that is live every week and that is meant for as general an audience as possible. And then you think about like the various complaints people always tend to have about SNL and have had more of, I think, over the last several years. And I wonder if those

complaints are just unsolvable because it is a live show every week that is targeted towards the broadest possible audience yeah it's also built in right the thing about snl is and i think i had a breakthrough with the show when i realized the show is not meant to be good in in the same way as we think of good like when you think of a good show if you like key and peel or whatever and then you watch snl it's like why don't they just make a show as good as key and peel therele? There's so many people that work there. And by design, and this is from talking to people that work there, the goal is that no one should like an entire show. They try to hire people with different sensibilities. So if you like a sketch at the top of the show, you might not like a sketch at the end of the show.

And I realized that early on because I was making a list for Vulture for the best SNL sketches. And I had a top 10 list and a co-worker was like oh i want to participate and had a completely different top 10 list so no matter what this is why people always complain about snl it's like when you were a kid you didn't pay attention to what you didn't like and then you grow up you're like why are there these bad sketches like well there's always been bad sketches like watch the first season there's tons of bad sketches the sketches were so long and that's that's that's an unrelated thing. But so like SNL becomes more frustrating because like, why is it so annoying?

And I think especially when you apply politics to it, because it has a sort of. Median quality that is so off putting to a lot of people, especially people who grew up not experiencing that type of feeling anywhere else, right? If you grow up on the internet and comedy has always been catered to your interest, when you see something that is catered to no specific interest, it is grotesque in a way. And like, I do think people hated Alec Baldwin's Trump impression online. Yeah. Hated it. And they're like, it's the worst thing in the world. It's an embarrassment. And yet it is so popular. Like it is so popular.

People loved it. I knew people that loved it. And it is, you know, I write about how subjective comedy is. And I go, it's so subjective that it feels objective. It's so, you can't even comprehend that someone, it's like food almost, I guess. Like you eat a food that's gross. You're like, there's no way anyone could like it. And that has now been intensified by the internet

because you're never even shown things that are not what you like. You know, like a lot of comedy programs, like The Simpsons, I read a lot about The Simpsons and The Simpsons themselves also were like, we want to have so many different types of comedy. So people with different sensibilities will still like it. That type of thing

is, even the people that I know at The Simpsons say we can't do that anymore. Because if you just liked when they were doing like cute family stuff, well you can watch Bob's Burgers. And if you just like when they're doing political stuff, then you can watch South Park. We have created specializations in sort of all these categories that SNL which is like so broad

feels foreign it feels like and but people like it like and people want like it's like wait it's a nice way to see what's up like see where America's at and I and I do think that we have, whether it's with comedy or anything else, we have sort of lost something essential with the death of the monoculture. And I know people have talked a lot about that and written way too much about that. But at a time where everything feels sort of fractured in society anyway, you do sort of miss and at least i do yearn for those moments where uh you can go into work the next day or talk to a bunch of friends and like everyone said oh we all watch that we all love that that was great and not having that is sort of tough yeah i mean that is the sort of fundamental problem with the life on the internet that if you go down that rabbit

hole it's it's hard because i i i'm nervous that if i embrace that perspective then i will sound old right so same i do this all the time but it did feel like things were better when people were just sort of talking like had things they agreed to talk about and even though they didn't love it the same way they were were able to be like, oh, I like this, I like that. And there is something lost to... I work for Vulture, which is a site with probably... I have more... My co-workers watch more television than anyone else's co-workers, I think, probably on Earth. And we can't even have the same things that we talk about because there's so much different things. And that's how you relate to each other, just the talking through something. It's like, this is not the same thing as play theory, but like play therapy with little

kids, like play with little toys. And I always think like, I'm a type of person who like my play therapy would be like talking about something I watched on The Simpsons or what I watched on any sitcom. So you lose that. You lose these ways in which you connect with each other. And, you know, the sort of bigger implications is the connecting with each other. Part of it is like actually something comedy can foster that is much more useful than like what I think the media tends to focus on the value of comedy in sort of political or social causes. And their algorithmic quality to how people consume content has made it so the opposite, right? People will criticize political comedy all on the left.

Different people on different parts of the left will just criticize different political comedy. And they will think it is a political judgment they're making on these shows when it's actually a taste judgment. Like it is sort of the opposite of what people think, which is that people force their politics onto their taste. Well, actually, sort of their taste is being forced upon their politics where they're like, I don't like this is not funny to me.

This is probably a Republican show. Right. Like, right. No, they're actually everyone agrees with each other. It is just a type of humor they're trying to do. I mean, I am unsurprisingly most interested in your chapter about comedy and politics. Not only because I was involved in Obama's roast of Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner, which you write about, but because using humor to get people interested in politics is a big reason we started Crooked Media, why we did Pod Save America. We have always had a hunch that humor and inspiration are better ways to motivate left-leaning audiences than the fear and anger you often get from right-wing media. But you actually cite this political science professor who argues that the simultaneous rise of political satire on the left and outrage programming on the right wasn't a coincidence.

Why is that? Yeah. So the thing that she writes about is essentially before we were born, people trusted the news. Isn't that unbelievable? That's wild. 72 percent of Americans trusted the news. And now the number, I think, in 2016 was something like 30%. And that is not by accident. I think there's a tendency to be like,

you know, don't ask why comedians have this platform. I think I quote Winnie Cummings, he's like, why don't the news? And it's like, well, in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan did a variety of things to specifically make it so people trusted news organizations less. You know, there's just straight up deregulation and the fairness doctrine that made it so people had to hear both sides, equal parties both sides, allowed for deregulation of like monopolies and stuff in media that allowed it so people could create conglomerates. That made it so what we think of why we think the news is bad, that all was because of what happened here. And so then you have profit driven news organizations that people don't trust. And then you have newspapers closing all the things that are, I think, bad. Like, I don't go like it's great that comedians are trusted news sources. I think it's good when if it was the news, but for some reason it is not. So as a result, people were looking for people to trust. That's like that is it. People just were searching for trusted news sources.

And that's something I experienced, like by the age in which I could have read the newspapers like around the Iraq war, because I was also watching The Daily Show. I thought the Iraq war was probably like a bad thing to do. I knew The Daily Show. I knew the New York Times was complicit in the march to the war. So I delegitimized the New York Times. I kind of wish I didn't in my own mind. But like, so that is part of what it is, right? So it's like people are looking for a way to trust.

Now, I do think in that book that she writes, there is probably reasons why people trust angry people versus why they trust funny people. But I think ultimately, as we've seen more recently on the right, they also like to trust funny people. Like I do think there is a sort of trust built into sort of how jokes work that makes it so comedians are good at being trusted. And there are studies that how funny you think a person is is also is correlated with how much you trust them right so and trust is really the thing people need most to be a news source not information like that came second like now we're supposed to fact checkers but they did not at first they first were just being trusted and were entertaining and and i think one of the reasons they become trusted and especially with john

stewart as an example is as you point out comedy is sort of creating this atmosphere of trust yeah where you're making people feel comfortable and you're you're having the goes back to the play theory uh and i i wonder if that is why people end up trusting the person who's making them laugh because they just feel more comfortable and feel like they know that person better a hundred percent i mean if it it is sort of it's deep in our brains which is we we feel comfortable with our family and your friends so we trust them and as a result we're more comfortable laughing right we feel safer to laugh at dangerous broadly defined ideas then you have a comedian who's really good at being funny and for some reason our deep subconscious this person is funny to us and then we reverse engineer it right

we're like well they have the qualities i associate with the people i trust most so we're like why then they're they're they're my friends they're my family like so much of comedy fandom is like really being especially now because of the internet is like that is my friend they don't know me but like our relationship is friends especially if the podcast it's like you you i talked i hear by my friends as in strangers talk more than i talk to my friends so i think that is part of it right it's like yeah and then john especially proved quite good at like the as as things became much more complicated. He was able to continuously find ways to talk about it.

And the ability to talk about things that are hard to talk about is probably most comedians strong suit. And then you just keep on trusting them more. And then so by the time he left, you know, like I think it was undervalued how many people trusted his opinion. and constantly wrestle with in my current job. Yeah. And I do worry that if trusted sources of news, even if they are comedy-based, if they spend too much time mocking the spectacle that politics has definitely become, it sort of leads to the LOL, nothing matters response that you see on social media a lot, especially among young people.

Yeah. But I don't know. Do you think that shouldn't necessarily be the concern of someone like Jon Stewart? Yeah. I mean, right. So as I write about, in the Daily Show book, one of your former colleagues, I can't remember who said, there was a worry in the Obama administration that the Daily Show is making people cynical. And then the Daily Show response is, you can't be cynical enough about politics. Which is just a line that I hated. Sure, sure.

And I also think you can be cynical enough, right? I do think there's an amount of cynicism that is useful, but there's probably a line to it. And I also think the cynicism of a professional comedian is different than sort of the cynicism of a non-professional person trying to be funny on Twitter. Right. I do think a lot of what I talk about this book is that like comedians are actually like very good at the nuances of these things. And I think Jon Stewart, for how cynical he was, maybe about politics, he also is extremely idealistic. Like when people make fun of Jon Stewart, often from the left now, they're like, oh, he just loves America or whatever. And it's like, you know, that is different than sort of what he taught people how to do. Right. I think he focused so much on hypocrisy that he gave people the vocabulary to sort of find hypocrisy all over the place. And hypocrisy is extremely easy to find. And I think when you then speed things up, as the internet does,

you get less time for the part that is not that and just becomes the point fingers at and the cynical part of it. That said, I think comedians always are going to wrestle with how their work is received. It is what the hardest parts of it, right? I think John was doing a 30-minute program. John Oliver is doing a 30-minute program. You know, Seth Meyers is doing an hour-long program with a lot of different things going on. That's all

they can control what they create. And it's hard to know what to do with the people who then sort of like clip it down and focus on certain parts of it or just hear the cynical parts of it and i think there's a this sort of bad news bias i think people say about the news i'm not saying comedy is immune to that right i think it's sort of people hear that and then it sort of sensitizes and it's easier to make jokes about how things are bad than to make jokes about how things are okay that is very true yeah so Yeah, so that, I think all that, right? And I think there's a sort of glibness to that. Now, I don't know what they can do.

Like, I do think they all try to showcase positive things, just not in their opening monologues, right? I think they will interview a politician who they agree with and allow them, or an activist, right? Yeah. I feel like Jon Stewart had Malala on or what. i don't remember when malala was at her peak but like i feel like john would have malala on a lot and i think that is a hard thing when you sort of like just focus on one parts of what they're doing and i do think twitter then incentivized non-comedians to make

jokes that were cynical because that caused more anger. And then that's how Twitter worked. More so than like, I mean, jokes about how like Joe Biden is crushing, right? Like there is a space for it, but it's much more limited if you're trying to like break out of your bubble. So it is, I don't know, like it's hard. Well, it's also, you know, cynicism has this sort of countercultural anti-institutional flavor to it that is popular among people who can like just put themselves at a distance from the serious stuff that's going on but you're right that like they don't at least comedians like john stewart don't intend to be

doing that or don't think they're doing that i remember when he came in to talk to obama and they had this discussion about the about the show being cynical about that. And the way that's about at least the way that Obama related was that Stewart said, it's sort of like when you're telling a friend that they have something stuck in their teeth. Like you like them, you're with them. But you know what? You got something stuck in your teeth and I got to tell you. I just got to I got to point it out. So that's at least where he's coming from which i thought

was interesting well it's also like i compare it to dating right there's so many jokes about dating if you go to see comedy right now most people are talking about dating and all the jokes about how dating is hard and how i it used to be just you know men joking about how women are bad and women joking how men are bad and now that more comedians come from all different parts of the spectrum it is just people joking about all types being bad and now do you go like comedians have made people too cynical about dating it's like what people no you wouldn't say that because there are other jokes about dating or people have other ways places they get it it is that cynicism in politics is reinforced by certain behavior and also by what information sort of gets out there. But it is a point I understand because for a person who notices the trends, I think as we've heard then there's just the person who's doing sort of like sit. My my Twitter account is just to make jokes, being cynical about the late night talk shows.

Right. That exists. Right. So when they become more prominent, whatever, what happens after that? Yes, I understand. But I don't want to forgive comedians for everything they do. That's not the point of the book. And especially as there are other comedians that I hold accountable for it. But it's somewhat blaming comedians for how people use their work more so than the work that they're doing. And I think that is a lot of when people complain or debate about comedy under Trump or whatever. It is they are blaming them for how the media has received them. Let's talk about Trump because, you know, very easy to joke about, difficult to joke about. Well, he seems impervious to mockery, but most people don't

view him as a serious person. And yet, like eight years after he first announced for president, people are still consuming tons of comedic content about Donald Trump, which I can confirm from firsthand experience. Why? Why do you think that is? Well, it's why do people go to comedy right it's it's because they want to laugh and why do they want to laugh is because they feel bad about something like it's like it's such a quite simple so trump makes people feel bad very often george bush made people feel bad but like not on an hourly basis not in your face every five seconds because of social media. Yeah. So there is a sort of like really basic like quality of just sort of like input in, input out, which is sort of like he keeps on doing things and people need help processing it. And comedy is really good at processing things in a way where you leave, if not feeling better, feeling lighter or less burdened by

something. And that that question of if you should feel less burdened by things is a thing that I think probably was debated also under Trump. Right. It's like, well, maybe we should feel bad all the time. And if we feel bad all the time, we'll do something. And that's not proven out. But that's what I think. And. So I think it's so. And he's a ridiculous character, right? He's a TV character. It's if Homer Simpson was running for president. And like we would we would clip that because he is a character created by TV to be entertaining and to be funny to watch.

So it makes sense that like just comedy that is repeating it would also still be funny if you can kind of like lessen the stakes enough that you can laugh at it. And so then everyone, it's just like the thing everyone was dealing with. It is the stress everyone was dealing with. So then they all found their ways to sue themselves for it. Now he's complicated as a sort of target for comedy. Right. But it doesn't mean that sort of comedy failed because during that time, because it seemed like everyone found their comedy about it. I know there's a debate over like whether comedy and making fun of Trump is somehow valuable from a political perspective. And I've gone back and forth on this, but I've come around to the view that Trevor Noah tells you about in the book where he says, you know, there's a lot of

countries and authoritarian countries, leaders don't want to be mocked. And they make it so that they can't be mocked because they know that that's potentially dangerous to their rule. And look, there's two ways to go after trump there is he is extreme and scary and fascist and he's taken taken over the country and all that and i think that is you know it's important to call that out when it happens but i also think there's he's just a fucking buffoon and not a serious person and is this really who you want running the country and i tend to think that as you go broader than just liberal partisans, it is more damaging to him and he thinks it's more damaging to him to be a joke. Yeah. I mean, and we talked about

cynicism, right? Like I do think there's an extreme value to not believe things are hopeless, right? The reason these leaders in other countries, you know, as I write in the book, at the same time, Trump was trying to arrest Jimmy Kimmel and trying to arrest Saturday Night Live. Other fascists were arresting comedians in India, in Russia, in Iran. And it is because once you take them less seriously, it's hard for them to act inevitable, hard for them to seem so powerful to sort of their followers. And that is a hit. It is not the same hit that I think people hoped from comedians in terms of the ability to bring them down. But the ability to make people still believe it's possible

to resist is super helpful. It is super helpful for organizing it's super helpful to like live a life and and that is a tool the comedians do worldwide and it's why that they're stopped doing it i think it's so interesting because a lot of the critiques of political comedy have been these comedians fashion themselves as like the people that can bring down despots and then fascists or whatever and it's like no they did it the media media said they're that and then complained when they didn't do it i was like well why did you create this idea that they can do such a thing and i understand it's like a nice story. It'd be great if comedians for some reason had this magical power. But their use, as I write about in the book, is their use in changing people's minds and affecting outgroups is less useful or less

powerful than their value to the in-group. How do they motivate people? How do they give people hope? The example I use is the Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner with Bush. That was, it is the political comedy piece of my lifetime. But it's not like Bush was like, I guess I got to quit. No, but it made it so people at home were like, oh, we're not alone. There is hope to resist this.

Yeah. No, and I think one of the reasons the media does that is because of what we talked about before, which is this in a trust vacuum where people have lost faith in institutions and they want someone to do something and we live in a celebrity driven culture, right? All those things combined. It's like, well, the comedians will save us. but i do think that sort of giving people that hope is probably the the um uh what you can what you can bet on more you have a chapter about when comedy crosses the line where you note the growing list of comedians

who've said some version of uh you know political correctness is killing comedy i thought you made an interesting argument that throughout history there have always been attempts to push back against certain comedic portrayals of marginalized groups. And people have always been free to say offensive shit. What's different today is the internet. Yeah. Can you talk about how you think the internet has changed the debates around free speech and political correctness? All right. It's a big question. It's by far the longest. It's like it's it's it's just a big question.

Let me think of where to start. So it's interesting. It's an interesting time to have a question, a debate around free speech. When we have created platforms where people can speak more freely than they've ever been able to. Right. It's like a funny time to be like, I can't say anything anymore when there are platforms where people are just saying hate speech on it. And especially now, as those things

are, there are fewer moderators on those platforms. So you sort of then, like anything, you create certain tribes of this debate. And as the sort of right has used this debate as a way to try to attract seemingly left-leaning young men to their cause, they've intensified this. But the basic idea is comedians were very used to a sort of one-way communication, which is sort of they say something and the audience laughs or doesn't. And they like that and allow them to live a life where everything they were doing was liked by everybody. As you know, even comedians will say now, like Jerry Seinfeld would say, like, you know,

comedy doesn't need criticism because the critic is the audience, right? But what they didn't couldn't hear was the person not laughing. When people are laughing, it's really hard to hear a person not laughing and those people had effects i talk about a show that i went to where i saw a comedian um who at the time did material later you would not believe in terms of the words she used this comedian lisa lampanella she has since does not do comedy anymore and i don't know if i even liked it but it didn't go like well this isn't allowed or this is hurting my friends who she says these words at and now people can say hey i don't like that now they're not saying that on a larger platform than the person who's saying the things they don't like but comedians are very sensitive people and anyone

saying they don't like something breaks their heart in a way that is almost hard to process. And it goes both ways. So it's like it has made it so both there's now people who are able to voice their complaints about something as well as people who like it so much, who go to comedy for this reason. I think these people are silly, but and that they then support it. Right. You have the Chappelle. That's a certain sort of army that will defend his right to say anything. And it becomes this right to say anything, not the fact that like no one is taking away the right to say anything. Also, no one's stopping him from being paid to do it. It is just the same thing, which is the freedom to just say like, this is

maybe not good art, which is a scary thing to say. And also be like, you heard my feelings and I'm a person as well. And that, and, and just having that all out there is different where before it just sort of a comedian was out of town by the time you wanted to complain at them. And I, I, and part of the chapter, the goal of that chapter was like, let's try to sort out, both for people who hate this, who hate that comedians are doing this, let me try to explain why they do it, what they think they're doing, and then maybe for people who want comedians to do it, let me try to explain why, one, it does hurt people's feelings,

and two, it maybe like not that interesting of work well i thought it was interesting that you basically come to the conclusion that it not only is political correctness not a problem for comedy but it actually has the potential to make comedy better yeah even if it makes comedy harder yeah also like that because the entire argument is so silly, right? It's like the idea of killing comedy. Truly, comedy has never been more popular than this time when more people than ever have been saying it's killing comedy. You know, I talk about Anthony Justin Luck.

And Anthony Justin Luck is a very edgy comedian. And he is the one who says, like, taking away political correctness from comedy is like taking the football away from football. Right. And it's basically being like the thing you are pushing against to make the tension, to make people laugh is the fact that it might be offensive. If you take out the fact that it could be offensive, then all you are doing is just saying slurs to people who want to hear slurs. And I don't think these comedians want to do that, but they can't process the need for the audience to sort of have a feeling that is maybe not exactly what they're doing. And I think not only is it necessary, it's like ultimately it's not going away. Like we say political correctness as a sort of grab bag, but ultimately as I describe it as this sort of line, and ultimately it's like where the taste is and where people are comfortable with you going. And the truth is, like, it is really dependent on the night

and the comedian and the people's relationship to that comedian. Like, I don't say it's not funny because, like, clearly Dave Chappelle is the most famous comedian, though it's almost ever has been right now. So these people are laughing. But I am saying saying there is one it is maybe not as challenging as he thinks it is if the audience is on board with everything and two in a few years it will seem he will maybe regret that he did it like this stuff ages terribly like i i you know i bring up eddie murphy because eddie murphy always gets brought up with this and in 1980s he started both of his specials just like railing against gay people in a way that's sort of so weird in a way that is so like there's something in his mind that he had to do this and then later

now anytime you talk about eddie murphy's stand-up you go like yeah some of the material doesn't hold up and he has to apologize for it every single time he is interviewed about maybe doing comedy again he is like you know i you know i feel bad i really regret i hurt people's feelings i want people to watch it in the context of the time and the context of time is people didn't like it some people liked it but some people don't and that's the same thing as always like i i say in the book um a lot of people who are opposed these types of jokes underrate how many people do like these jokes of and including people who these jokes might be about. I think there there are a lot of people who, for whatever reason, are able to enter a space where they can laugh at whatever. They believe comedy is a space where you can laugh at whatever.

But I also think comedians underrate how many people always didn't like it. Yeah. Well, and just like everything else that we've talked about, like you, you, you were just talking about this in the context of a comedian in front of an audience in a physical space. And when you cut down sort of either the most offensive or the most over the line bits and they're shared around the internet that everyone's yelling and it's a bit it's not just sort of a bigger drama than you might think but that comes to the comedian as well so i'm sure the comedian sees the the craziness online and is like oh god everyone's out to get me it's a mob and blah blah blah when in reality it's like first of all it was you know it might just be one joke that they didn't like out of a whole set but also um just some people didn't

like it and other people did and that's it no one's coming for you it's just that other people some people liked it and some people didn't and like other than if you're trying to make television on uh networks that have commercials you're probably fine like that is really it if you're on a streamer where they don't have commercials they don're probably fine. Like that is really it. If you're on a streamer where they don't have commercials, they don't have advertisers and advertisers are much more sensitive about these things. You're going to get paid a lot of money to do these things. You'll have a large audience. You might regret it someday, but right now, just count your money and be happy. Like I do think the, they, because these comedians live in the context of their own lives. Right. So they know they don't hate this. Right. And I think they know what they're trying to intend.

They're like, I'm just trying to say lighten up. I always say, like, in Dave Chappelle's mind, he's helping. And they can't comprehend that other people do not hear their jokes the same way they do. It is not so dissimilar to like people think so many songs are love songs, even if they're not about that at all because they hear the word love once and they're like, hey, it's probably. People are not so great at consuming work. Their brains process it through their own filters.

And why I spent so much time with Dave Chappelle is Dave Chappelle used to be the example of a comedian who realized that his work might not be received how it intended. And now he decided he's now the example of a comedian who does not care if his work is received how it's intended. I mean, can you talk about why what you call the bad little boy comedians have been successful. Not unlike a Trump thing, but it is adjacent, which is, I always imagine a person, mostly usually a man, but who goes to work and kind of wants to talk at work,

how he does with his buddies. And, and, and that doesn't mean like he, he's full of hate. He just likes the freedom to like, as I described, like a lot of it is likes the freedom to like as i describe like a lot of it is just the freedom to call things gay and not bad way to be like that like that chair's gay

whatever there's just some there's because as i compare it to it's like when you're in a foreign country where everyone's speaking let's say spanish and you don't speak spanish and you hear someone speak english you feel a little bit like you're at home. And I do think people speaking like you do or want to is really comforting, right? It goes back to the family stuff. And I think a lot of people, I sort of go into

a more extreme version of this in a later chapter with the bad little boy right, as I call it. These comedians who are not even right-wing but have been embraced by sort of right-wing ideology.'s joe rogan's yeah yeah even you even like chapo trap house right yeah it's like it spans the spectrum too there are just

the you know like chapo which is the dirtbag left which is sort of a mirror image of these what i call the bad little boy right is that like they're as one of the hosts explained like there are these men who are just sort of lost. Culture used to be only for them. Right. When we were younger, the like the man show was on TV and like where there's like Maxim magazine and FH. And it's just sort of like you can be a dude here. And and that and and because men had so much purchasing power, male culture dominated in a way that it just does not today. And those men missed that. And then they find people that speak how they speak. And they're like, I guess those are my politics, too. Right. They don't even know how they feel about trans people, maybe because they never met a person and they don't have the nuances of

Dave Chappelle's jokes about trans people. So they're like, well, that's a funny joke. I can say that. And then the danger is you're taking people who have no real strong opinion, who don't have a particularly sophisticated comedy literacy, you're giving them a joke that could hurt people. And by the way, they trust you. Yeah, and they trust you. And so I think, I mean, this has been hurt people. And by the way, they trust you. Yeah. And you're using that.

And so I think, I mean, this has been sort of a thread throughout the conversation, but like with the trust that you give a comedian, the comedian then does have some, I think has some obligation to not use, misuse that trust in a way that could be potentially harmful. I, it's like, I am not one to say should or should not. But like, clearly, these comedians do think that. Right. Clearly, Dave Chappelle thinks he should be trusted and that he's an important person. So it's not wrong to be like, well, if you are believe you should be trusted and you're

important person, if you're going to release a special like 846 about George Floyd's murder, that is essentially completely serious. You believe you take yourself seriously. And that's great. I take comedy seriously. But don't get mad when people then take it seriously that the like you taught a lot of these people to do this. But more than anything else, I want to make it clear that it makes his comedy worse. He's a very talented comedian that has now become a shock comedian. And I do think it is a cheap thrill. And I do think there is a lot of people, it's like any sort of taste in any sort of art. There's a lot of people who just want something easy, right? There's like, I want something shocking. I don't want to have to pay attention

too much. He says these words, I'm not allowed to say that's great then 20 000 of us can go together and i can feel like it's okay for me to say these words yeah my experience with that was like i saw all of the uh all of the outrage about uh the dave chappelle trans joke first and then i was like all right i gotta watch this myself you know and like prepared to be outraged myself and then i watched it and i was like you know what it's just that that part wasn't funny yeah like it wasn't like yes it's offensive but whatever people can judge that for themselves but i'm like i think it is just from a pure comedy perspective it seemed like he was a little too angry and not funny yeah it. It's also like there's such a defensiveness. And I don't know why people like defensiveness.

I think. And that's a Trump thing, too. Right. Like, I guess when you're being defensive, people that like you feel like you're defending them. So, right. That creates a certain sort of bond. But as I explained, like, I hope most people consume art or comedy because they care what the artist or comedian thinks and or cares about. They definitely don't.

It's not as interesting to see not only what they don't care about, but also basically talk about just the thing that they're talking about because someone says they shouldn't talk about it. Like now it's like, well, you don't even have an interest in this. Your only interest is in your ability to do this and it becomes so self-serving and so defensive that it becomes you remove the person from it and it just becomes a position and yeah i think you're correct like that last chapelle special it has almost that quality of certain Republican politicians who are so online that you have no idea what they're talking about. Like, if you haven't been following this debate around Dave Chappelle, you're like, why is he like, what is, what, what's, what happened?

Yeah, it becomes, it becomes an obsession. Yeah, and he used to be one of my favorite comedians, and I think he's an extremely talented guy. And in a room, he can get the audience to do whatever he wants. But I think he's so good at that, that he has no, it's so hard for him to understand how it plays to people outside that room. Yeah. So towards the beginning of the book, you write about comedians figuring out when and how to be funny after 9-11. And I made a note then to ask you about the pandemic before seeing that you wrote the last chapter about the pandemic. In some ways, I think we are still very much in the middle of grappling

with the trauma of the last few years, loss of life, but also the loss of time and connection with one another. What role do you think comedy has in getting us through that? Yeah, it's immense. And it's sort of different than 9-11 because 9-11 happened and then it was over, right? So then it was like, remember 9-11? Or like 9-11 was not about gathering in public spaces generally, right? There was, I'm sure some people might be afraid

to be in New York, but they weren't like, I can't be at a bar. I can only be at my home. The pandemic was like, gathering is is dangerous laughing out loud is bad you open in your mouth like all these just the gathering of people is valuable um and the ability to when you gather people make them relax about their tensions about the fact that they're gathering people right like and i and it's still a process like as i write about in the book audiences are still trying to remember what it's like to be an audience what it's like to merge with strangers and watch things together not just next to each other it is a to me a spiritual practice and it is so woo woo that i i am embarrassed talking about it

and all artists are doing a version of this but i do think comedy is unique in its ability to create a certain sort of aloofness as i quote victor frankel saying you know and that aloofness allows things to just be lighter of the many things about the pandemic, it's just sort of, it felt so everywhere that it felt, the existence felt really, really heavy. And it was hard to go forward because of just sort of the weight you're carrying on. And loss of life is, you know, like grief is a sort of weight that you carry. And it is so hard to relieve it. And comedians, and I think better at anything else they do, is lighting your load and just giving you some light that you're like, and once you have that, that's a step forward. You know, I write about how that affected me personally. And I still have it now. Like I still, when tragedies happen, I think comedians realize actually that is the time they're most valuable to talk about. And, you know,

the most recent example is Pete Davidson when he hosted SNL and he started and you're like, oh no, what's Pete going to say? And then you remember sort of the defining narrative of Pete's ascent was that his dad died in 9-11. And he talked about how comedy helped him. And I think there are certain people who and i'm one of those people with those brains that just like remembering laughter feels like i say in the book like there's been number studies that prove that comedy is not the best medicine you know like they're just it does not really help you get over a cold or anything like that.

But it depends on what you're sick with. And if your sickness is malaise, if your sickness is some version of like PTSD or some version of just sort of like not knowing how to go forward, then comedy is really good. If you can't figure out how to laugh, comedians are really useful at making you laugh. Jesse David Fox, thank you so much for for joining offline and where can people uh pre-order the book where books are sold where do people buy books these days everywhere where there are books you can buy that book um comedy book or if you're in new york on november 7th i'm doing a book release at the bell house will be me talking about the book but then also a very good comedy show and then november 13th at dynasty typewriter in la i'm doing a comedy show that also will be very good well we also be

selling the books and they'll be signed and yada yada that'll be great do go to that that's most important yeah those shows to be sold out we know dynasty typewriter well here um thank you again for joining uh Fantastic book. Appreciate you. Appreciate the time. Thank you so much. It means so much that you took it so seriously. Offline is a Crooked Media production.

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