| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Aurora Shootings & Gun Control | ||||
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| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Partisan Speculation Over Colorado Shooter | ||||
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I realize that Stewart and Colbert were NOT mocking the shooting itself or the victims. No one made a joke about people who don't know how to duck. No one made a joke about how, when it comes to jokes, comic book fans are "easy targets." Stewart and Colbert were just mentioning the shooting so they could analyze, deconstruct and reveal the laughable failing of American media and our political system. But still, they did it in a comedy setting. Again, too soon, right? How dare they use that horrific incident to make people laugh. Three days is way to soon to do jokes about a tragedy of this magnitude.
I will admit that I find it odd that no one (not just "no ONE," but no giant mass of internet trolls or lifeless TMZ wannbe reporters) came out to wag their giant, throbbing rage induced hard-ons at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colberts' twitter profiles and demand that Comedy Central fire them immediately, have them hanged at dawn and see their hearts served on a plate to the hungry lynch mob.
Odd indeed considering that a few days after the Stewart\Colbert airing, Dane Cook got on stage at the Laugh Factory and said...
“So I heard that the guy came into the theater about 25 minutes into the movie,” said Cook. “And I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie, but the movie is pretty much a piece of crap. Yea, spoiler alert...I know that if none of that [the shooting] would have happened, pretty sure that somebody in that theater, about 25 minutes in, realizing it was a piece of crap, was probably like ‘ugh f**king shoot me."
And then the internet went insane.
Now, again, Dane Cook isn't making fun of the deaths of innocent human beings. He's making fun of the movie itself and he's making fun the saying "just shoot me," which is a saying people throw around when they're bored like it's candy on Halloween.
But the weird thing for me is that people are really, really pissed at Dane Cook and no one said a word about Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart.
Why?
I mean, Dane Cook's joke was weak and obvious and lacking the flare and grace that Stewart and Colbert exhibited in their performances, sure, (I mean, seriously Dane, if your punch line is the name of a shitty sitcom, isn't that your first clue that you're phoning it in?) but was it really offensive to the degree that people should attack him online, forcing him to apologize?
No. Fuck off, no. Here's why.
I'm a comedian. Before I was a comedian I worked in a hospital as a nursing assistant four about seven years (4 1/2 in a hospital for the criminally insane and 3 1/2 in general medicine). I've seen people die. I haven't just seen people die, I've felt people die. Some of them died under my hands, literally.
I know what it feels like when a man's ribs break under my hands while I'm performing CPR chest compressions continuously until my arms and shoulder are so tired that I think my arms are just going to fall off.
And then I watched the doctor call time of death and realized it was for all nothing. I tried so hard to save that guy. Me and all the nurses and doctors and specialists. We tried so hard and now he's gone.
If you don't know what that feels like, allow me to clue you in.
It fucking sucks.
But that was the job and we did it every night. I did it for seven years. A lot of people do it for life.
Do you know how we got through it without going absolutely bug- fuck crazy?
We made jokes.
Here's a few we made about people who died under our care;
"Hey, were you really just giving that old man mouth-to-mouth or did you slip him the tongue?"
"Thank God, Ms. Henderson passed away. Now I don't have to strangle the bitch."
There was on diabetic who had lost both legs. After he died a nurse made the joke, "Now he'll never play third base."
We didn't wait a week out of respect for the dead to tell these jokes after some one passed. Hell, some of us didn't bother with seven seconds. In the hospital, we riffed on what we thought was funny as it popped into our heads in real time. Fuck what the rest of the world may think.
Bare in mind, these were just jokes. In the hospital I worked at, people who did a shit job taking care of their patients got ratted out by their coworkers. Any one caught physically harming their coworkers (which happened) got a punching in the head from their coworkers (which, I'm glad to say, also happened). Because at the end of the day we were there to make the world a little less shitty for people who were having a shitty day. We had no absolutely no tolerance for people who made things worse for patients.
But those among us who were still dedicated to caring for and helping the sick, well...the good guys among us, we still had our jokes.
Because it still sucks to deal with other peoples' shitty day on a regular basis and all we had were each other and you can't just not talk about it, and you can't just spend your whole night talking about how bad it sucks.
So you make jokes.
Are those jokes fucked up?
Yes!
Are we, as people who work in the medical profession, a bunch of sick motherfuckers for mocking the passing of the sick and elderly?
Yeah, obviously, you have to be to want a job dealing with human suffering, but you know what....
It's not a mental sickness that lets us make light of human suffering. It's not a failing on our part. It's not that we lack sensitivity. It's a mental wellness that drives that type of humor. Without that we could never do our jobs. This ability to laugh at the tragic and the horrible is what will see us through to the other side of the motherfucking apocalypse. Those of you who are angry at Dane Cook obviously do not possess this skill.
Comedians are the guys who are trying to teach that skill to everyone. If you work in medicine you're exposed to death all the time. And you have to see the funny in it or you'll go nuts. If you're a regular human and you just watch the news, you're still exposed to death all the time, but you only feel it when the media tells you to.
As did National Celebrity Examiner and apparent moron (moron for no reason other than that I disagree with her), Jodi Jill said;
"While it hardly seems fathomable that someone would so quickly reflect on a massacre like the situation in Colorado, it goes to show that contemporary comedians find human tragedy a place to discover a laugh. In the case of Dane Cook, it seems his apology falls short and his original words still hit home."
Nah, fuck it. She's just a moron.
What you need to remember is that on the day you die, you don't want your mom and dad crying at your funeral. You would much prefer them laughing and enjoying their lives. Just as the dead would now love to see you enjoying yours.
You need guys like Dane Cook and Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and Daniel Tosh and Bill Hicks and George Carlin and countless others to take horrible shit in the world and turn it into something you can find joy in. You NEED those guys. Their job is to take all the horrible in the universe and give you another way of looking at it. Because if you only look at the Aurora, CO shooting the way the news gives it to you then the only story you're getting is, "Hey, bad shit happened. Now buy Coke, eat at McDonalds and vote like we tell you. You're FREE!!!!"
Horseshit.
We need guys and gals who can take the worst things in the universe and put a spin on them that's not directed by a pre-existing political narrative presented by the six or seven companies that control all of what we get to hear in America.
They show us what's ridiculous in our collective thinking and by doing so, they show us how we can think differently.
And that's why I think it's bullshit that Dane Cook felt the need to apologize for what he said at the Laugh Factory.
Fuck sorry.
