Thursday, February 23, 2006
Making Friends With Smart People
Nick Adams wrote a book called Making Friends With Black People. Adams and TAN seem to be the two premier black writers among the now-counterfeit hipster intellegentsia.
And with good reason. Mickey Z. (not Nikki Z., which is short for Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, although I doubt anyone calls him that except George W. Bush)
brought out his dowsing rod to uncork Adams's geyser of genius.
As an open-mic comic, the following exchange struck such a chord with me, I felt like The Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man" was about to start playing.
MZ: In light of the recent anti-Muslim cartoon affair, where does “freedom of speech” fit in when it comes to humor? How far is too far? Is there a “too far” in comedy?
NA: To me the biggest questions you have to ask are 1. Is it funny? 2. What’s the intent? The first one is obvious, but the second question needs some explanation. If your intent is to be mean spirited or to make a point, you’re setting yourself up for failure. One of the disturbing trends in stand up right now is the white comic who isn’t afraid to be “un-PC.” So you get a lot of white people doing racial shit that isn’t funny and seems like the only intent is to shock the audience. Lenny Bruce did not die so some Waspy motherfucker from the valley can use the word “beaner” on stage. Every jack ass white comic in the world thinks that they’re Sarah Silverman now.
As an Arab-American, here's my take. The cartoons should not be illegal. But the cartoons are offensive and worse than the caricatures (you know your race is in bad shape when it is portrayed with nothing but broad-brush, one-dimensional grotesques like a Sherwood Anderson collection) are these hacks who think that they are,...,
blah blah, I'm tired. Read the rest here.
via The Sound of Young America
And with good reason. Mickey Z. (not Nikki Z., which is short for Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, although I doubt anyone calls him that except George W. Bush)
brought out his dowsing rod to uncork Adams's geyser of genius.
As an open-mic comic, the following exchange struck such a chord with me, I felt like The Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man" was about to start playing.
MZ: In light of the recent anti-Muslim cartoon affair, where does “freedom of speech” fit in when it comes to humor? How far is too far? Is there a “too far” in comedy?
NA: To me the biggest questions you have to ask are 1. Is it funny? 2. What’s the intent? The first one is obvious, but the second question needs some explanation. If your intent is to be mean spirited or to make a point, you’re setting yourself up for failure. One of the disturbing trends in stand up right now is the white comic who isn’t afraid to be “un-PC.” So you get a lot of white people doing racial shit that isn’t funny and seems like the only intent is to shock the audience. Lenny Bruce did not die so some Waspy motherfucker from the valley can use the word “beaner” on stage. Every jack ass white comic in the world thinks that they’re Sarah Silverman now.
As an Arab-American, here's my take. The cartoons should not be illegal. But the cartoons are offensive and worse than the caricatures (you know your race is in bad shape when it is portrayed with nothing but broad-brush, one-dimensional grotesques like a Sherwood Anderson collection) are these hacks who think that they are,...,
blah blah, I'm tired. Read the rest here.
via The Sound of Young America
# posted by Mo Diggs : 3:42 PM
