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Marc Maron, Chief of the Joke Police
Why do some comedians hall monitor the jokes of other comedians?
Marc Maron criticizes Netflix for airing Dave Chappelle’s comedy that poked fun at transgenders. That he does this six years after the fact indicates that while jokes keep some people laughing, they cause others to grind their teeth perpetually.
Why did Netflix not take Chappelle off its programming? Because, Maron claims, “Fascism is good for business.”
It’s actually not, as this old bit on Conan O’Brien’s TBS show proves. Chappelle, on the other hand, is good for business. Products that the people demand, but that elites demand that the people not demand, usually are. Normal people judge comedy on whether it makes them laugh, not whether it checks all of their political boxes. (RELATED: ‘Hey! It’s Enrico Pallazzo!’: The Fall of Comedy)
Chappelle (or Netflix) presciently named his special “Sticks & Stones.” Maron does not get the irony of responding as though Chappelle’s jokes amounted to an assault that hurt people. The fact that he lectured the Left on Pod Save America to curb their buzz-killing ways, yet compared a comedy special that aired on Netflix to something out of Nazi Germany (minus the trains, gas chambers, camps, silly uniforms and mustaches, invasions, and demands for papers, but otherwise a close approximation — or not), emphasizes that he certainly does not get his own irony. So does his Tourettes-like tic for “othering” and other selections from the Condescensionese jargon dictionary.
He faults Chappelle for using trans people as the punchline for some jokes. When I wrote about the special in question in 2019, the trans stuff did not make it into my article. Jokes about Jussie Smollett (er, Juicey Smolier) and abortion stood out. Maron, however, fixated on trans jokes. (RELATED: ‘That’s Not Funny!’ Well, It Is to Dave Chappelle)
He thinks it’s fascism when powerful people do not commandeer your remote control.
“Netflix will just co-opt anybody that can take that algorithm,” he told Pod Save America. “I used to do a joke about it that Netflix can become ‘Reichflix’ very quickly. I think the pivotal moment was when they had pushback from the trans community about Chappelle; they realized after several days that that community was not going to affect their bottom line at all, and cut them loose. That is how fascism works in business.”
Cut them loose? Is that a euphemism for not acceding to their demands for censorship? That’s what the trans community called for — pulling Chappelle off of Netflix’s programming.
Maron tells a joke about Mike Pence, Jesus, and a sex act. One would think that a comedian who relies on tolerance to tell his controversial joke might stand on the side of the jokester and not the jokesters trying to banish him from Netflix. Like most “progressives,” Maron can never separate his politics from the general principle. He wants to say what he wants, to shut the other guy up, and — this is key — to be thought of as a civil libertarian as he does this.
The authoritarian reflects, “We’re currently in an authoritarian country.” Maron admits going on “bro” podcasts “specifically to take them to task.” He says it’s his “responsibility” to talk politics (just like Larry Fine and Rodney Dangerfield?). He describes his comedy act as “doing community service in a real sense.”
Isn’t making people laugh the community service? That seems like a more needed job than sermonizing them about where you stand on Donald Trump’s position on, say, anti-Israel activism in the Ivy League.
Recall that at the time of the release of “Sticks & Stones,” Rotten Tomatoes gave the special a critics rating of zero and an audience rating of 99 percent. The gatekeepers hated it, but the hoi polloi storming the gate loved it. How much did they love it? More of them watched that Chappelle standup routine than any other comedy special in the history of Netflix.
When most people think of fascism, the concept of a select few determining the “choices” of the masses comes to mind. Maron imagines fascism — a left-wing swear word that he does not grasp the meaning of (let alone that a bunch of Italian left-wingers launched that movement) — as what everybody else thinks of when thinking about democracy. He thinks it’s fascism when powerful people do not commandeer your remote control, tell you what you can watch, what jokes you can laugh at, and what comedians are funny (laugh at Hannah Gadsby now!).
What a world we live in that angry, grim-faced, turn-that-frown-upside-down, that’s-not-funny scolds wanting to censor jokes describe themselves as comedians — and depict a media outlet as fascist for not blocking the most-watched comedy special in its history.
READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn:
Finding the Lost Papers of the Conservative Movement
One Nobelist Attacks Two Nobelists As Racists
House Democrat Puts Guatemala First
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