Every Hack Comedian's Transphobic Bit
THE COLD OPEN
...okay, I know, but you all have to calm down, seriously...
I can't tell the next one if you don't stop laughing at the last one
Got damn!
...
Look at that lady! Her face! Sir, sir... make sure she has something to drink.
...
It's not that funny.
Trust me, I know. I wrote the joke.
I showed it to my wife.
She said "that's not funny".
...
We're divorced.
...ha ha, oh you knew? [Pause]
Something about me just screams it, huh?
...
Well... I'll tell you what, ...getting divorced was the best thing that ever happened to me.
It made me look more, more... interesting.
Ooh, look at him! Look at that scary, scary guy! He musta done something... some... thing to get divorced.
...
It never says amicable on the paper if it really was, you know? Let me tell ya,
I went down the etymology road. You can drive it, you know. It's got its own restrictions. Definitions.
Dictionaries. Grammar. Meanings. Driving down the --- no, that's too dumb a joke.
...
Where was I? Oh yes, I looked up the kind of divorce it was. Amicable, they said.
Amicable. Kindly, friendly. That's what it, no... for real, that's what it means.
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Ain't nothing... kindly about breaking up.
...
You don't peel a band-aid off slowly, know what I mean?
...
Well I did, I did... do something to get divorced. And this, let me tell you, you seem like nice folks, good people...
Oh, you're not? Me neither. But let me tell you this: this is what got me a lot of dates.
...
I was divorced, I said.
What did you do? She said.
Well, it was hard... I said.
How so? She said.
I had to do something I never done in my life... I said.
...
No, wait til I get to the end of... the joke.
...
Now, she leaned in, big eyes, ready to give me that sympathy kiss. You know, I'm a bad boy, folks...
...
So she thought.
So I leaned over and I said... she was really leaning in, edge of the table, wanting to know.
So I go... folks, I could smell that she'd smudged sage on herself instead of patchouli that day and -- hold on, let me tell you what she said, as she bit her lip and flicked her hair back. She... look, listen I know some of you are concerned I'm making fun of this woman I was on the date with. She said I could tell the joke. I, I asked...
...
This is what got me a lot of dates.
This is what got me a lot of dates.
...
I was divorced, I said.
What did you do? She said.
Well, it was hard... I said.
How so? She said.
I had to do something I never done in my life... I said.
...
No, wait til I get to the end of... the joke.
...
Now, she leaned in, big eyes, ready to give me that sympathy kiss. You know, I'm a bad boy folks...
...
So she thought.
So I leaned over and I said... she was really leaning in, edge of the table, wanting to know.
So I go... folks, I could smell that she'd smudged sage on herself instead of patchouli that day and -- hold on, let me tell you what she said, as she bit her lip and flicked her hair back. She... look, listen I know some of you are concerned I'm making fun of this woman I was on the date with. She said I could tell the joke. I, I asked...
She said it's not like you can shut your mouth about it anyways.
...
She'd read my tarot.
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The night before I asked her how come psychics like her never know... when I'm coming.
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She said, oh I knew. Because you announced it-- no-- no--
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Let's not get distracted now, sir. I know you like imagining her bod-- no no, we're in the middle of a story! Sir, please!
... okay, it was a good body though. She did yoga. With goats!
...
So I'm telling her about my difficult divorce, right? The friendly one.
...
She asked what was so hard about it... [Pause, Laughter]
No! Sir, try to be appropriate here!
...
I looked into her crystal blue eyes, thinking that... if she sold them at her shop, it'd cost like, uh, seven dollars and seventy-seven cents and be labeled something like angel vibration azure and I said...
Ready? I said...
I said: most difficult thing I ever had to do, it was.
...
Reading all that divorce case text instead of the comic digest! It was so hard. Small print. Little paragraphs.
I asked if I could get the Ziggy version.
You ready for this, folks?
...The lawyer didn't even know who Ziggy was!
TESTING THE WATERS
Okay, now I know you're cool, we'll get to the racial jokes. I got help with this part from Michael Richards, so they should be good.
This joke is about a great old racist. One of the best racists of all time, in fact. I admire his racism.
THE TURN
So Achilles and a trans woman were in a race...
...and Achilles is ahead, see? He started the race a fraction of a second before her, and he's really fast. She is too, she was tested by some Russian committee, and they said it was okay, actually, for her to race Achilles because they said she wasn't a woman.
Matt Walsh did a whole thing on it! No, I'm telling you.
And any time the trans woman got close to Achilles, he had the Olympics committee change the rules so she was in a different category. So she was a trans woman but not a woman, and so if she got close to him it was cheating, you know?
Got to be fair in sports. There's a difference in bone structure, you know? No really, I read it in this book I got. Well, translated. It was in German, from the 1930s...
Not many books from Germany in the 20s and 30s, did you know that? So I figure the ones that did survive must be pretty good, right?
Anyway, any time the trans woman gets close to Achilles, she isn't any closer at all. She gets halfway to where he is, but he's gone further, and in the meantime she hasn't gone halfway to halfway yet. And of course, before you go halfway to halfway you got to go halfway to half of halfway to... you get it--
In the meantime, these committees have to rule on everything she does but Achilles they know, so whatever he does is fine. After all, he's a man so he's gonna win, right?
Anyway, this goes on for a bit, but Achilles always ends up winning because every time the trans woman gets half the consideration Achilles had, Achilles gets something new so she needs to race and get halfway the stuff he gets. She can never win!
That's the race joke! And get this, she was a druid! Fully druish! Shoulda started with that, everyone hates the drew---ids!
My druish friend told me not to tell that story. She said I'd be cancelled.
THE TRUTH*
I said, who by, a bunch of people in hoods who go around chanting at flames? In America, it's good to be cancelled by groups like that! You know what I mean.
That's why I'm so dangerous, folks. I don't like being so, but someone has to yell at the crowd, jump up and down angry like Kinnison was a black music that wasn't for him. You know what I mean?
Someone has to sit back and say it doesn't matter I'm rich and they keep giving me more specials.
Someone has to go on the podcasts and talk about how a few people said they're uncomfortable with my jokes! After all, can't do comedy without punching someone, right? That's what they say, you have to punch somebody to be in comedy.
We're way more like fighters than prizefighters are, you know... and I hate to get serious here, folks, but we're the only ones with a special insight into the truth.
Fuck politicians, fuck philosophers, fuck novelists. Only the comedian gets to get up here and say this is what's true.
That's the tradition of comedy. And that's why this lecture is fucking funny, god damn! Because I'm a comedian and I'm telling you it's funny! I hold all the truth, while it slips through your stupid fucking minds.
You need us. You need me. So you can understand the truth.
Only a highly trained idiot can tell you what the world is like. That's why we have such drinking and drug problems, you know?! We have to cope with you people!! Awwwwwwwwwwwrrrggrrrgrg grrrrrr!
Woof woof! I'm better than you! I bullied teacher! Woof woof! My hate makes me special! Look at me! Fuck you, look at me! Der Anführer fordert dich zum Lachen auf! Du musst lachen! Wuff wuff wuff! Wir werden ein reines Rennen haben, bei dem du mich auslachst, so wie meine Eltern mich stattdessen geschlagen haben! Ich bin kein Hund! Du bist ein Hund! Schuss!
Come on! Get up we've got to sing the third verse of the national anthem in honor of all the people that comedy killed. Not Lenny Bruce, he wasn't pure if you know what I mean, but like... uhm.... well, come on, you know the verse, it goes ..."no refuge could save....the hireling and slave.... from the terror of the flight... only the freemen!"
That's me! I have the whole truth and you deserve to only sit there and clap like seals while throwing me money, arf! arf! arf!
*AUTHOR'S NOTE
At risk of ruining the bit, I do want to make sure that Poe's Law doesn't apply here. The point is that comedians who hide behind being cancelled rather than owning up to the idea that they have written edge jokes that are bad and in poor taste-- I have, most people have-- are actually hiding something worse.
There's a narrative in comedy that anyone who is a class clown is a truth-teller, and it's the system of education that disrupted them. That they are special because of their promotion to being "comedian". But that's not true.
Some people are just disruptive assholes. And a lot of people laugh nervously when these people shit all over everyone's day. Most people are trying to get through and learn what they can in life.
Comedians who think they are always out of the "big club" that Carlin talked about are the most susceptible to becoming the useful idiots within it. That's part of the rest of the bit that is so often omitted: they let in a few people so everyone thinks it might happen for them.
Then those people turn around and are the best gatekeepers.
This is what Jefferson meant, asshole that he was, when he said there should be a new constitution every 20 years. Just because someone had some good ideas once doesn't mean all their ideas are worth celebrating.
Any good comedian would own up to: I have said and done some shitty things, most people have. I am not doing them now.
I wrote a screwball screenplay in 2012 about a man thrown into an insane asylum for seeming to hit on his stepdad. I would find a less cheap, more interesting setup IF I wrote a similar screenplay today. Though, I wouldn't write a similar screenplay today. I have different concerns and ideas, having changed. (It is not up to me to say if the change was growth).
I've even been known to tell the old "fell off a watch tower" joke, though I might argue the listener should think about who that punches at. In either case, if someone was offended my reaction might be "how dare they misunderstand me!" but that would be a me problem, not a problem with the reactor. People are well within their rights not to like jokes and to call them out when they are shitty.
But instead, too many comedians double down precisely BECAUSE this is a way to power.
Since it's the 20-year anniversary of Green Day's American Idiot, I'm just pointing out what everyone does, that "another protester has crossed the line / to find / the money's on the other side".
Hopefully this bit can help you spot when a comedian is being a shitty fascist, yeah?