Bias and Blind Spots -Since You MENtioned Power & Privilege In Comedy

Did you forget to call out Eliza, Lisa and Chelsea — just asking?

I read a great piece by Sady Doyle on the Comedy of Power and thanked her. Sady made some excellent points about a lot of white male comics who are continuing to thrive using racism, homophobia, misogyny and every other ism as painful punchlines.

I wrote an article about the SNL scandal and racism in comedy, but I chose to focus on Bowen Yang and intentionally removed Gillis’ image because I refuse to give any more exposure, energy or free publicity to another racist.

SNL’s New Season Brings Bowen Yang & A Little Comedic Justice

As Sady pointed out, racist male comics are still getting booked, but I feel we’re partially responsible. When we publicize their prejudice, we’re inadvertently building their brand of notoriety and their case for being a victim.

But I think we forgot to add Iliza Shlesinger, Lisa Lampanelli and Chelsea Handler to the conversation about comics who’ve also benefited from their power and privilege and used racist and racially insensitive material:

Chelsea is the ONLY white comic who seems to be genuinely and publically apologetic about her racially insensitive material (Uganda Be Kidding Me) and actually made a documentary about white privilege.

I commend Chelsea for being honest and acknowledging that she’s the poster child of white privilege. Her family had the resources to legally terminate two pregnancies from her Black boyfriend. She graduated from a special school, and she was never arrested in spite of the numerous times she confessed to driving intoxicated or with drugs and became a multimillion-dollar comedian.

The other two ladies need to be addressed!

Eliza is just way too comfortable with using the N-Word and actually had the audacity to compare her struggle as a white female comic with several Netflix specials to a Black person being called the N-word:

The connotation of “female” is like saying, “Hey, a girl is doing something boys do.”…We’re getting more chances in TV and movies, and it’s getting less about “funny for women” and more just “funny period. It’s something we’ve all kind of accepted. To hear someone say to me, “You’re funny for a girl” is kind of antiquated. It’s almost like hearing the n-word. Like, really? You’re really saying that? OK. You need to watch the news more.”

You would think an “elder millennial” would be wiser. She is, in fact really funny so the N-bombs kinda kills the jokes for me…

And then there’s Lisa (who I’ve nicknamed the female Andrew Dice Clay). Most of her act is rooted in good ol’ school racism (like Gillis), her jokes about Black people are especially nasty and dehumanizing. She spews out stereotypes of Black life and the lazy, oversexualized and predatory Black men.

I love to laugh and I truly think laughter is healing, but these two women are just as guilty as their male counterparts of making jokes at the expense of Black people and other marginalized groups. And I haven’t heard any feminists call them out.

This is a pattern. For some strange reason, white women seem to get a pass when they perpetuate hate and humiliation. If the goal is equality, white feminists need to call out white women, too! I call this silence and double standard “selective solidarity”. But as Chelsea Handler discovered in her documentary, white privilege isn’t just about rich white men.

I hate to go dark and deep, but we can’t forget the women who remain silent, deny, turn a blind eye, and deflect to protect their privilege. The women who implicitly or explicitly support bias and discrimination lie and gives alibis,and shout and shut down the oppressed are equally culpable and dangerous.

We forget that the same colonizers and sinister slave masters that kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered Black men, women and children had women in their lives. And although they may have been oppressed — their struggle cannot be compared to 400 years of systematic dehumanization, oppression and injustice.

If white feminists want to show their loyalty and be real allies and soldiers for the cause, they have to understand and accept responsibility for how their thoughts, words and actions impact the lives of Black people and people of color. The call outs have to be inclusive, too.

As of fan of comedy, I’m sickened when the craft is tainted. Comedians help us see, think and talk about society’s ills and ugly truth. They are artists and some of them are geniuses. They are storytellers and essential to social and political discourse. I think comedians and satirists should be allowed to push boundaries, but not at the expense of perpetuating hate and prejudice.

My fellow fems we’ve got to call a thing a thing! Female comics don’t get a racism pass. WE need to check them because we know how to do it from a place of love and sisterhood.

A racist is still a racist even if they wear a pink pussy hat — it just feels worse because SHE should know better.

There are a lot of comedians that are hilarious and don’t spread hate. I featured a few of them in my an article about my Five Favorite Things.

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