Blog

The Conservative Comedy Cheat Code

This past weekend, during an exhausting journey to get to Philadelphia to watch my Utah Jazz defeat the Philadelphia 76ers (join my Patreon to hear the saga in a bonus podcast episode) I saw several billboards and ads for comedians coming to the Wells Fargo Arena, where the 76ers play.  One stuck out to me and that was the ad for Jeff Dunham’s show.  Obviously, it first offends me that a ventriloquist can headline an arena, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is from 1000 feet away does it even matter if he’s moving his lips or not?  But Dunham’s comedy is really elite hackery. Obviously plenty of people like it because there are lots of simpletons in our country.  But there has always been a strain to his humor that felt like a wink and a nod to the “conservative” (I put it in quotes because what we really mean by “conservative” now is religious hypocrites, racists and greedy, myopic assholes) crowd. It was simple and harmless, but had just enough bland bigotry in some of the characters to appeal to their soon-to-be-MAGA hearts.  But with Dunham’s new show, he has given away the game.

Jeff Dunham’s new show is called “Still Not Canceled” because PG rated ventriloquists are on the front lines of speech and comedy, right?  The only thing that could and should cancel Jeff Dunham Puppetry of the Peanut is good taste.  But that is not what he is suggesting or better yet, what he is lack-of-virtue signaling.  He is sending a thinly veiled message to his fans and their ilk that his comedy is an enemy of the dreaded “woke mob.”  And that is the new algorithm cheat code for right wing comedians (and ventriloquists) and grifters.

When they came for Jeff Dunham I said nothing, because I hate his act and no one actually came to cancel him

Similar to Bill Maher and Ricky Gervais, the conservative comedy crowd (of which there are funny people – I am not going to take the low hanging , and incorrect fruit of some of my left leaning fans who will reflexively say “conservatives aren’t funny” when my personal experience is a lot more pushback from liberals whenever my jokes touch on anything deemed sacred to them (e.g. a tweet making fun of Hunter Biden for being loved less than Beau Biden earned quick condemnation from my “fans” while there was no end to the joy my Jeff Epstein and Donald Trump having sex with underage girl references)) never seems to get bored of hearing the same attacks on “wokeism” or “cancel culture.”  It’s like every topic can be hack or overdone to them, but as long as you complain about wokeness, or deride a liberal talking point with a stereotypical gay accent, it is a never ending stream of originality and humor.  Just like the Left has proven themselves humorless sometimes when a topic is not to their liking, the Right seems to ignore the staleness of the bitching and moaning because it validates their beliefs.  But it is bad comedy.

And now, to use one of the few Latin phrases I remember and like from law school, we have reached the reductio ad absurdum point of the “cancel culture” warrior phase of comedy. Jeff Dunham, promoting an entire tour as “I have not been canceled yet.”  Perhaps his poster should be the famous photo of Malcolm X holding an assault rifle looking out of his window, but with one of his puppets’ heads superimposed on Malcolm’s.  The chances of Jeff Dunham being canceled are about as high as my new special going platinum (Half-Blackface totally should, but should and will are a universe apart).  But this is the point now – Dunham is sending the very clear message that funny is less important that culture war signaling.  Even if that is completely absurd. Only complete idiots would be motivated to see a ventriloquist with 1980s stereotypical puppets simply because he had made the ridiculous claim that he had evaded cancellation… so far!  But apparently, judging by the size of the Wells Fargo arena, Jeff Dunham’s dummies will have a lot of company this week.

Blog

John Wick? More like John WOKE

When I heard that a new installment of the John Wick film franchise was coming out I was excited.  Wick represented a throwback ideal of a man – husband (albeit he left his job to please his wife – no one is perfect), feared by criminals and impeccably dressed (sorry, no sweat pants for your stay at home zoom “job”). He killed with ruthless efficiency and set a high standard for justice: kill my puppy and I will kill everyone.  Needless to say John Wick was not taking time out to go protest the 2nd Amendment with David Hogg!

So last week I lined up all three Wick films for a great retrospective before the 4th chapter’s release this week (in Joe Biden’s world of gun control, paternity leave and pronouns – it felt like nothing was more needed than the Wick movies).  But as I rewatched the films I realized that the John Wick films were actually a progressive trojan horse.  John Wick was actually John WOKE.

In the first film, Wick attacks exclusively white criminals (they appear to be Russian, so I guess double points on the globalist, woke scorecard).  Of course he is friends with a few people in the criminal world – Latino Mike Birbiglia John Leguizamo and the late Lance Reddick, the concierge of the assassin hotel.  He did have a white friend, played by Willem Dafoe, but the John Woke screenwriters obviously saw fit to have him killed.  Wick eventually avenges his deceased puppy leaving a lot of dead white people.

But I did enjoy the first one and since I am the last person to engage in cancel culture, perhaps this was just one plot line.  But as I re-watched John Wick 2 I saw a clearer pattern emerging.  Wick is forced to repay a debt to an Italian criminal (so apparently honoring a contract is a bad thing when a white man asks you to do so!) and in attempting to do so is attacked by a Black criminal… who Wick allows to live.  The actor’s name may be Common, but needless to say, this was a very uncommon fate for killers who cross John Wick.  When Wick needs assistance in the film he gets it from a homeless Black man, played by Lawrence Fishbourne. So instead of perhaps cleaning up the homelessness problem in Democrat run NYC, Wick empowers this man to wreak more havoc on a once great city.

Well then we get to John Wick 3: Parabellum, which might as swell mean “all out war against traditional values.”  Wick is now being hunted by all assassins because he violated the terms of service at the Continental.  There white people go again – wanting contracts to be honored. For a contract killer, John Woke seems to have a major problem with… contracts.  In John Wick 3, Wick makes it to northern Africa where he of course will finally have to kill some killers of color.  But he is aided in that pursuit by Halle Berry, a Black woman, who, in the Leftist hierarchy is the most discriminated against person so, by the John Woke transitive property, is entitled to kill men of color, as they are part of the patriarchy. So John Woke gets a pass via Halle Berry and comes back to America to fight a gang of Asian assassins.

In other words, John Woke is now able to murder lots of minorities, as long as they are over-represented minorities.  And boy does Wick go off!  He takes out so many Asians I thought he was Bill DeBlasio trying to stop them from getting into selective high schools!  And orchestrating a lot of the enemies against John Woke was a non-binary actor, known primarily for their work on Billions, a show I know something about.  Does the non-binary actor get murdered by John Wick?  Of course not – John Wick may have killed 1000 assassins, but if you have a plural pronoun you are off limits.  And when it is time to finally defeat the evil Italian gangster, Wick is given aid by the aforementioned Reddick, who needless to say survives the gun battle.  Do you see it yet?

So as I reflected on this deceptive legacy that the Wick films represent, I have opted to skip John Wick 4.  I can actually appreciate films like Schindler’s List, 12 Years a Slave and Roots who at least when they shove wokeness down your throat, they do it openly. What the John Wick franchise has done is far more devious. They have taken a beta cuck and wrapped him in the blood and garments of an alpha male and sold us the lie with popcorn.  John Woke?  I’d rather take a nap!