comedy | The Mob and the Multitude

I’ve been running around a lot for the past few days, and I’m still not done. But, I’ve been thinking about female comics, particularly standup comics, for the past few days…mostly because I watched Date Night and Tina Fey was AWESOME. She’s the only female comic I can remember since I started to have some memory of these things, who manages to be a comic and a female without that ending up in some bizarre overly-sexualized carcicature. Most female standup comics seem to be fighting that one way or the other: either they embrace it and play a sexpot with a sense of humour or they reject it or they go out of their way to tell dumb sex-related jokes to show they can be just as raunchy as the men. This is the conundrum of feminism in America these days generally, I think.

Anyway, a long way of saying, I ran across a commencement speech that Gilda Radner gave in 1980 at yes, the Columbia Journalism School, one of the places I’ve passed through. So here it is. Enjoy!

I made the mistake of having Comedy Central on in the background a couple of days ago while I worked only to be assaulted by the unfunny and racist utterances of Carlos Mencia. The dim-witted comic had his own hour-long show on cable 2005-2008. This particular sketch involved him demanding that the Americans stop patrolling the Mexican border. The Mexicans, already know, according to Mencia, that should one of those crazed Arabs/ Muslims (he’s not too clear on it but that’s how racism works folks), cross into the US from Mexico, that the US-Mexican border will be closed. Mexicans don’t want to see that happen so they’d be the first to tip-off the US border guard. “Senor, senor,” Mencia mimes a Mexican tapping a US security official on his shoulder and pointing out the suspects, “those people they don’t speak Spanish.” Oh, it gets better:

Mencia says that his friend told him, Carlos, you should stop making fun of the Middle Easterners. They’re crazy. A “middle eastern” man who’s standing next to the two friends advises Mencia to listen to his friend pointing out that they are indeed crazy. Mencia responds by saying, no “my people” are crazy! “My people” here has suddenly somehow switched from Mexican to American. Then he treats the audience to the following sketch. These aren’t exact quotations, but pretty close:

Crazy Middle Easterner: We blew up two of your buildings.
Mencia’s punchline: Oh yeah, bitch, we blew up two of your countries! [applause]

Crazy Middle Easterner: We killed thousands.
Mencia’s punchline: I was like, bitch, we killed millions! [applause]

Crazy Middle Easterner: We’re looking for the atomic bomb.
Mencia’s punchline: ooh, you’re looking for one atomic bomb. We already got those. And, guess what bitch we already used it and if you dont believe it, call Japan and talk to the man with 3 penises and 5 balls. That’s how we roll baby!…And we named it Enola Gay, because we wanted them to know they were about to get boned in the ass. That’s how we play the game! [applause. Camera pans to a wide shot and there are some audience members actually standing and applauding Mencia.]

Now, in case, I actually need to explain what’s wrong with this: it’s not satire when you make unclever jokes that dump on those who are already oppressed.

The Mob and the Multitude

Tag Archives: comedy

Gilda Radner delivers it straight

WTF. Seriously unfunny.