Perhaps the first ones to be taken out back and shot will be the ventriloquists. Or maybe the hypnotists… or the prop acts… or the song parodists… or the impressionists. My, my, there’s a lot of work to be done.

We discovered a disturbing Myspace profile the other day. It’s an anonymous person (one can never be sure about a Myspacer’s gender) who is devoted to “calling out bullshit acts.” This self-appointed guardian of the art of standup has so far only garnered a relative handful of Myspace “friends.” We can only hope that number levels off or even shrinks to zero.

Near as we can tell, he woke up one fine morning and decided that, for the good of standup comedy, he will be the arbiter of “what is good and what is right and what is funny.”

We can’t think of a worse idea. That it might be perpetrated by someone who is a comedian is all the more repellent.

We found this to be particularly chilling:

Have a comic that needs to be reported? Send me a link to their video and what the offense is. **UPDATE** Been getting a lot of emails/suggestions. They will be reported on ANONYMOUSLY. Your name won’t get dragged into the mess.

The language should send a chill up and down the spine of anyone who calls himself a comic. “Reported?” “Offense?” “Anonymously?”

How’s this for ironic: One of their first victims is none other than Steve Hofstetter. Hofstetter’s most recent project is a comedy jihad against Dan Whitney, aka Larry the Cable Guy. He’s released a CD, complete with art depicting the Blue Collar comic hung in effigy. We winced when we learned of Hofstetter’s campaign to discredit Whitney, to condemn his fans. We were of the opinion that no good could come of such a crusade. Much valid discussion has occurred in attempts to define what constitutes “good comedy.” Little good can come from determining that which constitutes “bad comedy” or the “wrong kind” of comedy. In private discussions here at SHECKYmagazine HQ, we expressed our apprehension. (We wish we could say that we expressed is as “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword,” or even, “What goes around comes around,” but I think our exact phrasing was, “Ooooh… That‘s going to bite him in the ass.” Can I get a CHOMP?!?

What is the wrong kind of comedy? We won’t attempt to answer that– attempting to answer that merely legitimizes the question. Giving anyone permission to ask that question gives someone permission to determine what is and what is not “wrong.” We would never seek to classify Mr. Whitney’s approach to comedy as wrong because we know that it’s only a matter of time before someone seeks to classify our approach as wrong. Eventually, it’s your turn in the docket. That is something we’re sure we’d all like to avoid.

As we’ve pointed out many times over the past seven years, we have enough opposition from the MSM, from the Popular Culture, from Political Correctness. Why turn on ourselves?

In December, in a posting about NJ Monthly’s Comedy Issue, we posted this:

The grand prize for the most annoying quote was from one Gary DeLena in an article called “Tough Crowd,” a brief (modern) history of the standup comedy as it relates to the Garden State.

Gary DeLena, a Point Pleasant comedian who has performed stand-up for 22 years, says that many clubs didn’t last because they were mismanaged or they cut corners by booking weak acts. “Once it caught on, everybody and their brother wanted to try comedy,” DeLena says. “Did you ever hear the expression, ‘Dying is easy but comedy is hard?’ A lot of the comics sucked.”

While there is a nugget of truth in DeLena’s statement, it utterly fails to convey any of the subtlety of the collapse. We shouldn’t be surprised, though, that the reporter seized upon this particularly negative, vicious and ultimately unenlightening quote. The MSM gets a woody any time they get anyone to say that comedy (or comedians) are somehow inept or boorish. All the better if they get one of our own to utter the remark.