Roasts expanded the First Amendment?

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on September 2nd, 2009

Greg Beato wrote As Nasty As They Wanna Be; How the Friars Club roasts expanded the First Amendment for Reason.com, “the monthly print magazine of ‘free minds and free markets.’ (Reason “provides a refreshing alternative to right-wing and left-wing opinion magazines by making a principled case for liberty and individual choice in all areas of human activity.”)

Beato sets it up thusly:

Roasts are the Rodney Dangerfields of free expression: They don’t get any respect. When we credit the iconoclasts who believed that the freedom of speech granted by the First Amendment should be as expansive as Sasha Grey’s fun tunnel, we turn first to literary sorts, like H.L. Mencken, Henry Miller, and Larry Flynt, and second to more cerebral funnymen like Bruce and Carlin. In part, this is because the Friars Club roasts, along with similar events held at The Masquers Club and other locales, were private affairs, with no women or waiters allowed. But we also snub roasts, one suspects, because they had no greater goal than coaxing horse laughs from filthy-minded drunks. Which of course is why we should value them all the more: How free is free speech when the only way you can unleash masturbation gags upon the public is to write a masterpiece on the order of Ulysses?

Good question! (Emphasis ours.)

What follows is a rumination on the history of roasts, their evolution and their possible role of Dino and Jack Benny and George Gobel as “the slapdash forefathers of gonzo porn, Jackass, and YouTube.” Kind of a stretch, but we’re game when anyone attempts to hitch up cultural significance to a standup-related activity that is regarded as a curiosity, if it’s regarded at all.

Beato makes the case that the roasts (back in Dean Martin’s day and before) were snarky before snarky was cool. He maintains that the roasts of old and the roast on Comedy Central have blazed a trail and made safe the freewheeling atmosphere (and the unfettered speech we enjoy) on the WWW and the blogosphere and in countless chat rooms, making it “the most vital medium we’ve ever known, and the one that offers the most accurate and expansive portrait of humanity to date.”

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