Modified On August 9, 2012
They’re at it… in the Comments again.
We responded… again. We grow weary. The response, though, was over 4,096 characters, so we brought it topside.
Herewith, our response to comments on our Wanda Sykes/George Lopez defense (for that posting, and the ridiculous comments, see here):
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People!
Read more carefully!
Context! Context! Context!
How fucking hard is this concept?
We aren’t defending comics who do other people’s material.
Have you been reading this magazine at all? For ten years (TEN YEARS!) we’ve always stressed that comedians who make an honest effort to go up there and make the room laugh are on our side, are our people, are our colleagues.
Has anyone ever heard us defend comics who do only street jokes? Or who only steal? Good Christ, Myk– that is some of the most ridiculous arguing we’ve seen in the comments in quite some time.
We were talking about context– Sykes and Lopez… Weekly/Daily monologues… network show… mass appeal… timeliness. How much clearer do we have to make it?
Byhoff totally ignored these factors and then threw in the odious charge of racism on top of it. And some comics, like Wagner, thought that was legitimate.
But Wagner ignored those factors as well, then threw in some nonsense about Carlin and Pryor and on and on.
Both Byhoff and Wagner were wrong and stupid.
The joke which was deemed easy because “so many different people (were) thinking of it so quickly” was told by people who had a television talk show. The criteria are vastly different from a weekend comedy club. Does it let them off the hook? YES!
(And, if you want to get technical, Sykes’ monologue was extremely timely– having been delivered AS THE STORY WAS STILL UNFOLDING with many of the details still unknown! Her observations turned out to be prescient. The one joke, which was taken out of context for the purpose of excoriating Sykes as “lazy,” was the least of the bunch– certainly not a good reason to trash the entire monologue… or call Sykes A LAZY RACIST.
A lazy racist. That’s right. Read that again.
Have you gotten so jaded that you can sit there and watch a columnist call one of your colleagues a lazy racist and, instead of defending him/her (or at least seeing his/her side of the story!), you pile the fuck on and reinforce the notion?
And then you log onto our magazine and personally attack us and accuse us of being motivated purely by self-interest and being banal?
WTF?
Get. A. Hold. Of. Yourselves.
Myk says, “there ARE things that many would agree are actually of higher priority” than making audiences laugh.
If you’ve read this magazine with any care over the last ten years, you know that we disagree totally with this.
And we’ve defended that position quite well.
But we have never said that stealing or telling street jokes makes one a good comedian. Quite the contrary. To imply or insinuate that we have is just plain stupid, vicious and wrong.
We have said that telling the occasional street joke has its place– and we made the case quite eloquently, citing examples and paying attention to context (there’s that word again).
But to twist the words and the meaning of this posting to the point where you conclude that we’re defending comedians who steal and tell street jokes borders on a debate crime.
Standup comedy, according to Wagner, is “certainly not that hard.”
Well, we find it impossible to take seriously anyone who utters such an insipid thing. When we labeled him “infantile,” we were being charitable.
After that, the rest of his screed is just goofy drivel.
Would you like us to proclaim once and for all that Hicks is “better” than Hedberg because Hicks made people think? Or because he “challenged their preconceived notions of right and wrong?” Would you like us to determine definitively that Lenny Bruce was “more of an artist” than Dennis Wolfberg because Bruce was arrested more often?
Forget it. We won’t do it. You seem to have mistaken us for Rolling Stone or Tiger Beat.
It’s a game for pinheads, a pointless endeavor for mere fans. Any comedian who makes an honest effort at standup (and for God’s sake, don’t make us qualify that again or delineate the criteria), is our colleague and deserves our respect.
Anyone who can read Byhoff’s ignorant analysis of Sykes’ and Lopez’s performance– and conclude that he has anywhere near a legitimate point– is being a boorish simpleton merely to score some sort of points with like-minded boorish simpletons engaged in some sort of schoolground trashtalk game.
Throw off the childish impulse to rank your fellow comics and recognize the goodness in all… that’s our holiday message (and, coincidentally, the core message of the magazine for going on eleven years).