The answer would be "No."

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on February 10th, 2010

Did the Daily Show steal a joke from another comedian? So asks the Gawker.com

They make the case by running a clip from The Daily Show, then screen-capping this tweet from comedian James Urbaniak:

The joke is practically word-for-word repeated by Stewart.

Stolen? We don’t think so. It’s a joke that might have actually occurred to both Mr. Urbaniak and to one of the TDS writers simultaneously. And to the shame of neither, as it is both an obvious joke and a good one.

Then they go off the rails:

Clearly, Urbaniak is not actually upset with this development. The world of comedy is filled with comedians stealing and buying material from each other. It is well documented that Dennis Leary ripped-off Bill Hicks wholesale and that Carlos Mencia hasn’t made an original joke in his entire career.

This demonstrates several things. Not the least of which is a thundering ignorance of the world of comedy.

Comedy is not “filled with comedians stealing and buying material from each other.” Haven’t you heard, Gawker dudes? Comedians are pretty much self-contained units that write all their own shit. Have been since about Shelley Berman or so. It’s in all the books.

Comics, like most musicians these days, take pride in their singularity, their originality. Pretty much the only folks buying material these days are those comics with an insatiable appetite for material due to repeated appearances on television. And, due to the changes in the amount and presentation of standup on television these days, those are few in number.

Way back when, it was commonplace for comedians to steal and/or buy jokes (“Gags,” they called them back then) because they were facing the same crowds over and over again (in the Catskills, for instance), or they were not accustomed to creating their own in the first place. This has not, however been the case FOR FIFTY FUCKING YEARS!

To cite Mencia and Leary as evidence that the business is “filled” with comics who steal is akin to saying that popular music is “filled” with artists who steal because George Harrison was found guilty of ripping off “My Sweet Lord” from The Chiffons. Get a grip.

At the bottom, after the original posting, they insert this:

Looks like our thorough investigation into the dark bowels of the comedic world turned out to be nothing more than a coincidence, where two comedic minds think of the same joke. Scandal averted… for now.

It’s Gawker. We shouldn’t be so concerned. They live for stupid shit like this.

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