We’re talking about a profusion of macho posturing, in the form of competitions or contest, most often down at the open-mike level. They’re frequently loosely structured and offer no prizes– monetary or otherwise– other than bragging rights. Is this something to be concerned about? Is it indicative of some sort of shift in priorities among aspiring or “up-and-coming” comedians?

As we recall, when we were at that level, the “competition” was almost always exclusively between the comic and the audience. Or, if we stretch the meaning of the word, the competition was between yourself and your old self– there was a striving to be better, but comparing ourselves to others was pointless. Or, if such comparisons were made, they were covert.

But when the average open mike is turned into a weekly steel cage death match or when roving bands of market-identifying comics travel to nearby cities to challenge the indigenous comedy population, things have taken a strange turn.

Of course, we’ve spent some time wondering why. Why does this generation of novice, fledgling, apprentice comics feel the need to flex their still-developing comedy muscles on such a regular basis?

There was a similar (and not unrelated) trend back a few years ago– that of playing to the comics in the back of the house. Open mikes became a rat’s nest of inside jokes, internecine heckling and one-upsmanship that benefited few. The inevitable result of such preening and self-congratulation was the formation of cliques, stunted comic development and, more often than not, confusion on the part of audiences.

Now comics that are in the trenches (comics still aspiring to gather that ten or fifteen minutes that will allow them to break through to paying gigs), are in the often unforgiving position of competing– overtly and coarsely– not only with audiences, but with their fellow comedians. Can it have any effect other than to stunt the creative process? Can anyone imagine any positive effects? If you’re hitting the stage once or twice a week and the object is not so much to hone material or sharpen and focus a particular bit, but to “win,” what does that do to a comic’s mission to craft a memorable, tightly-constructed act that conveys a point of view and an individual sensibility?

We’ve been wondering why this is happening.

The Male Half thinks that it is perhaps an indication that this cohort currently working its way through the comedy system is feeling impotent. That they feel powerless. The maturation of the business– with its tsunami of Comedy Central Presents and Half-Hour Comedy Hours and digital DVD downloads and theatrical-released concert films– perhaps presents a seemingly insurmountable obstacle for one just starting out. He posits the theory that the competition is just one way of coping with the impotence, a way of collecting small victories along the way.

The Female Half theorizes that just the opposite is occurring– that the trend is driven by a sense of entitlement. That young comics’ inflated egos demand a trophy for everything they do. That laboring quietly and diligently on a joke or an act or 15 minutes of solid material isn’t viewed as exciting or virtuous. As evidence of such a mindset, she cites the number of newbies who will do a set at a club on a weekend (or during a regular show), then won’t stick around to watch the headliner (or the other acts on the show). Or, worse yet, the newbie who will stick around, but only to sell his CD or other merchandise! The number of newbies who steadfastly refuse to emcee also bolsters her theory.

This may sound like a “these kids today…” rant. We would hope our readers know us better than that. We like to think that any of our rants are a bit more subtle that those of past generations of oldsters who criticized any who came after. We love the new comics. We even wrote a book that endeavors to subtly guide them through the process that we went through so long ago.

But we worry about the future of the business. Today’s newbies are tomorrow’s headliners. (Trouble is, many of them think that they will actually be headliners tomorrow!) We suppose that we’re counselling a little humility. We all have a bit of an ego in order to have attempted this crazy thing called comedy in the first place. We suppose that it would be helpful to temper that ego just a bit with some modesty and respect for the craft.

As for his own place in that world, he’s satisfied. Comedy nerds know his name, and he’s well-regarded by his peers. He is exactly as famous as he should be, he says.

“I’ve made a living at this for 20 years,” Smith says. “That would put me in the top 1 percent of everyone who’s done this.”

The wires are crackling with the report of the lavish “over-the-top” training session thrown recently in Vegas by a division of the General Services Administration. Heads rolled after news of the $822,751 party. The head of the GSA was canned along with a handful of underlings.

What caught our attention was the coverage of the story.

They list many “abuses”– $130,000 for six “scouting trips,” $7,000 for sushi, $6,300 for “commemorative coin sets displayed in velvet boxes” and $31,000 on a networking reception– but the items that make it into the headlines, ledes and sub-heads are:

The gems listed above don’t even include the clown and the comedian.(solomonscandals.com)

A mind-reader, a clown and a comedian attended a General Services Administration taxpayer funded convention. (whitehousedossier.com)

Agency billed $835,000 for comedians and clowns in Vegas. (freebeacon.com)

The chief of the General Services Administration is resigning and two of her top deputies have been fired amid reports of excessive spending at a training conference at a luxury hotel that featured a mind reader, a clown and a comedian. (Concordmonitor.com)

And the last line of paragraph three of an article on BusinessInsider.com says, “The (Washington) Post does not specify how much money was spent on the clown and the comedian.”

And a website which purports to keep tabs on political developments affecting residents of New Hampshire, granitegrok.com, listed close to a quarter of a million dollars in expenditures, then asks:

And if it were deemed inadequate for these government hacks and their invitees to nosh on the splendor provided, several semi-private “parties,” hosted by GSA officials in their own hotel suites, were also catered at the expense of the American taxpayer. I want to know what was paid for the Clown and the comedian that were hired for this junket?

Emphasis ours.

Why is everyone so fixated on the clown and the comedian? The mind reader was paid, according to all reports, a grand total of $3,200.  Okay.  Nothing extraordinary there. (In fact, we’d say that might be a bit on the low side for a professional mind reader hired by a conference with an $822,751 budget.) But, since it’s now part of the narrative, such a figure has become a clear indication of extravagance!

And, for some reason, the salaries for the clown and the comic have been left out of the accounts of the conference. And it is doubly puzzling that the mind reader the clown and the comic are not mentioned in the 23-page report issued by the inspector general.

So where did the press get the figure for the mind reader? And why didn’t they also get the figures for the clown and the comic? A Wall Street Journal report on the story says, “An administration official said the expenses also included about $3,000 for a mind-reader to entertain attendees, though the inspector general’s report made no mention of it.” An administration official? Why is an unattributed “administration official” giving out details like this? And, since the figure wasn’t included in the IG report, can we even trust it? And, since neither the clown nor the comedian were mentioned in the report, can we trust that there was in fact a clown or a comedian hired?

We ask this because speculation (see above) is running rampant. And the clown and the comedian are taking the brunt of the criticism and have become symbolic of government waste and fraud (and of extravagance in general). And, since no one seems to be doing any investigation or numbers-crunching when reporting on the conference or when analyzing the fallout, the exact figure for the clown and the comic will probably never be known.

We can only hope that the clown and the comic were paid as much as the mind reader.  Otherwise, they are two pissed-off entertainers right now.

Nor would that be very helpful at this point in time. The damage is done. It was bad enough when the president trashed Vegas in two separate incidents one year apart, but now Vegas is, courtesy of the knuckleheads at the GSA, once again associated with “over the top” spending. And the mind-reader, the clown and the comedian are all symbolic of that extravagance.

We suppose it was too much of a temptation for such outlets as Gawker.com (who ran, side-by-side, a pic of GSA Head Martha Johnson and a stock photo of a clown) to make the association for their readers of spendthrift bureaucrats and clowns. It’s classic. But we’re surprised that the $7,000 sushi and the $1,900 petit beef Wellingtons didn’t make an equally attractive hook for the “out-of-touch, elitist bureaucrat” angle. Instead, the three folks who were probably paid a reasonable sum for their services have become emblematic of waste and fraud.

Now, we would not be surprised if event planners are acutely aware of appearances and will gladly arrange for $2,850 worth of  “Artisanal Cheese Displays” without batting an eye, but will steer clients clear of hiring a comedian because, well, it might look bad.

As comics living in Vegas– who would love to pick up the occasional corporate gig (and be happy to be paid about as much as it costs to rustle up 150 Artisinal Cheese Displays)– we find this to be disturbing.  (P.S.: We won’t leave the house for less than it costs to provide 400 Mini Monte Christo Sandwiches.)

The room, as it is now (and as it has been for most of its 20+ years), is a great one for comedy. Wide, with a low ceiling. The stage is just the right height. Great sight lines.

And now it will be the Vegas branch of Hollywood’s Laugh Factory. The release promises “a multi-venue comedy experience.” The Factory’s Jamie Masada has partnered with Joseph Merhi, CEO of Fun World Media, a producer and distributor of “cutting edge family oriented television,” to build a “new comedy empire,” the details of which will be announced later this month.

What constitutes a “multi-venue comedy experience?” Well, for starters, they’ll offer monthly Laugh Factory “Superstar Comedy Concerts” in the 1,000-seat Tropicana Theater. (Which was, if we’re not mistaken, most recently dubbed “The Gladys Knight Theater.” We saw a Beatles tribute show there last year… it might prove to be an excellent venue for standup– not too big, not too small.)

So far, nothing earth-shattering… but we see that the new partners will “develop and co-produce a variety of comedy specials, television series, reality shows and films” at the Trop venues, and, we suspect, in and around Vegas, with the town as a backdrop. We’ve been saying for a few years now that somebody– anybody!– should produce television shows outta Vegas. It’s a natural! Who doesn’t love Vegas? And there are always tons of stars here! Musical acts, magicians, comics, dogs who juggle cats while riding on top of warthogs! It’s exactly what television is (or was, at least) ideally suited to present. Now, Masada and Merhi may not exactly be planning any variety shows (the genre is “dead,” say the critics), but surely there’s a lot of “raw material” here for virtually any kind of show imaginable.

And there’s mention of plans to “design a new Comedy Walk of Fame, Comedy Wall of Fame and Stand-Up Comedy Interactive Museum, inducting comedy legends and modern stand-up celebrities.”

Bring it on.

Las Vegas is already a standup comedy interactive museum. And we say that in a 120 per cent good way– in the past few years of hanging out/living here, we’ve seen Don Rickles, Shecky Greene (3X!), and we’ve accidentally run into Marty Allen, Steve Rossi, George Wallace, Shelley Berman and many others. Heck, we even saw David Brenner at the supermarket!

Many comedians love performing here… or at least they should. It’s dripping with comedy history. And, though it’s disappearing slowly, the “Old Vegas” memorabilia that’s still hanging on the walls of various restaurants and casinos always heavily features comedians. (The Male Half’s cellphone wallpaper is a snapshot of a gorgeous black and white photo of George Burns and Jack Benny that hangs upstairs outside the Riviera Comedy Club! We wonder what happened to those tremendous candids that hung behind the registration desk at the now-closed Sahara?! Standup’s contribution to the history and popularity of this town is right up there with the mob and Frank Sinatra. (We like to point out that one of The Rat Pack was Joey Bishop, a comedian.!) This crazy desert town is like The Holy Land of standup.

Awesome pic which hung behind the Sahara registration desk.

It’s nearly always a good thing for any market when a new club opens up. Things get shook up a bit, complacency is (temporarily, at least) banished. (There’s a downside that’s probably unavoidable– territoriality muscles might be flexed, loyalty might be questioned or demanded, etc. So far, we haven’t heard about any of that.)

There seems to be a lot of, for lack of a better word, fluidity in this market. The Trop venue didn’t remain closed for very long before this announcement. And the opening of the Factory follows, by just a few short weeks, the opening of the new MGM Grand comedy venue. (The best line from that evening belongs to Ray Romano, who said, “I’d like to congratulate Brad on his new club. I was going to buy him a gift, but what do you get a guy who has everything… because of you?”)

Anyway… we decided to pull the plug on our club list. It has had a good, long run. We didn’t put it up until year two (maybe late in year one). In our first year of publication, we had an anti-link policy. We didn’t put hyperlinks in any stories. (Why send anyone elsewhere? We reasoned. Not a popular stance among the cyber-fascists who were under the illusion that they made and enforced the “rules” of the WWW at the time, you can bet on that!)

Anyway, we changed. We created a page that contained dozens (hundreds?) of links to comedians’ websites. That became obsolete relatively fast… we ditched it after three or four years. Then we created the club list.

What a giant hassle to update! (And, to be honest, we got tired of helping clubs that never seemed inclined to help us… you know, by actually BOOKING us! Not that there was a quid pro quo, but we got awfully tired of providing the quid and getting precious little quo in return. We’re giving people… to a point.)

We decided about three years ago to ditch the club list. And we honestly thought we had! But we got an email from a club owner telling us that his club’s phone number had changed.

Wha?

Oh… the club list.

We just rummaged around under the website’s hood and obliterated it. The Club List is dead! Long live the club list!

Says Cleese, in describing his new one-man show:

“One of the things I do, I tell a number of jokes, a joke against Australians, one against Americans, one against English, one against the Swiss, one against the Germans, and then I start telling a joke: ‘There were these two Mexicans..’. And in America, the whole audience freezes. I point out that it’s kind of patronising. If you make jokes about Germans and Australians and English, why can’t you make jokes about Mexicans? Because they can’t take care of themselves? Because they are a feeble species that has to be specially protected?”

This is something we’ve been grousing about for a long time. The selective nature of political correctness has driven us batty and we contend that it played a large part in “killing comedy” (or, to put it another way, it destroyed some of live standup’s momentum and much of the politically correct criticism of the genre was illegitimate and undeserving).

Political correctness is, says Cleese, “like a maiden aunt– you’re all having fun at Christmas, and she walks into the room and it all goes quiet”

It “all goes quiet,” indeed.

We’ll leave you with a quote from H.L. Mencken:

I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse. ––from a letter to George S. Schuyler, June 15, 1931.

When the dustup over Rush Limbaugh heated up earlier this month, we held fire. Then we were appalled by what we witnessed on Facebook and Twitter, particularly the spectacle of our fellow citizens (some of whom were comics!) signing and circulating petitions seeking to have Limbaugh removed from the airwaves. We saw a clear line between Limbaugh’s schtick and that of Bill Maher and Jon Stewart and Adam Corolla and Chelsea Handler and Dennis Miller and on and on and on and all of us who call ourselves comedians. (And even if you didn’t believe us, the connection was being made by others, for good or for ill, in the ensuing days. Eventually, the pushback resulted in Louis CK backing out of the Correspondents’ Association Dinner.)

Our reaction was to defend Limbaugh’s speech. We saw his outrageous comment as speech that needed protection. And speech is speech is speech. We figured: If we don’t beat back the folks who seek to silence Limbaugh, we’d have a tougher time beating back the folks who came after us down the line for a similar offense. It’s textbook 1st Amendment stuff.

To recap:

We do mind, however, when people (people who should know better, i.e. comedians) are the ones who are leading the charge and behaving like some sort of dime store Terry Rakolta and circulating petitions via Facebook to have Rush Limbaugh taken off the air! Well, excuse us while we wretch our guts out.

If anything, comedians should be locking arms and leading the charge in defense of speech, not spearheading efforts to curtail it.

We’ve held this line for 13 years. No matter that it was a college professor or a ringtone creator or a comedian.

On Saturday, CNN.com ran an essay from comedian Dean Obeidallah called “Stop the war on comedy.” It’s a garbled mess.

His inability to check his distaste for Limbaugh obviously clouds his ability to think or write clearly on this subject. It’s tough to do, but it’s necessary.

He eventually gets to what he believes to be the heart of the matter:

So, here is the big question: What exactly is the line that comedians are prohibited from breaching? What type of joke crosses from killing the crowd to killing your career?

To me, the answer depends on two factors. Are you a famous comedian? And what type of joke is it?

Say what?

Our response to the whole matter was to fight against those who would limit speech. Obeidallah seems to think that the way to deal with it is to concoct rules, parameters and qualifications.

This is questionable at best, frightening at worst.

Now, here’s the really scary part:

But to me, the more important factor in determining if a comedian — famous or not — has crossed the line of decency is to look at the subject matter of the joke.

While I absolutely support freedom of speech, comedians deserve to suffer consequences if they make hateful jokes about race, ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation.

We would like everyone to read the bold portion of that sentence aloud. Take your time. Say it twice if you have to.

And savor the many implications.

A fellow comedian is say that we deserve to suffer consequences if we make hateful jokes about race, ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation.

We don’t have to waste our time explaining just how reprehensible that statement is, do we? It speaks for itself, right?

Just in case you don’t grasp the extreme density of that nonsense, we’ll add this:

Obeidallah follows it up with some sort of twisted, tortured nonsense about how a comedian “must be afforded great leeway when the joke is about a political issue.” But such a rule is pointless after the above statement about “hateful” jokes.

Who, exactly, will determine which jokes are “hateful” and which aren’t? Nothing else said after that line makes any sense. Because if you start from the premise that this joke or that joke is off-limits because of it’s potential for being “hateful,” then none of our jokes are safe. “Hateful” is too indistinct of a concept.

Folks, this isn’t very tricky or thorny. The way to protect speech is not to set up some sort of arbitrary (and ultimately unenforceable) boundaries or by declaring certain topics to be forbidden. This is a formula for disaster and it does nothing to protect speech and it does a whole lot to restrict it.

Oh, sure, certain topics will be okay– if they’re treated in a “sensitive” manner by– let’s face it– people who agree with Dean Obeidallah. After all, Dean is on the side of the “good guys.” Right?

(Los Angeles) City Council members took a step closer on Wednesday to becoming the first in the nation to adopt a resolution condemning certain types of speech on public airwaves.

The legislation would seek to bug media companies to “ensure ‘on-air hosts do not use and promote racist and sexist slurs’ on radio and other broadcasts.”

If they think they can restrict the speech of radio hosts…

Is there a window open? We feel a chill.

When Rush Limbaugh says something that is influential, he’s dismissed as “an entertainer” or “a clown.” He’s no more consequential than Jerry Springer or Maury Povich. Move along, there’s nothing to see here. When he gets into a bit of hot water, his critics say that he’s the de facto leader of the Republican National Committee and that he should resign. And if he doesn’t resign, we’ll circulate a petition to have him removed from the airwaves.

This is a textbook example of a double standard.

We’ve always held that a double standard is bad. It never works out the way you want it to. (A standard, on the other hand, is a good thing. It is what it is.)

In the pages of this magazine, we have always stated that it is important to defend the free speech of all– even those you may not agree with. Especially when it comes to humor. And make no mistake, the slut comment was a joke. It was a rhetorical flourish to make a larger point about a current issue.

In a sane world, comedians (who are inclined and capable of making jokes of a somewhat socio-political nature) would have viewed the testimony of Sandra Fluke as a “comedy wet dream.” How else to characterize a 30-year-old woman who testifies in front of our elected officials in Washington, in a highly-publicized event, that she spends a thousand dollars a year in birth control?!

Again, your propensities may vary– making jokes about sex or politics or contraception may not be your bag– but Limbaugh had no such reservation. He went for it and wrote the “slut” joke that got him into hot water. We can debate all day long as to whether it was well-constructed or bulletproof or even all that uproarious. But the premise– the basic underlying thrust, if you’ll excuse the poor choie of words– made sense. It may not have been riotous, and the execution might have lacked, but it was sound. A woman who is spending a grand a year on contraception is having a lot of sex.

To be sure, there were some brave souls– fellow comics– who attempted to make similar jokes online (particularly on Facebook or on Twitter), but they were few. And their efforts were quickly swamped by a tsunami of petitions and scolding and name-calling and shaming by those who felt it far more important to get Rush Limbaugh off the air. The spectacle of standup comics seeking to silence an entertainer and force him off the air was truly disheartening.

And it was only a matter of time before the “other side” could stand the double standard no more. There are reports out there that thousands of HBO subscribers are fleeing. Up until now, folks were perfectly willing to put up with Maher calling Sarah Palin a “cunt.” Even though the insults were somewhat asymmetrical. (As The Female Half points out, on the insult scale, “cunt” far outweighs “slut.” “You may see hundreds of women walking behind a sign that proudly advertises a “slut walk,” says she. “But you’ll never seen anyone walking behind a banner that trumpets a “cunt walk.”)

We would have been distressed if any of our colleagues were to circulate petitions to have Maher removed from his chair at HBO. And, let’s face it, the transition, “And speaking of dumb cunts…” is perhaps less of a joke than Limbaugh’s… but it’s a joke nonetheless.

But where’s the harm? Why not try and silence that big bag of wind Limbaugh? He’s nothing but a racist, drug-addled hate-monger. Here’s the harm: Louis CK is now officially collateral damage. He has canceled his appearance as the guest speaker at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner.

The pushback continues. It has been known for quite some time now that CK tweeted some rather “vulgar and inappropriate” “jokes” about (again) Sarah Palin during a flight to Los Angeles. (“@SarahPalinUSA kudos to your hole, you fucking jackoff cunt-face jazzy wondergirl.” among others.) Those tweets were sent out well over a year ago and, though he got some grief for his drunken tweeting, it’s been smooth sailing by and large with critical acclaim for his FX television show and wildly positive buzz for the tech-savvy marketing of his digital DVD.

Greta van Susteren cited the drunken tweets and suggested that her colleagues refuse to attend the bash in D.C. CK has canceled. (And in a backflip double-double standard, some of those who were, 24 hours ago aghast at the vile treatment a 30-year-old political activist/law student are now calling van Susteren a “cunt” and a “hag” and making cracks about her plastic surgery.)

We’re reminded of a saying, “What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” It is a saying that’s so old that it was coined when people actually knew what to do with a goose and how to make sauce! Try finding a recipe for goose sauce in any modern cookbook! Why is such a golden rule (which addresses the “ethic of reciprocity”) either forgotten by some or deemed outmoded by others? Consistency has never been more of a virtue in this day and age of the WWW and instant lookup-ability.

Mind you, we don’t mind if someone gets grief for public statements. Rush is getting it, Maher moved from one network to another because of it, Louis CK is no doubt exercising caution when using Twitter (if he uses it at all)… or alcohol… or both in concert and now has had to back out of a sweet gig.

We do mind, however, when people (people who should know better, i.e. comedians) are the ones who are leading the charge and behaving like some sort of dime store Terry Rakolta and circulating petitions via Facebook to have Rush Limbaugh taken off the air! Well, excuse us while we wretch our guts out.

If anything, comedians should be locking arms and leading the charge in defense of speech, not spearheading efforts to curtail it.

It’s easy to defend speech when it’s something you agree with. It’s difficult– but necessary– to defend speech when you disagree with it. Doing so isn’t heroic. Doing the opposite is cowardly.

Like it or not, there is a connection between us comedians and Rush Limbaugh and Bill Maher and Opie & Anthony and Dennis Miller and Adam Corolla and Chelsea Handler. When it comes to comedy and free speech, we can’t play ideological Kerplunk.

And if you doubt that there is a connection, you haven’t been paying attention for the past 72 hours.

Of course, if it’s true, it’s sad.

The Male Half was a fan of the Firesign Theatre, spending some hard-earned paper route money on “I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus,” the troupe’s 1971 release. And, four years later, as a student at Bowling Green State University, he and a roommate trekked 30 miles north to the campus of Toledo University to see a performance of Proctor & Bergman.

A decade later, The Male Half got to meet the comedy duo in person when they co-hosted and episode of the syndicated standup comedy show Comedy Tonight. (The Male Half appeared twice on the show, hosted by Bill Boggs, which taped at WNEW’s studios in NYC.)

“It was a thrill to meet them and they couldn’t have been nicer,” recalls The Male Half. “And they were extremely charming live performers. We sat on the floor of a small performance space on the TU campus.

“I remember at the time that BGSU’s radio station had a pair of students who somehow convinced the station’s GM to give them a late-night slot on the school’s FM station. They thought that they would do what Firesign Theatre and P & B did. I suspect it was a trend, and that every college campus radio station was plagued by similar aspiring satirists. They underestimated just how creative and, I suspect, how prepared that Firesign Theatre were when they went into the studio or hit the stage. As such it was unlistenable.

“It is a crazy thing about standup comedy. One day, you’ll be watching a comedy idol in a coffehouse on a campus in Ohio, then ten years later, you’ll be taping a television show or sharing a bill with that same act.”

The Female Half, since reading of Bergman’s death reports that she has had “Rat In A Box” stuck in her head all morning. (The Male Half taped the ad parody off of USA Network back in 1983 or so.) She adds that she has had the entire soundtrack from “Mary Poppins” stuck in her head since reading of the passing of comedian Wendy Liebman‘s father-in-law Robert Sherman, who, with his brother, composed such musical gems as “It’s A Small World” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” (Our last two posts have been about death. It happens.)