All right. So… Vancouver loses in the Stanley Cup Finals to Boston. In Vancouver. So the Vancouver fans go nuts and tear the place apart and turn over BMW’s and set stuff on fire.

The video goes viral. As do the pictures. One pic in particular– it depicts, in the background, a bunch of “revelers’ retreating away from the photographer and, in the foreground, an out-of-focus, riot-gear-clad cop or two. And in the middleground is a couple– a guy and a girl– embracing in the middle of the street, and he’s planting a kiss on her.

Bruins fans? No. Just a couple, caught in the mayhem. And he’s trying to protect her and shield her from the broken glass and the rocks whizzing buy. And, to reassure her, he kisses her. And it’s caught on a chip and uploaded and it rockets around the planet and it makes the couple a worldwide sensation– particularly after they’re identified.

Australian Scott Jones and his girlfriend Canadian Alexandra Thomas are now “vacationing in California,” but they’ve hired Max Markson, spokesman for the Australian public relations giant Markson Sparks.

Here’s where it gets… interesting… or nauseating, if you prefer:

Markson Sparks will represent them and handle requests for interviews, endorsements and job opportunities for Jones, who’s an actor and standup comedian.

“I think for Scott it’s a tremendous opportunity for him to springboard his acting and standup comedy,’’ says Markson, who added that the couple is heading to Melbourne, Australia for a while, after California.

Jones, 29, who had one standup comedy gig in Vancouver before the famous photo was snapped but mostly worked as a bartender there, “could use this as a way of breaking through for a standup comedy career,’’ says Markson. “It could set him up for life, if he’s as good as Robin Williams or Bill Cosby.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be boarding the helicopter soon to venture to the top of that really big “if” that Mr. Markson has set up in that last sentence. If all goes well, we should reach the top of the “if” in about a half-hour or so. Please be patient.

Are there hundreds of bartenders in Australia who are as good as Robin Williams or Bill Cosby, but are simply waiting for accidental, international fame so they can “springboard” their standup talents?

Is this what people think goes on? People do one gig and they emerge fully-formed as the next Robin Williams?

We shouldn’t be surprised. We were standing in line at the deli on a cruise ship recently when the nice man in front of us recognized us as two of the ship’s entertainers and engaged us in conversation. Upon learning that we were the comedians, he asked us what we did during the day. We were momentarily confused– does he mean, “What do you do to kill time?” or does he mean, “Do you have a day job?” He meant neither. He was curious as to what we did during the day, on the ship, when we weren’t performing… he asked, “Do you clean or something?” Clean? Here was a man– from all indications, a reasonably intelligent man– who thought that part of our duties as fly-on entertainers on a major cruise line was to clean.

It is this lack of knowledge that Markson is hoping to capitalize on. (We don’t believe for one minute that Markson himself believes what he’s saying.)

Slate ran an interview with Louis CK on June 17 in which CK defends Tracy Morgan.

There’s a lot of times when I let myself channel bad ideas as a way to do comedy. I think it’s something that’s a healthy thing to do, honestly. And I think the person who really fucked people up and hurt people with Tracy’s words was whoever took it out of that Nashville club and put it on the national stage— whoever called Huffington Post or whoever started this shit, and said, “Guess what Tracy Morgan said,” and announced it to the rest of the world. He wasn’t trying to say it to the rest of the world. So when I read stuff like, How are gay people going to feel when they read this? Well they didn’t have to read it! They weren’t part of that show. Maybe there were gay people there who were laughing. You don’t fucking know. Nobody gets to say that they represent anybody and they’re offended on behalf of the whole world.

You can see this shit really bothers me. I didn’t carefully inspect what he said. I heard some of it, and it made me laugh. I didn’t get the context, but I have to defend it, because if I was in his role, if I was in his situation, which I might be someday—which I already am for having said something on his behalf—I would want someone to step forward and say something. This is a freedom that I live off of. I think, whatever, if Tracy made a mistake, he certainly didn’t deserve all of this. And I don’t know him well, but he’s a good guy. So I’m using that judgment, of just, hey, I met him and he’s a good guy. And I get a sense of him as a father, and there’s no way he would stab his kid.

It’s a dumb thing to take at face value. You’d have to be a moron. And if you do, you are not allowed to laugh at any more jokes. You are not allowed to laugh at any jokes that have any violence or negative feelings attached to them, ironically or otherwise. I think there’s a lot of hypocrisy in that. If anybody thinks that what he said is true and there’s no comedy in it, don’t come to my shows. I’ve said to many audiences that I think you shouldn’t rape someone unless you have a good reason, like you want to fuck them and they won’t let you. That’s worse than what he said! And I didn’t wink and say, just kidding. I just said it.

And there’s another article, this time in the Atlantic, by a senior editor, Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which he quotes from the same Slate interview then proceeds to dissect the matter and offer many of the same points that others have made on the issue. It’s rather murky, but Coates provides a clip or two of Louis CK’s act, then tries (we think) to differentiate between Morgan and CK.

One of the commenters on this magazine opined that Louis CK’s material possibly wouldn’t be subject to criticism or persecution like Morgan was “because of the caliber of the usage and the thought that went into it, its purpose.” Well, buckle up, buttercup, and get an eyeful of the comments that follow Coates’ “defense” of Morgan. There were 345 at last count and the commenters– surprise!– say a lot of the same things about humor, about jokes, about boundaries, that were said about the Morgan incident… only this time, it’s about Louis CK.

The mob is rather like the gang that’s camped outside of, say, Frankenstein’s house with pitchforks and torches and someone runs up and yells, “HEY! Over here! There’s a werewolf!” and they all set off in that direction with their pitchforks and torches.

Like we said, if you think Louis CK or any other respected comedian is immune, because the “caliber of the usage” or the “thought” or the “purpose” that goes into the material, you are wrong. And if you think you’re immune, you’re wrong, too.

Adam Gropman was, for longer than anyone else, one of our columnists here at SHECKYmagazine.com, back when we had columnists.

We just got this note from him:

I am finally doing my one man show about upbringing with “hippie adjacent” parents and being sent to scary extreme summer camp at age 9 and hating it, here in LA- as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Show is called GET ME OUT OF HERE! and is this thurs and sun june 23rd & 26th.

We’ll miss it by just a week! We just read all about Gropman’s one-man show, and it sounds like a hoot.

…in a bid to “toughen him up”, Adam’s parents sent the nine year old Adam to the most rugged, stripped-down, back-to-nature camp in all of New England, for two months. Luckily, they also saved a shoe box full of the letters sent back and forth that summer between the somewhat precocious and extremely foul-mouthed Adam and the astoundingly zen, placid-toned Mr. & Mrs. Gropman, and this correspondence forms a powerful backbone to the show.

A short, 8-10 minute version of “Get Me Out of Here” (called “Unhappy Camper”) was presented a while back as part of a larger show and was a smashing success. If you’re in Los Angeles this week, check it out!

After our posting on the Jo Koy incident (scroll down to “The Possible Return of Charlie McCarthyism”), we received a flurry of hate mail. A lot of snark and not a lot of illumination. When the vitriol comes in piles like that– and when we’re as busy as we are– it’s tough to dissect the various lame-o arguments and highlight the illogic, outline the hypocrisy and defend our position. And quite often the folks who attack our posting obviously haven’t read any of our many posts on similar incidents that touched on related issues of free expression. It’s a bit frustrating.

We’ve said it, and said it again. So our desire to reiterate it one more time is zero.

It’s interesting how some of our critics are trying to lump us in with the alleged homophobes. We defend free speech and free expression and we’re called names and it’s suggested/hinted/implied that we are filled with hate. Not sure how that works.

A couple of comics were coerced into apologizing for remarks made onstage. We are of the opinion that such a trend is bad for standup. We made what we believe are pretty good arguments supporting that opinion and we express a fear that such incidents might have a deleterious effect on standup in ways that we can’t really quantify or qualify. But we believe they’re real and possible.

We end with a quote from that great legal scholar and champion of free expression, Vince Vaughn, who issued what the entertainment media and others called a “non-apology” when the trailer for his movie “The Dilemma” contained an alleged homophobic line.

“Let me add my voice of support to the people outraged by the bullying and persecution of people for their differences, whatever those differences may be. Comedy and joking about our differences breaks tension and brings us together. Drawing divided lines over what we can and cannot joke about does exactly that; it divides us. Most importantly, where does it stop.”

An article from last week, on the Atlantic website, entitled “In Cambodia, Comedians Double as Government Propagandists,” tells the story of Krem and a gaggle of other Cambodian comedians who are members of the Prime Minister Bodyguard Unit, an autonomous section within the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. They also share membership in the “Propaganda and Education Commission” which is made up of “152 performers and artists, including the bulk of the country’s comedians.” It’s not all the comedians– just most of them– who carry their leader Hun Sen’s message to the people via television, radio and live performances.

…this kind of politicized comedy is shown on all of the country’s eight television stations — performed by comedians who, frequently, are also paid members of Hun Sen’s personal bodyguard unit. Many of the comedians bear the rank of colonel or lieutenant colonel.

The country’s dozens of “colonel comedians” underscore the extent to which Hun Sen and his CPP have consolidated power over the past two decades, successfully marginalizing not just rival politicians but also dissenting artistic and cultural voices.

“It is further evidence of the deep reach of Hun Sen’s personal networks of loyalties, and the growing difficulty of doing opposition politics in Cambodia,” said Duncan McCargo, a professor of Southeast Asian politics at the University of Leeds.

Atlantic finesses the situation by sayin that opposition to Hun Sen has been “consolidated”. (Translation: Hun Sen is systematically eliminating opposition by jailing journalists, opposition members of Parliament, lawyers and “government critics.” The leader of Funcinpec, the only serious opposition part, fled and is in exile in Paris after being sentenced to jail.) Perhaps we can’t blame the author, Julia Wallace, as she is living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

Wallace tells of another comedian named “Koy” (not to be confused with Jo Koy):

Koy, the stage name of Colonel Chuong Chy, a doughy, thick-featured man, is also active on behalf of the government. Of the four men in the comedy troupe that Koy leads, three of them — including Kren, a popular comedian with dwarfism — belong to the Prime Minister Bodyguard Unit. The fourth is an officer in the 70th Infantry Brigade of the Cambodian army, which is also closely linked to the premier and has been accused of human rights abuses.

Like Krem, Koy joined the bodyguards in the 1980s, starting out as a captain and rising to colonel two years ago in a mass promotion of entertainers. In person, he is terse and severe, rarely cracking a smile. Although he openly describes the work he does as propaganda, he insists his troupe writes all its own skits with no government input.

“We just tell people how good [Hun Sen] is, how he constructed the country, how many buildings he builds,” Koy told me backstage after one of his performances, fiddling irritably with the keys to his Lexus. “Nobody tells us what to say. We just describe what we have seen- — roads, schools, irrigation — and make it a little bit funny.”

Emphasis ours.

A decade ago, when Funcinpec was a more serious contender for power, it had its own comedian-affiliates. But as the party has dwindled over the past few years, its comedians have all defected to the CPP.

The best known of them, Lorcy, struggled for years to find work after campaigning for Funcinpec during the 2003 election season. He claimed he had been blacklisted from the airwaves and feared for his life. In 2009, he defected from Funcinpec and published an open letter of apology to Hun Sen through General Bunheang. His career immediately picked up. Krem invited him to join his troupe for a guest appearance, and now Lorcy regularly performs on two government-affiliated stations. On April 1, he became a lieutenant colonel in the bodyguard unit.

“I was really regretful of my mistake, which was why I apologized for forgiveness…”

Were this kind of situation to exist in America, we wonder: Would you be in jail for cracking wise about the oppressive regime? Or would you be the comedian who flees to Australia, telling jokes about the awful conditions in your native land? Or would you be the comedian with the Lexus?

We call this one “Geechy Guy MacPherson” That’s Geechy Guy on the left and Guy MacPherson on the right, at the Fryers at the Orleans, on Friday night.

It’s another in a series! (It all started with Dwight Slade Ham and continued with Todd Paul Ogata.) We must be ever on our toes for the next “mash-up!”

Vancouver journo, FOS and Frequent Commenter Guy MacPherson was in town for a few days to take in some shows, write some reviews and conduct some interviews (he interrogated The Male Half at Hooters last Wednesday). He curates “The Comedy Couch– Your Guide to the Comedy Scene in Vancouver and Beyond.” (CORRECTION: The Comedy Couch is curated by Raegan Birch, whom MacPherson calls, “a true friend of comedy.”) Check out his podcast– he interviews everybody. (And you can read a transcript of a recent telephone interview with Tracy Morgan here.)

That’s Jack Benny on the left and George Burns on the right. It’s from the Riviera’s collection of 60′s and 70′s portraits and candids adorning the wall outside the Crazy Girls showroom. That George Burns was a snappy dresser.

From the free legal encyclopedia Jrank.com, is this paragraph, from their summary of Lenny Bruce’s Café au Go Go obscenity prosecution (“the most controversial obscenity trial in American history”):

Herbert S. Rune, an inspector with the NYC Department of Licenses, was the final witness called to testify. He had watched Bruce perform, jotting down surreptitious notes. Over defense objections, he read out an edited version of Bruce’s act that highlighted the language used and virtually ignored the context. Worst of all was Rune’s assertion, bitterly denied by the defense, that Bruce had fondled the microphone in an obvious and suggestive manner.

These days, we don’t worry about such things as licensing inspectors or cops with brush cuts and shiny shoes sitting in the darkness at the back of the room. No, these days, we’re enlightened. Lenny Bruce’s world had angry and disgusted judges who gladly heard obscenity or drug cases, eager D.A.’s who sought to make their reputations by hounding high-profile comics and musicians, vindictive bureaucrats who granted or withheld cabaret licenses.

We’re so glad that’s not going on any more.

What we have nowadays is perhaps worse, in some ways. Take the case of Jo Koy.

Huffingtonpost.com is gleefully reporting on the latest comedian who has been forced to issue an apology for something he said onstage, during the course of a June 15 comedy performance– Jo Koy. During a recent performance in Chicago, Koy called someone in the audience a “fucking faggot.”

Someone else in the audience dutifully reported the incident to the Windy City times– which subsequently reported that Koy let loose with an “an anti-gay rant.” The show was at the Vic Theatre and was part of the Just For Laughs Festival. So we figure it was JFL who squeezed Koy’s testicles to produce the lightning-fast mea culpa.

Instead of an intricate chain of D.A.’s and judges and cops and inspectors conspiring to wipe out obscenity while burnishing their credentials or solidifying their re-election or fulfilling their duties as good little bureaucrats, we have citizen crusaders who take the airtight case directly to the court of public opinion.

Instead of cops wearing wiretaps or a former CIA agent in attendance or an awkward cop in the back of the house scribbling notes– which are then read back in open court, void of all context– we have eager busybodies with cellphones and Facebook blogs and Twitter accounts who dutifully report the egregious offenses of this comedian or that.

In this case, the comedian doesn’t even have the benefit of a trial or witnesses or an arraignment or a plea. In the court of public opinion, the comedian is guilty until proven guilty. The apology follows quickly and the “jury” decides exactly what the punishment will be.

Koy no doubt thought he had a pass by virtue of his frequent appearances on gay-friendly Chelsea Handler‘s late-night talk show. Turns out obtaining this pass is trickier than anyone can imagine.

We’ve been warning folks about such persecution for quite some time now. For years. Way back when, we told folks that they had better not throw Larry the Cable Guy under the bus. Initially, it might be white males with southern accents who are sacrificed to the PC gods, but we cautioned that they were just getting warmed up. (“They” being any group who feels aggrieved and who has the juice and the knowhow to whip the MSM into a righteous, anti-comedian frenzy. It might be a group that insists on spelling “womyn” with a “y,” or it might be the League of United Latin American Citizens or it might be GLAAD.)

Eventually, they got around to Sarah Silverman, then they set their sights on other trophies. When will it stop? It won’t.

And all along, fellow comedians insist on taking the side of the prosecution, perhaps hoping that such a show will immunize them against any future actions. It won’t.

Perhaps comedians should print out a formal apology, laminate it, keep it in a jacket pocket or in the wallet and whip it out when something is said onstage that might anger any professional grievance mongers. Reading it immediately after any possibly offensive statement might short-circuit the cyber kangaroo court and nip the whole “controversy” in the bud.

We might also suggest purchasing a digital recorder that slips easily into a pocket– the VN-7000 goes for $40 at Staples. Maybe a Flip camera, too. Paranoia? Not at all. The best offense is a good defense. If nothing else, the beleaguered comic can provide the context that never seems to survive these witch hunts.

Often the comedians who dare to appear on NBC’s America’s Got Talent are met almost immediately with boos. There’s something very Showtime at the Apollo about the crowds they recruit for AGT. They have a hair-trigger and they’re demonstrative– especially when it comes to comics.

Geechy Guy, however, handled the situation smartly– first, by stressing the world record holder joke-telling thing and second, by steamrolling the audience. On Joke Number Two, he stepped on the audience’s (positive) reaction and made it quite clear that he was not interested in basking in their approval but was instead intent on banging out a lot of jokes in a short time and that they had better catch up.

The result is predictable:

Piers Morgan is a world-class idiot. (We came to this conclusion after watching Piers Morgan Tonight– the only show that can make one nostalgic for Larry King.) Try to imagine his utterances without the British accent. Not only is he utterly lacking in brains, but he seems to have a curious blank spot where any normal person has a sense of humor. “I didn’t find you remotely funny…” says Morgan, after Geechy Guy’s hysterical barrage of one-liners. Not even remotely? He should donate his brain to science.

Full disclosure: The Male Half regularly performs on Geechy Guy’s “Dirty Joke Show” at the Iowa Theater for the Performing Arts at Hooters Casino Hotel here in Vegas. The show, produced by Geechy Guy, features him and a rotating cast of two other comedians telling dozens of old jokes (or “street jokes”) in a back-alley setting. The pretense being that the audience is witnessing three comedians sitting just outside a fictional comedy club’s stagedoor, shooting the breeze and entertaining each other by telling the jokes that have amused them over the years. Great fun for the audience and, says the Male Half, great fun for the performers as well.

The Male Half got a nice hit in the local paper. (The local paper, in this case, is the Las Vegas Review-Journal.) It’s a nice article by Corey Levitan that contains mini-profiles of The Male Half and four other Vegas-based comics who “haven’t yet turned the corner to fame.”

Geechy Guy, Ron Shock, Matt Markman and Rob Sherwood are the others in the quintet.

You can read it for yourself (and see the sweet picture of TMHOTS!) by Googling “lvrj mckim” (without the quotes, of course).

It’s a very nice thing to get such a high-profile (front page of the arts and leisure section, above the fold, color pic) hit just 122 days after hitting town.

And normally we’d link to it, maybe even run the pic and an excerpt from the copy, but we’re dealing with the Stephens Media-owned Las Vegas Review-Journal. And they employ a company whose sole purpose is to harass blogs and other websites for copyright infringement. (We’ve posted about this in the past.)

The deal is, if you link to a piece (or excerpt from a piece) in one of the publications that this company is acting on behalf of, you open yourself up to ruinous litigation. Thus the rather ungainly Googling advised above.

(There is hope. A judge here in Nevada has ruled that the company “has made multiple inaccurate and likely dishonest statements to the court” and that they must “show cause, in writing, no later than two weeks from the date of this order, why it should not be sanctioned for this flagrant misrepresentation to the court.” Pretty strong language from the man with the gavel. We can link to that article without fear. Some law bloggers are speculating that it could be the end of the company. Others have even speculated that it could signal the end of the aforementioned Stephens Media!)

Tracy Morgan told a bunch of jokes at an appearance in Nashville, at the Ryman.

From what we can tell, it was just Tracy being Tracy. (Which is more outrageous than nearly anyone else out there by a factor of about 12.)

Of course, it all would have passed without a media firestorm had not someone named Kevin Rogers posted a lengthy rant– complete with quotes– on his Facebook page, which was then picked up by (near as we can tell) Huffington Post.

Rogers didn’t record the performance. (If he did, he doesn’t say.) But it seems that the media has taken the HuffPo account (which is based on Rogers’ account) and run with it.

Then Wanda Sykes (going by what she read in the HuffPo) took to the Twittersphere to condemn Morgan.

We wearily take to the keyboard to defend Morgan. It is truly eye-glazing to behold yet another “controversy” involving the “outrageous” and “hate-filled” comments of a comedian. The stories follow a similar pattern– comedian makes outrageous comments onstage (how odd!), professional grievance group files complaint through the media, comedian attracts defenders and detractors, detractors demand apology from comedian while simultaneously bullying supporters into retracting support, comedian issues apology, professional grievance group designs additional penance involving some sort of cash settlement combined with public humiliation/symbolic gesture, comedian is given permission to continue plying his trade, pundits use the incident to make larger points about society, all is forgotten until the next comedian steps on some sort of grievance land mine.

In this case, the supporters were CNN correspondent and syndicated columnist Roland Martin and fellow comedian Chris Rock, who tweeted, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in (a) world where Tracy Morgan can’t say foul inappropriate s**t .”

We’re inclined to agree with Rock. Sykes wasn’t so inclined.

Rock, after a Tweet-lashing from Sykes, back-pedaled.

Martin has doubled down. His follow-up (after he received a blizzard of hate mail for his original column) column contains a reasoned discussion of the matter.

Of course, Morgan has issued a “heartfelt” apology. It is, as are most of these apologies, worthless.

Sykes has likened Morgan’s jokes to “yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” She seems particularly peeved that Morgan did the bit in Tennessee. And, of course, you know what that means– Tennesseeans, even ones who pay $86 to see a black man perform in Nashville’s country music shrine, are racist knuckle-dragging cretins too stupid to move out of a state that has passed an “anti-gay bill” (HuffPo’s characterization, not ours). This entire incident looks to be centered on a beef that GLAAD and other affiliated groups have with Tennessee over HB 600, which was signed into law on Monday, May 23.

Morgan is a political football. We have no doubt he was doing the same “rant” in every city he performs in. His grave mistake was doing it in a politically-charged atmosphere.

We defended Sykes when she was labeled a “lazy racist” by an imbecilic columnist for a Tiger Woods joke she told in a television monologue. We’re a bit taken aback at her bullying of Morgan and Rock, though. She seems to have put politics and group identity ahead of free expression and art in this case. Particularly appalling is Rock’s reversal.

The mangling of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ quote aside, Sykes’ analogy is seriously flawed. No person can believe that anyone would commit a violent act based on the lunatic ramblings of Tracy Morgan. Not a serious one.

Sykes’ quote, from a quote in a publication called “The New Civil Rights Movement,” gives away the game:

Sykes said, “I do believe in free speech, but for a youth in TN or any other numerous place, Tracy just yelled, ‘Fire,’ in a crowded theater,” adding, “Morgan “is just a dumb comic,” but also said she faults Tennessee lawmakers. “They’ve created an anti-​gay environment,” and suggested she didn’t “believe Tracy would be so ignorant in LA, because we have a mayor, a city council,and police chief who believes we are all equal.”

Morgan is “just a dumb comic,” therefore, he is a tool, to be used. Under the bus he goes. It’s a small price to pay for the cause.

We are reminded of the Doomsday Clock created by the boys at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “The closer the clock is to midnight, the closer the world is estimated to be to global disaster. As of January 14, 2010 (2010 -01-14), the Doomsday Clock now stands at six minutes to midnight.” Every time some rogue nation acquires nukes, the clock ticks closer to midnight. Were we less busy, we’d create a similar, vivid analogous doomsday clock that estimated our slide toward disaster in matters of free expression. The clock just got closer to midnight.