John Donvan

This is Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan. Today we’re doing something a little bit different. In this particular debate, the fault line relates to the world of comedy. We asked two comedians to come to a comedy club in New York City to debate our question. So what you’re gonna hear is a serious debate, but it’s also gonna be funny. We asked our good friend of the show and previous guest moderator, previous debater in fact, Nick Gillespie, to take this one on. There will also be some references in this debate to sex and some other edgy materials, so please take care of listening with children. And with that, my good friend guest moderating Nick Gillespie. Here’s Nick.

Nick Gillespie

Welcome to Open to Debate. I’m Nick Gillespie, editor at large for Reason Magazine. And I’m guest moderating this debate here at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. We’re here to debate the question, is wokeness killing comedy? I guess the very first thing we should do is define the terms of debate. Being woke or staying woke is a phrase that originated in African American slang, referring to the urgency for blacks to have a heightened awareness of social inequality, especially related to race. In contemporary usage, it means emphasizing issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, and more when analyzing all social interactions.

Supporters of wokeness say it calls much needed attention to neglected, but systemic power imbalances, while critics see wokeness as a way of shutting down legitimate debate and discussion. We’re gonna debate that tonight. But before we hear from them, we’re gonna hear from you, the audience. I’m going to ask you your opinion on the topic before the debate, and then afterwards to see if you might have changed your point of view. So first, let’s find out to, you know, I want you to applaud to show your opinion as it stands right now. Yes, no and undecided. Please clap if you think. Yes, wokeness is killing comedy. Now clap if you think no wokeness is not killing comedy. And finally, clap if you’re undecided.

Alright, so there’s some people out there who are undecided. It sounded to my ears, which are not very good, uh, that the, uh, the no side, wokeness is not killing comedy, had a slight edge, but it seemed pretty, pretty even. I wanna introduce our debaters now. Arguing that yes, wokeness is killing comedy, comedian, producer, and author of That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore, Lou Perez. And arguing no, wokeness is not killing comedy, comedian and actor Michael Ian Black. Uh, before we get started in the nitty-gritty, I want to, uh, get a sense of why each of you care about this. Lou, why did you want to take this topic on? What are the stakes for you in this argument?

Lou Perez

I have no other skills than comedy.

Michael Ian Black

(laughs).

Lou Perez

So my resume is just like sending a turd to HR at this point. And I really made the mistake of saying like, F you before I had F you money.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

So this is really important to me, guys.

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

All right. Michael, uh, same question to you. Why did you want to take this topic on? What are the stakes for you?

Michael Ian Black

Like Lou, I have no other skills. I, uh, uh, consider myself a warrior for the First Amendment, and yet I am arguing that wokeness is not killing comedy. If anything, I think it is helping comedy. I say that as a warrior of the First Amendment.

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

Okay. All right. Uh, let’s get to it then. We want each of you to take a couple of minutes to explain your basic position. Lou, you’re up first. You answered, yes, wokeness is killing comedy. You’ve got four minutes to tell us why.

Lou Perez

Thank you guys so much. Uh, just, you know, I went to college not too far, far from here. I went to NYU and that’s where I started doing comedy. This is my first time back in the neighborhood in a really long time. You know, when the debate was announced, uh, everybody who reached out to me was like, “Is wokeness killing comedy? Like, is that even debatable?” Like, yeah, like, of course it is. Which put more pressure on me, ’cause I’m like, “If I lose, man, I suck.”

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

And I was also a little nervous too, because, you know, the reality is I fear that the systems of oppression might keep me from winning this thing.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

After all, Michael Ian Black is way more successful than I am-

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

… also better looking. And he’s a straight white man. Now, for me, I am a Latino.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

My full name is Luisa Matte Perez. And my father is an immigrant. And I do not have anywhere near 1.7 million Twitter followers. Dude-

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

… Michael has all of the power. Yeah. And to make matters worse, to make matters worse, I took a 23 and Me. The results came back today. Turns out I’m 4.8% indigenous American, which means that I’m more oppressed than I ever knew.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

So not only will Michael Ian Black be punching down on me-

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

… but he’ll be doing it on stolen land-

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

… of which I own 4.8%. It’s very important when we’re having a debate about wokeness for you to know about our identities. That’s very, very important. And thank you so much, Nick, for defining woke, because I came into this, and I was like, “I don’t know what that means.”

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

But wokeness deals a lot with power structures. You know, there are, the system is structured to oppress certain groups and raise other groups up, and the, and the group at the top, straight white men like Michael.

Michael Ian Black

In fairness, I’m barely straight.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

I did not yield my time.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

My people have been spoken over too much.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

But what does wokeness look like in practice today? Well, you get things like the word Latinx, which I do not identify with. I know that every time a white person says Latinx, an angel gets an NPR toe peg.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

With wokeness, you get things like, for all you people who showed up here on time, you are perpetrating white supremacy.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Now, it would be one thing if wokeness was just like goofy stuff we can laugh at, but there’s a very strong censorship component to it, right? And it’s also a problem because wokeness has infected every institution, academia, media, entertainment. So they actually have the power to shut you down to shut you up. So that’s why I’m here right now, because at its most basic level, wokeness is a puritanism that strangles creativity kills joy. And as Michael and I will show is killing comedy.

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

Okay. All right. Thank you, uh, Lou Perez. Michael Ian Black, you are arguing no, wokeness is not killing comedy.

Michael Ian Black

Lou, that was a very funny, entertaining four minutes of comedy, which really did not address the central question in the debate-

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

… is wokeness killing comedy? I was all set. I wrote notes to refute your points. Sadly, you made no points.

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

It was funny, but like a lot of standup comedy, you know, it didn’t, didn’t really it, it didn’t, it didn’t, it didn’t, it didn’t, uh, uh, make your argument for you. I will make an argument against wokeness killing comedy. And I think, I think the reason you were struggling, perhaps, and I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, is there is no evidence that wokeness is killing comedy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Uh, we stand, we sit here today in the Comedy Cellar just down the street from the other Comedy Cellar.

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

They had to open this one because that one was doing such gangbusters business in this age of Me Too and wokeness. You can really point to no comedians who have had their, uh, careers utterly derailed by comments they may have made other than perhaps Michael Richards, and I think we understand why. Um, if you don’t recall, Michael Richards got on a stage not so different than this one, and just started screaming the N word for about three minutes. That didn’t go over well for him, but he may be the rare exception.

The fact of the matter is comedy is alive and well and flourishing in ways that it never has before. And more importantly than that, it’s flourishing with a much, uh, uh, a broader spectrum of people than it ever has before. It’s no longer just swarthy guys sitting up on a stage. I’m glad that, uh, it’s dudes up here debating this, because this seems to be a problem really only among dudes and in particular, mostly white dudes. Um, you do have people like Dave Chappelle who complain about it because he can’t make as many transsexual jokes as he thinks he deserves to make. And I should rephrase that. He keeps making them. Nobody is stopping him from doing so.

Nobody is stopping any comedian from performing any kind of material they want. The difference is audiences are a little bit more sensitive, perhaps, and I’m not gonna say sensitive, I’m gonna say discerning. They’re more discerning than they used to be. A good friend of mine, Mike Birbiglia, who’s a really great comedian, had a joke in his act a while ago about how he could never compete with the comedian who used to get up on stage and just go, “Hey, how many,” and I can’t say the word because we are on NPR, he would just go, uh, “Hey, you’re a F word.” And you’re an F word, meaning a slur for gay people, and it would get huge laughs.

We don’t make those jokes anymore because there’s nothing inherently comedic about calling somebody a slur, wokeness sort of aw- awakened a lot of comedians to that point. It is wokeness that said, “Hey, if you wanna come up on stage and make ethnic jokes, that’s fine, but at least have a smart point of view about it. At least be able to defend your material instead of just getting up on here and slamming various ethnicities for no reason other than it’s easy to do.”

Nick Gillespie

All right. Thanks to you both, we know where you stand and why. We’re gonna dive into our discussion, is wokeness killing comedy, after this.

John Donvan

Hi, it’s John Donvan. I have a favor to ask of you, our listeners. We want to know what matters to you. We’re curious to know what issues you are seeing right now that you would like to hear debated. Please send us your ideas in an email or a voice memo to hi@opentodebate.org. When I say hi, that means hi, how are you? Hi. Hi@opentodebate.org. Bye.

Nick Gillespie

Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m guest moderator Nick Gillespie. We’re at the Comedy Cellar in New York City debating the question, is wokeness killing comedy? We’ve just heard our opening statements from Lou Perez and Michael Ian Black. Lou, your basic position is that wokeness is censoring the minds of comedian and it’s strangling creativity. Michael Ian Black argued, no, comedy is more successful, more popular than ever. There’s a broader spectrum of comedians. Lou, I want to go to you first. Do you agree with Michael that comedy is bigger than ever? And if so, does that undercut the idea that wokeness is somehow strangling creativity or or killing comedy?

Lou Perez

Well, I think something we need to talk about, um, and Michael has brought this up before, um, in, in his opening the idea of if you’re going to make a, you know, an insensitive joke or a joke about racism like that, you should have re a good reason to back it up that you did that. And that actually flies in the face of wokeness because for wokeness intent doesn’t matter, impact matters. So you can, you can craft like the most amazing joke about race and, and racial dynamics and all that. But if it, if it’s capable of doing harm to somebody, then it’s a big no-no. And that’s where people can actually, you know, come back at you for that.

And as far as, you know, things being, you know, bigger now, like yeah, there’s opportunities there to, you know, get yourself out there. But ultimately what I, what I’m concerned about is the material that’s coming out and where people fear to, to go fear to tread.

Nick Gillespie

Do you feel like people are doing, I don’t know, less racial, less sexual, uh, content than they were doing, I don’t know, 15, 20 years ago? Or how, how might we measure that?

Lou Perez

So, so I’ve been doing comedy for around 20 years. I think Michael’s been doing it maybe like, uh, 30. And one of the, one of the things that-

Michael Ian Black

[inaudible

].

Lou Perez

… happened, just he looks like it doesn’t-

Michael Ian Black

Not my age.

Lou Perez

Uh, one of the things-

Michael Ian Black

I thought this was gonna be respectful, Lou.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

So one of the things that I had to do, you know, I, I had to research and, you know, go back and, and check out old material that, that Michael did, right? Because that’s-

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

… that’s what the culture tells us. Like, “Hmm, here’s a guy who’s pro woke. I wonder what dirty secrets he has?” And honestly, I felt like a dirt bag going back and, and doing that because sure, Michael has done blackface with Stella (laughs). He has done Asian face with Stella, rape jokes, jokes about Puerto Ricans, pedophile jokes, but also.

Michael Ian Black

AIDS jokes.

Lou Perez

AIDS jokes. He has a, he has a poem he did, it’s called, If I Had A Slave-

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

… which is brilliant. It is awesome. It’s such a great thing. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a thing that a comedian, another comedian made that I’m like, “Damn, I wish I, I wish I had, uh, thought of that. I wish I could have done that.” And he did it already. And Michael has so much material out there that today would be a no-go, but he had the freedom and the courage to do it and to test the boundaries of it. And now you’re saying, “Well, you can’t do that now.” And I, I, I have a, I have an issue with that.

Michael Ian Black

Uh-

Nick Gillespie

Do you wanna recite If I Had a Slave?

Michael Ian Black

If I could. I was actually gonna Google it to see if I could, but I don’t have internet down here. Uh, but the basic, the basic gist is if I had a slave, I would be such a good slave master.

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

It’s amazing.

Lou Perez

It’s, it’s incredible, really.

Michael Ian Black

But the fact that I’m able to come up on this stage and say that and get a laugh, I feel like disproves your point, which is that yes, I, I feel like I can still do that in material. Um, blackface, I don’t think I would do anymore. And I think that’s exactly right. But the question is, and we did it once for a television show called Stella on Comedy Central. The point of the, the point of the blackface was to actually show how offensive it was. Um, and the standards and practices department at Comedy Central approved that joke. Would they approve it now? Probably not. You’re probably right about that. But, but you’re talking about, I think, minutia in the larger scope of things. Um, the fact of the matter is, Nick you asked the question, uh, are people doing less sex material or race material or what have you?

And what I have noticed in my time in comedy over these however many decades, is that material does change and it does respond to kind of the social morays that are percolating right now. There was a moment when, uh, we had a terrific opening comic named Ginny Hogan, who you, uh, if you’re listening on the radio, didn’t see or didn’t hear, but she was great. She had a joke, a really funny joke that she said she wrote during the Me Too movement but couldn’t… Jeannie, come up. Can you say the joke?

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

I don’t wanna, I don’t want, I don’t wanna put the joke-

Lou Perez

Are you forcing her?

Michael Ian Black

… in her mouth?

Lou Perez

I didn’t know we could bring guest witnesses.

Audience

(laughs).

Ginny Hogan

I think-

Nick Gillespie

Yeah. Yeah.

Lou Perez

Because I have, like, I got a physicist out there-

Michael Ian Black

(laughs).

Lou Perez

… he’s ready to say anything I want him to say.

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

Uh, Ginny Hogan, please.

Ginny Hogan

I don’t, I don’t wanna take sides, but I didn’t stop telling this joke because it was offensive, but it is… Okay, I’ll tell the joke. I, the joke is, I only like gentle sex because I’m a very light sleeper.

Michael Ian Black

That’s a great joke. And Ginny said, Ginny said she wrote it during Me Too, but then didn’t quite feel comfortable doing it during Me Too, or the sort of the height of the Me Too movement, but now sort of feels like maybe she should bring it back. So you’re seeing kind of social mores sort of ebb and flow kind of in real time people sensitivities kind of rise and fall with the tides. I don’t know that that’s a bad thing, and I don’t know that it’s a bad thing for comedians to respond to that.

Nick Gillespie

Is it a bad thing if things get judged by contemporary morays looking backwards? So, I mean, would there be a Blazing Saddles, uh, under today’s kind of, you know, woke atmosphere?

Michael Ian Black

I feel like Blazing Saddles is kind of the defacto movie to go to.

Nick Gillespie

But what about more recent, more recent movies like Tropic Thunder or The Ringer, which, uh, you know, focus on Special Olympics and things like that. And I’m not saying those movies have to be made, but is it a sign that wokeness has throttled the, you know, range of material that’s gonna be used?

Michael Ian Black

Well, unfortunately, it’s impossible to look backwards and say, “Well, this would get made, or this wouldn’t get made.” And I don’t know that it’s a particularly useful exercise because things that we making now may not have been able to get made then, for example. I don’t know that Barbie would have been green-lit in its current, uh, form, uh, 10 years ago, but it is now. And part of what’s so good about it is the trickle-down effect. When we start saying we as an audience or we as performers should be more sensitive to the kinds of things we’re saying, what it does is it makes comedy a safer space for people who weren’t necessarily performing comedy before.

I’ve seen, um, the percentage of women grow exponentially in the last few years, the percentage of South Asian or Middle Eastern, people of different walks of life. That in and of itself isn’t important. What is important is that people from different walks of life bring different unique voices and experiences to a standup stage, to a television set, a movie set, a podcast.

Nick Gillespie

And who knows, in a few decades, maybe they’ll be on this stage in this debate.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Nick, if I could, [inaudible

] if I could just jump in, I, yeah, yeah, because how-

Michael Ian Black

Can you, do you want-

Lou Perez

Well, a couple of things I’d like to talk, uh, [inaudible

] I’d like to, to [inaudible

].

Nick Gillespie

Yeah. Would you address, uh, say what you’re gonna say and also, uh, if, if you’re not also factor in this question of trickle-down comics. Um, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Lou Perez

Yeah, they’re, they’re all Reaganites, uh-

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Yeah.

Nick Gillespie

Um, he knew how to tell a joke.

Lou Perez

I’m not necessarily concerned about the stuff that’s already been made. Uh, even, uh, you know, even all the examples of like, of scenes that need to be cut in order to be, uh, you know, more palatable to a modern audience. Take something like Roald Dahl where, you know, uh, using words like fat, but that’s just going too far.

Nick Gillespie

Just to clarify that so people understand Roald Dahl, you know, the venerated children’s author, his books are going to be rewritten by his literary executor in his publishing house to stop calling characters fat, bald, short, ugly, and the like.

Lou Perez

Yeah, they’re gonna be, uh, brave now.

Nick Gillespie

Yeah. That, that’s all I know.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Are they gonna do anything to, um, ameliorate Roald Dahl’s, virulent antisemitism?

Michael Ian Black

They’re working on that.

Nick Gillespie

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

They’re working on that. That’s, you know, after this project.

Lou Perez

So, so, um, when it comes to, when it comes to representation, right? As somebody who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s consuming comedy, most of the stuff that I watched were black shows in Living Color, Living Single, Rock, Fresh Prince of Bel Air. On, when it came to movies, Eddie Murphy was my God. And so it’s sort of like, we’re, we’re sort of playing up this thing like, oh, we need more and more, uh, representation as if we’ve never had it before.

Michael Ian Black

I do think there’s something important and valuable about audiences seeing themselves reflected on, on the people they see on stage, or on TV or on movie. Doesn’t mean… in a movie. It doesn’t mean that you exclusively, uh, have to feel connection with people who maybe physically resemble you. But I think there is something valuable, and I know there is, because somebody like Atsuko Okatsuka who is a, a Japanese comedian who’s just sort of popped in the last year or so.

She talks about how, for example, when she was growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, Margaret Cho had a sitcom on, and it was Margaret Cho who sort of gave her the idea, um, that an Asian woman can get up on a stage and do this. And we see those kinds of stories time and time again. So I, I do think that more voices, um, can only help comedy, broader voices can only make comedy broader, richer, deeper, and, and more interesting ultimately.

Nick Gillespie

John Cleese, uh, of Monty Python fame, uh, is on the record as saying-

Lou Perez

No idea who that guy is.

Nick Gillespie

Yeah, he, uh-

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Let me, let me Wikipedia him.

Nick Gillespie

But he said, uh, you know, in the current climate, and both of you can get on this, but let’s go to Lou first. You think of an idea and you immediately think, “Oh, is that gonna get me into trouble? Uh, all of that stuff immediately stops you being creative.” Lou, that echoes some of what you were saying. I’m not accusing you of plagiarism.

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

But, you know, is that, is that what’s going on? And you were saying you don’t wanna look at things that were in the past, but is this a question of what is not being joked about?

Lou Perez

Yeah, so, uh, in, in my experience, you know, we could, we can go down a list of, you know, well-known people who have been, you know, supposedly canceled or, or not canceled. And, uh, in my own work, I can tell you that I’ve had experiences where I’ve worked with, uh, collaborators who I’ve known for years and worked with on a number of projects where they’ve asked me, “Please don’t credit me on this video because there’s an, there’s a chance that it could derail my career down the road.” There was, uh, the Washington Post reporter, Dave, uh, Weigel, who got into trouble because there was a joke that was posted on Twitter that he liked and shared, I believe. And it was, the joke was, “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Now, you guys all laughed but-

Michael Ian Black

Not all.

Lou Perez

… but, but the people here-

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

All of you guys laughed.

Nick Gillespie

(laughs).

Lou Perez

But, uh, Dave Weigel went under, uh, immense scrutiny. Uh, fellow journalists at the Washington Post wanted him to not only apologize, they didn’t wanna work with him, they claimed that he was making an unsafe environment and all that. That is the environment that up and coming comedians are trying to work in right now, where liking the wrong joke could derail your career. And I think that it, it makes it a, a very, very tough time in, in all, in a, in a, a genre that’s already tough. It’s already [inaudible

] tough to try to make, so to make something new, to make something great, to make something original, and then adding that pressure on it, I think is, uh, um, gets in the way.

Michael Ian Black

Dave Weigel is a journalist working at a newspaper. Whether his peers disagreed with him liking a joke, has nothing to do with the idea of whether, w- wokeness is killing comedy. The two are unrelated. And, and, and I, I just question, I mean, I’m, I, I guess, I guess what I want is evidence that somebody liking a joke has derailed a comedian’s career or affected comedy.

Nick Gillespie

Well, can we talk about a couple of examples? Uh-

Michael Ian Black

No, not if you-

Nick Gillespie

… I mean-

Michael Ian Black

… not if you not, if you have some at the ready and-

Nick Gillespie

Yes.

Michael Ian Black

… are prepared to defend them, then no.

Nick Gillespie

[inaudible

].

Michael Ian Black

Absolutely not.

Lou Perez

They are all in this room right now. Step up [inaudible

].

Nick Gillespie

Yeah, this is-

Michael Ian Black

Yes. Let’s talk about examples.

Nick Gillespie

Um, so, uh, Kevin Hart, uh-

Michael Ian Black

Yes.

Nick Gillespie

… in 2019, he was gonna, he got the gig hosting the Oscars, um, and then he was fired because of old homophobic tweets and jokes that he did.

Michael Ian Black

Yeah.

Nick Gillespie

Um, Shane Gillis was fired from SNL also in 2019, due to podcast appearances in the past where he did ethnic voices and jokes. Uh, again, in 2019, Roseanne Barr fired from her sitcom reboot after posting racist tweets. Uh, and then we can go back to 2011, Gilbert Gottfried, uh, the late Gilbert Gottfried, fired as the Voice of the Aflac Duck after making jokes about Japanese earthquakes and the ensuing tsunami. So those are a couple of examples.

Michael Ian Black

I think we have to make a distinction between killing comedy and getting canceled off your corporate network television show. I mean, when you talk about Shane Gillis, Kevin Hart or Roseanne Barr, you’re talking about very specific examples of people on very high profile, um, network broadcast television shows. Those networks have always been incredibly conservative. If you expect to, uh, in the case of Roseanne Barr, go on Twitter and make just racist comments and expect your corporate job to not react to that in some way. I wonder whether anybody in here who has a corporate job wouldn’t expect to sor- get some sort of reprimand for referring to one of Obama’s chief advisors as something outta Planet of the Apes. I expect they would.

Um, I don’t think that has anything to do with killing comedy. I think it has to do with not being an idiot, uh, when you have a very high profile corporate gig. In the case of Kevin Hart, um, I actually think that is a pretty good example of somebody who maybe, um, it went too far for, um, because I think, I think, and if, if, if I’m not, if I’m mistaken, then forgive me. But I think he did apologize for those jokes and those comments. That being said, Kevin Hart has done just fine since then. And Shane Gillis, by the way, also has done incredibly well since then.

Nick Gillespie

Is there a statute of limitations, or does that, you know, and somebody like Kevin Hart say, you know, is, I mean, does that betray a wokeness that really is kind of trying to squeeze, uh, Lou used the term, uh, puritan. You know, going all the way back where there’s a sin that’s committed and it can never be remedied or anything like that. Is there a statute of limitations on this sort of stuff? And if there isn’t, does that suggest maybe wokeness is a real factor?

Michael Ian Black

I, I, my my personal opinion is it’s a matter of individual, individuals, how they feel about a performer, and whether they want to forgive a performer for something they may have said or done in the past. I don’t know, like, there’s people… This isn’t about wokeness, but there’s certainly people who have said, “Louis CK why do I care that he, you know, did what he did? I’m gonna go see him.”

Nick Gillespie

Michael raises some good points that a lot of the people who get, uh, who get trotted out as examples of, you know, where wokeness has killed comedy or, or stopped careers end up doing, you know, pretty well. Um, is that a, is that a point against your argument?

Lou Perez

Well, I mean, there are people who survive assassination attempts.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Um, you know, so, uh, a lot of people have done well in spite of the, uh, uh, attacks on ’em. You, you brought up, uh, Shane Gillis. And for those of you who aren’t familiar with Shane Gillis, the guy is a great standup comedian, and he’s a great sketch comedian. At the time, I mean, people were saying, like, treating it like, “Ah, whatever, you know, uh, no SNL, he’ll, he’ll find gigs elsewhere.” You’re talking about, uh, a comedy institution that launched the careers of so many legends, and to have that taken away from you is not something I think is just, uh, easy to, uh, brush under the rug.

Nowadays, like if you wanna see great stuff, you gotta go and, and watch online. But there was a time again, when we were coming up where the vanguard of comedy was happening on the screen, it was happening on TV, both in cable and network. And I, I want it to be that I need to catch those network TV, uh, TV shows. Again, I want the greatest stuff to be there. I want so much comedy-

Michael Ian Black

But where, but where was the ed- edgy, anti woke comedy go, uh, on network television when you were growing up? I mean, you maybe, All in the Family. I mean, that, that’s-

Lou Perez

No, I’m not that old. How dare you?

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

No, me neither. Obviously not. I mean, I-

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Oh, I, I just, it’s something I read about. I, I would on, on a CD-ROM. I think in Living Color was great, I think Martin was great.

Michael Ian Black

I think a good synonym for what we’re talking about here is political correctness when it comes to comedy. It’s, political correctness has always been an issue in comedy. It goes back to the very beginning of comedy. George Carlin got arrested. Lenny Bruce got arrested. Like, there’s always been this tension in comedy. And comedy has always managed to find a way, because you can’t kill comedy. It’s, it’s, you know, you can’t kill humor.

Nick Gillespie

Lord knows we’re trying and we’re gonna-

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

… and we are gonna kill this segment right now. We’re gonna wrap up our discussion there, and when we come back, we’re gonna hear questions from the audience. Is wokeness killing comedy? We’ll be right back.

Welcome back to Open To Debate. I’m Nick Gillespie. We’re at the Comedy Cellar in New York City debating the question, is wokeness killing comedy? It’s time to take questions from the audience. We have a, uh, microphone and a podium, and, uh, please come over here, ask a question.

Audience

Question for Michael, which you said, if someone gets on stage and just uses ethnic slurs, that’s not humor. Humor is what makes people laugh. What’s like the principle here? ‘Cause there don’t, doesn’t seem to be con- um, coherent principles about punching down or what you can or can’t make jokes about or anything else.

Michael Ian Black

You can, you can make jokes about anything. I would encourage people to make jokes about anything. I mean, as I said, I am a First Amendment warrior, but, but there’s a difference between just sort of pointing out somebody’s ethnicity and using the sort of laziest tropes about it as humor versus having a sort of thoughtful take on ethnicity or sexual orientation or gender or whatever. And I think this movement has actually elevated comedy to make comedians, good comedians more thoughtful about the jokes that they make ’cause they can’t, it’s harder to, to, to, to stand on those crutches.

Audience

Thank you.

Nick Gillespie

Lou?

Lou Perez

O- one example that, that I wanna give you guys, I don’t know if you guys, uh, read recently in the New Yorker, but there was a, an interview with a comedian has Hassan Minaj.

Michael Ian Black

Oh, well, somebody meets the New Yorker. I’m impressed Lou.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Uh, with Hassan, uh, Minaj. And it turns out that, that Hassan, uh, who is a Muslim American, he made up a lot of the stories that he tells in his standup. And when called out on it, uh, instead of, you know, admitting, “Oh yeah, they’re lies,” what he called them was emotional truths, right? And he’s sort of playing a part, he’s playing a role in this sort of identity politics thing where all, you know, Muslims have the same experience. Now, I just want to p- put it out there. This is a guy who came out, who grew up, you know, like after 9/11 and went over 20 years as a Muslim American without having a racist experience, so much so he had to make them up. That’s something we all as Americans should be proud of.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Never forget that.

Nick Gillespie

Uh, let’s go to the next question.

Audience

Uh, Lou, you came here to argue that wokeness is killing comedy, and your opening act was making fun of woke people, which kind of seems like they just gave you a bunch of material to work with. And so I, I guess my question is that is, most comedians today get their followers on Instagram and TikTok, that as long as those platforms aren’t censoring comedians, isn’t wokeness just giving you good material to write jokes about, and you can get your followers that way?

Lou Perez

I, I hear, I, I hear what you’re saying there. The, the one, the one thing is like anyone who’s, you know, a creator on those platforms, understands that on each platform, you’re also dealing with different community standards. So one of the things I, I, I give many props to, to Michael for being, uh, you know, all about the First Amendment and a free speech warrior. The fact is that a lot of these platforms, they are not, whether it’s, uh, whether they’re, you know, because they’re, uh, you know, based in foreign countries, right?

So when it comes down to, um, the type of stuff that you’re able to put there, you’re often dealing with different sensors, you know, and that can make it tough to develop a, an audience online. So that’s why, uh, it, uh, you know, that that’s definitely a, a mark against it, I think.

Nick Gillespie

Uh, next question.

Audience

First name is Jean. Are you saying that, that wokeness has meant that certain jokes are indeed inadmissible, even though some people laugh at them? For example, there are many racist jokes that I grew up with having been born in 1944. We Jews, for example, have jokes about Gentiles.

Michael Ian Black

Yeah.

Audience

And like, one of them is, why did God make gentiles? Because somebody has to pay retail.

(laughs).

Okay, so God left. So the question is, are you saying that a joke that, uh, that’s racist oriented, that says that basically as a group gentiles are, are stupider than Jews who are smarter than Gentiles. Do you think that that’s, is that something that woke has destroyed, but that on net woke has brought benefits?

Michael Ian Black

No, uh, no, [inaudible

] because Jews are smarter.

Audience

Oh.

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

That’s just, that’s just a fact.

Audience

Are there good, are there good jokes?

Michael Ian Black

No [inaudible

].

Audience

Are there good jokes to say about that?

Michael Ian Black

Um, it’s an, it’s actually an interesting example, Jean, because the, the conceit behind the Jew Gentile joke right there that you just described is about, um, it is about a minority speaking, uh, punching up in a sense, because the Gentile is the, is the group that has the power in the culture.

Lou Perez

I think a wokeness today, we look at that, at that joke, at that situation, the context of that joke. And then we need to start doing this intersectional math, right? To determine whether or not the man making that joke is actually at a lower status, uh, than the, the, than the subject of the joke. And, uh, it can get really, really confusing, uh, because I’m terrible at math.

Nick Gillespie

Thank you. Uh, next question.

Audience

Hi, my name is Kay. It occurs to me that a good litmus test for this is if either of you have a joke that you would like to tell, but feel you can’t because of woke-ism.

Nick Gillespie

Okay, thank you.

Lou Perez

I do this thing where if I come up with, um, with a joke that I’m like, “Oh, I don’t know if I should, if I should, if I should tell it.” I, uh, send it to a friend. And if he laughs, uh, I, I, I, I, I post it and, uh, I have a really bad friend because he makes me post all the jokes that, that I shouldn’t do. Now, now I might be a little different than, than other comedians.

I, you know, speaking to other comedians, I know that there a lot of, a lot of them are like, “I’m not gonna post that because I just, I don’t want the, uh, you know, I don’t want the headache.” And it could be something that’s a great joke. It could be something that’s coming from a good place, but they’re like, “Ah, just forget it.” So I think we’re, we are different in that.

Nick Gillespie

Michael, what’s your-

Michael Ian Black

Uh-

Nick Gillespie

… secret joke that you would like to broadcast to everywhere in America?

Michael Ian Black

I’m trying to think about it. I, I don’t think I have one like I used to do, If I had a Slave pretty regularly on stage, (laughs), like, I used to read it out loud pretty regularly. And I guess the truth is like, I probably wouldn’t do it now, but maybe I would.

Nick Gillespie

Uh, next question.

Audience

Mike, you said that, um, wokeness has been a net positive to comedy, in your opinion. Do you think cancel culture also has been? And I’m curious if you, if your opponent see any positive on cancel culture and comedy in general? Thank you.

Michael Ian Black

I don’t think we’ve seen any examples of cancel culture in comedy, at least as it relates to speech. Um, none that I can think of, certainly none that have stuck. I mean, who’s been canceled in comedy? Can you think of any, Lou?

Lou Perez

Um, a lot of, uh, a lot of the examples that I have are sort of like happening, like across the pond. Graham Linehan is probably-

Michael Ian Black

Mm-hmm.

Lou Perez

… uh, an example he wrote, um, uh, Father Ted, which is a very popular, uh, sitcom over there, and-

Nick Gillespie

And the IT Crowd as well.

Lou Perez

And the IT Crowd. Excuse me.

Nick Gillespie

Yeah.

Lou Perez

See, part of the thing about wokeness is you, you is, there are certain things that somehow become, uh, you know, trip wires like saying that I believe that, uh, a woman is adult, is an adult female. Um, or I believe that there are, you know, biological differences between men and women and, and that sort of thing.

Nick Gillespie

Let’s go to the next question, please.

Audience

Hey guys, my name is Brenda Morden. First of all, thank you for being here and sharing your perspectives. Uh, to preface my question-

Nick Gillespie

Uh.

Audience

Regardless, well-

(laughs).

I know, I know, this, I’ll make it quick. Um-

Nick Gillespie

Just ask the question.

Audience

Where is comedy thriving?

Nick Gillespie

Ah.

Audience

And what, what can we do and what can the world do to ensure the thriving of comedy?

Michael Ian Black

The only place I would say comedy is not thriving right now is in, uh, sort of Hollywood movies, the sort of mid-range Hollywood movie. Other than that, I feel like it’s never been in better shape. Every medium-sized city has at least one comedy club, podcasts. Um, um, t- television comedy is really good right now. Internet comedy is really good. TikTok, Instagram, like, there’s so many-

Nick Gillespie

Politics.

Michael Ian Black

Politics.

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

Very, very funny.

Nick Gillespie

So it’s, it’s, uh, comedy is thriving-

Michael Ian Black

I think we’re in a great place.

Nick Gillespie

Do you agree with that? And, and-

Lou Perez

I, I mean, I agree that, that Ted Cruz is a hilarious Latinx politician.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

I agree. And if you have a problem with that, maybe you should check your privilege.

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

Alright. Uh, next question, please.

Audience

I was gonna give context, but I don’t want what happened to him [inaudible

]. Okay, (laughs). So my question-

Nick Gillespie

You’re, you’re in a comedy club-

Audience

Yes.

Nick Gillespie

… debating comedy.

Audience

Okay.

Nick Gillespie

That’s the context.

Audience

Okay. Is it true comedy if comedians feel hindered and become inauthentic? And if it’s not true comedy, isn’t it currently dead? Even if through social mores it can be revived?

Lou Perez

I talked to a PR person, they’re like, just try to be as authentic as you can, but be smart about it.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

Um, you know, I, I think there is something there, and I think that that, that authenticity, there’s something that, that speaks to people. If you, you are presenting your true self in the way that you view the world.

Nick Gillespie

Do you, do you worry at all though, to the questioner’s, uh, point, uh, does a fear of reprisal like term, you know, make people into-

Michael Ian Black

If your authentic self-

Nick Gillespie

… less interesting performance?

Michael Ian Black

… is going to generate the kind of reprisal that people are, that you’re afraid of, maybe you need to look at yourself a little bit more carefully.

Nick Gillespie

Next question.

Audience

My name is Robert. The question I would put forward to you is that, do you think it’s, it is, to use a, a favorite phrase, problematic, that a comedian has to be of a certain identity to make jokes about that identity? It seems to me the, the, the one area of, of wokeness is that you are not allowed to really have these cross identity kind of jokes that we, uh, may have had in the past.

Nick Gillespie

Thank you. Michael?

Michael Ian Black

Um, yes and no. Yes, I do think that that is a fear and a concern. No, I think comedians can do it and do do it if they’re kind of, if they’re not sort of locked in on one target. Like the thing that makes Chappelle, I think such a, like, good example of this is he’s so locked in on the transgender thing that it makes it, at least to me, it, it makes him kind of ugly as a comedian because he’s so focused on this one thing. Whereas if he sort of distributed his opprobrium, uh, more equally, I think it would, it, it would have the opposite effect.

Like a good example is, um, uh, Jeff Ross, who has sort of inherited Don Rickles mantle as an insult comedian. If you don’t know him, he calls himself the Roast Master General. He goes out, he makes fun of people, and he is beloved. I mean, he’s kind of anti-woke. He’s doing the Don Rickles thing and it goes over beautifully because it’s, it’s funny.

Nick Gillespie

Lou?

Lou Perez

Nothing.

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

All right. Okay. All right. That concludes our audience Q&A. Thank you. Thank you all. That was incredible. And I say that as a Gentile, so I realize I’m missing most of the jokes along with all the discounts.

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

Okay, you guys, you both made excellent points. Now is the time to bring it home with closing remarks. Lou, you’re up first. Tell us why this audience should be convinced that wokeness is killing comedy.

Lou Perez

The other day I got to sit down and interview Nadine Strosson, who’s a former president of the ACLU. And I spoke to Nadine, she has an incredible personal story. Her father is a survivor of the Holocaust, and, uh, he was set to be sterilized the day after US GIs, uh, freed him from his camp. So here’s a woman whose very existence hung in the balance. In, in an alternate, uh, reality, a day later, the world would not have a Nadine Strosson. And she would go on decades later to head the American Civil Liberties Union that would defend the speech of neo-Nazis, the very people who would’ve destroyed her father and her existence. And while that was going on during that interview, all I could think about was, “Man, I gotta talk with Michael Ian Black for…” Oh man, I missed a lot of her story.

Audience

(laughs).

Lou Perez

And I was just thinking about, “Man, I need like, examples of stuff that he did and that was bad. Was he ever a Nazi? Could I, could I use that?” But all this is to say, um, I, I, I, I believe very strongly in free speech, uh, as a, as a defender of it. And I look up to people like Nadine, like the ACLU, like the foundation for individual, individual rights and expression does right now to support, uh, and protect even the speech that we hate. And one of the great things that we get when we protect the speech that we hate is that we get some good jokes too. And I wanna make sure that we continue that and not allow wokeness to kill comedy.

Nick Gillespie

Thank you, Lou. And now Michael, you have the final say here. Your rebuttal, please.

Michael Ian Black

Well, I was talking to Elie Wiesel-

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

… and he agrees with me. Okay, Lou, he agrees with me.

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

You can’t just pull Holocaust survivor out of your pocket when you’re doing a debate on comedy. That’s unfair. That is a low blow. Lou, we agree essentially, we agree that free speech needs to be protected at all costs. My argument is we haven’t seen it be curtailed here in the world of comedy even a little bit. Free speech is flourishing, it’s alive, it’s well. I have a joke in my act about the First Amendment, when I, where I say, “You know, I’m a, I am a, a proud American. And one of the things I love so much is our First Amendment, which means I can get up on this stage and say whatever I want and it will be fine. And then if you do the same meaning the audience, I will have you removed.”

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

“Free speech for me, not for thee.” Comedy is flourishing, it’s alive, it’s well. Having a little bit more, uh, being a little bit more front of mind about other people’s experiences, I think is a good thing to, and I will quote the British actor, uh, Kathy Burke, who was on Ab Fab and other such things. She said, “I love being woke. It’s much nicer than being an ignorant effing twit.”

Audience

(laughs).

Michael Ian Black

But she didn’t use the word F and she didn’t say twit. Uh, but again, this is NPR.

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

All right. Thank you Michael.

Michael Ian Black

Thank you.

Nick Gillespie

And now we’re gonna ask the audience your opinion again to see if you may have shifted your stance on the question-

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

… is wokeness killing comedy? So after having heard this debate, I’m gonna have you applaud to show your stance yes, no and undecided. Clap if you think, yes, wokeness is killing comedy. Okay, now clap if you think, no, wokeness is not killing comedy. And finally clap if you’re undecided. Okay. Well, there, there were some shifts there. I have to say to my aging ears that it sounds like Michael Ian Black, who argued, no, wokeness is not killing comedy, prevailed tonight.

That concludes our debate. I’d like to thank our debaters and everyone here at the Comedy Cellar for keeping such an open mind while listening to this insightful debate and occasionally profane debate.

Audience

(laughs).

Nick Gillespie

Open to Debate is a nonprofit organization we think we’re offering value to public discourse. I’m Nick Gillespie, and thank you for joining us at this Open to Debate, live taping. Thank you everyone.

Thanks for tuning into this episode of Open To Debate. As a nonprofit, Open to Debate’s work to combat extreme polarization through civil and respectful debate is generously funded by listeners like you, the Rosenkranz Foundation and supporters of Open to Debate. Open to Debate is also made possible by a generous grant from the Laura and Gary Lauder Venture Philanthropy Fund. Robert Rosenkranz is our chairman, Clay O’Connor is CEO, Lia Matthow is our Chief Content Officer, Alexis Pancrazi and Marlette Sandoval, our editorial producers. And Gabriella Mayor is our editorial and research manager. Andrew Lipson is head of production. Max Fulton is our production coordinator. And Damon Whitmore is our engineer. Gabrielle Iannucelli is our social media and digital platform’s coordinator. Raven Baker is events and operations manager and Rachel Kemp is our Chief of staff. Our theme music is by Alex Clement. And I’m Nick Gillespie sitting in for John Donvan. We’ll see you next time.