Chris Rock: Comedians Don't Want to Perform At Colleges Anymore Because of Special Snowflake Outrage

Okay he said two interesting things. Let's look at the one I approve of first.

New York magazine’s Frank Rich interviewed comedian Chris Rock for a piece published yesterday, and Rock took the opportunity to point out another sad result of college students "unlearning liberty": talented comedians no longer want to perform on campus.

In the interview, Rich and Rock discussed how Rock, like many comedians, has been criticized by audience members who were offended by his jokes. When asked what he thought about the recent controversy over Bill Maher’s invitation to speak at the University of California, Berkeley’s December commencement ceremony, Rock said, "Well, I love Bill, but I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they're way too conservative." He elaborated:

Not in their political views — not like they’re voting Republican — but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody. Kids raised on a culture of "We're not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose." Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can't say "the black kid over there." No, it's "the guy with the red shoes." You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.

Rock said he started to notice the trend about eight years ago, and that he wasn’t the only one--as he recalled, "I remember talking to George Carlin before he died and him saying the exact same thing."

He says that this environment of hypersensitivity is "going to lead to safer, gooier stand-up."

So here's the other thing Chris Rock said. This one is a lot dumber.

From an interview with Frank Rich, so you know this is going to be just awful.

We've just come through an election that was a triumph for Fox News and a fiasco for Obama. What do you make of it?

Jon Stewart has said the reason Fox News works better than CNN is because the people at Fox News figured out how to make themselves into victims.

So will it now be harder for Republicans to play victims?

They have no problem playing victims.

Even in victory?

Even in victory. America -- not black America, but America as a whole -- started in England and was ruled by kings and queens and had a class system. I'm almost of the mind that that's what America wants at the end of the day. Maybe America wants monopolies.

...

What do you think of how [Obama's] done? Here we are in the last two years of his presidency, and there’s a sense among his supporters of disappointment, that he’s disengaged.

I'm trying to figure out the right analogy. Everybody wanted Michael Jordan, right? We got Shaq. That’s not a disappointment. You know what I mean? We got Charles Barkley. It’s still a Hall of Fame career. The president should be graded on jobs and peace, and the other stuff is debatable. Do more people have jobs, and is there more peace? I guess there's a little more peace. Not as much peace as we'd like, but I mean, that's kind of the gig. I don’t recall anybody leaving on an up. It's just that kind of job. I mean, the liberals that are against him feel let down because he’s not Bush. And the thing about George Bush is that the kid revolutionized the presidency. How? He was the first president who only served the people who voted for him. He literally operated like a cable network. You know what I mean?

He pandered to his target audience.

He's the first cable-television president, and the thing liberals don’t like about Obama is that he's a network guy. He’s kind of Les Moonves. He's trying to get everybody. And I think he’s figured out, and maybe a little late, that there’s some people he’s never going to get.

When you mentioned Bush, I thought you were going to say something else, which is that he had this "good versus evil" manner of speaking -- the Western sheriff who’s come to lay down the law. Obama’s been faulted for not showing anger in public, and for not speaking in simple, declarative Bushisms. Of course, the moment he does do that, he's accused of being an angry black man.

There's an advantage that Bush had that Obama doesn’t have. People thinking you're dumb is an advantage. Obama started as a genius. It's like, What? I've got to keep doing that? That's hard to do! So it's not that Obama’s disappointing. It's just his best album might have been his first album.

So, he's obviously a fool. He's actually claiming that Obama governs to the middle -- trying to get everyone's vote -- whereas Bush only played to his base. Hm-mmm.

Well, he says something equally stupid earlier-- he says "the middle" is where the laughs are in comedy, and uses for his example Dennis Miller, Jon Stewart, and Bill Maher. See, Jon Stewart's the most successful, he explains -- and Stewart is "in the middle," politically.

posted by Ace at 05:37 PM

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