Tasteless and Racist

Originally published by David Sable on LinkedIn: Tasteless and Racist

As if fake news isn’t bad enough…

A new front has been opened in the “what the hell” media wars here in the United States.

Almost as if it were planned, choreographed and stage-managed…two famous female comics…representing opposite political views…caused a furor for their public comments…one tweeted as personal commentary and the other broadcast as political humor.

Roseanne Barr, who had just returned to mainstream TV with highly rated reboot of the show that made her famous, Roseanne, commented on former Obama aide Valerie Jarret calling her “a child of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes”.

Samantha Bee, whose show full frontal is known for pushing the edges of the political edge called Ivanka Trump, the daughter of US President Trump, a “feckless c@#$”.

Roseanne, whose show was swiftly canceled by the ABC network, blamed her behavior on Ambien…a defense debunked by Sanofi the maker of the drug who said “racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication”.

Samantha Bee, whose remarks were not off the cuff but part of an edited and one imagines pre-reviewed show apologized both to Ivanka Trump and to her viewers saying “it was inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it”.

And while some advertisers pulled out and the President demanded that she be fired while his press secretary and others piled on her…TBS, her home network, took no action.

Needless to say, sides were drawn, with many calling out the double standard that they saw through their own lenses…. the more right wing seeing hypocrisy in the firing of Roseanne and the forgiveness for Samantha Bee and the more liberal seeing racism defended and humor attacked and censored.

As I said…we thought fake news was complicated.

To me the issue is simple.

Tasteless vs Racist, and neither one should be condoned as the line between them is thin, at best, and easily crossed.

Both women are top-flight A-list comediennes with global followings and both, no doubt, know the old comics’ adage “chances are if it’s tasteless and inappropriate I will think it’s totally hilarious”… a riff on Mel Brooks’ famous comment that comedy is when you fall in a hole, tragedy is when I do.

Back in the ‘60’s there were comics who managed to cross the lines — one was Don Rickles, who insulted everyone equally, and of course there were the African-American comics who used the “N” word and Jewish and Italian comics who took off on their own….but God help them if they had ever crossed the line to the other. There was an understanding that in the charged atmosphere of that time using humor to deflate and deflect was a good thing…Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In and the Smothers Brothers come to mind ... but crossing the line was not.

Yet here we are in a charged and divisive and polarized political and social environment, worldwide and “Tasteless and Racist” have garnered headlines and further separated people.

Let me be clear, I am condoning neither, as both were public figures with an accountability to all of us not to censor themselves, but to be thoughtful. In one case a racist mash-up was deemed to be comedic and in the other an offensive word was a bet to get a laugh.

Imagine if Roseanne had used that in her script and took the pulpit of her show to teach a lesson about bigotry. And if Samantha had filtered herself and made her point without hate.

We would all be better off.

A great writer of humor from the earliest parts of the last century observed that life is seen differently by all…listen:

“Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.” - Sholom Aleichem

What we can’t allow it to be is tasteless and racist for us all.

Tasteless or Racist...does it really matter when the lines have become so blurred?

What do you think?