Sports and media legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as usual, makes more sense than anyone else who has spoken on the matter of SNL hiring and firing a comedian who relies on bullshit racism for laughs.
…The weakest of all defenses in his case is that he’s a “comedian who pushes boundaries.” He’s right that artists push boundaries of cultural conventions. Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor were all boundary pushers. The difference between an artist and an artisan is the artist’s willingness to poke at the audience’s comfort level in an effort to unveil weaknesses, discrepancies and hypocrisies. Not everyone appreciates having their values questioned. That’s why it’s important that we give artists plenty of leeway to sincerely explore their interpretation of humanity. The goal of the artist is to bring people together by showing us our similarities through our weaknesses, even when we are reluctant to acknowledge them. At the same time, we are under no obligation to financially support self-proclaimed “artists,” like Shane Gillis, whose work promotes hatred toward groups based on ethnicity, gender identity and religion. Gillis’s humor doesn’t so much expand boundaries as shrink them back to where they were in the 1950s.
His failure does not mean subjects now should be taboo or that we should not have comedy that offends. Ricky Gervais is able to make comical fun of religion, Atlanta has poignant and hysterical observations about race, Sarah Silverman is riotous about sexual politics, Will and Grace and Tig Notaro are hilarious about the LGBTQ community. All of them offend some people. But they don’t offend through deliberate, malicious attacks. Their humor brings the culture into sharper focus through intelligent and often barbed observations…
