I stopped accepting invitations to lecture college classes after it became trendy to boycott, picket and demand apologies from speakers whose contrary views might “trigger” delicate young minds with ideas that threaten their “safe space.”
Who needs the grief, right?
Now I have to worry about getting smacked in the head by spouses of politicians I joke about after a puffed-up actor at the Academy Awards strode to the stage and sucker- slapped a smaller comic for cracking a lame joke about his wife’s hairdo, then shouted profanities but later was allowed to accept his award and make a smarmy speech casting himself as a hero to a standing ovation.
Make a joke about Vladimir Putin’s hair and you might get nuked.
Even my wife thought the comic deserved this outrageous display of gratuitous violence on national TV, which I suppose wasn’t surprising since she and I graduated from a local high school where the height of academic inquiry was, “What, you like beef?”
One commentary on the incident in a prestigious publication suggested comedy is no longer a valid means of expression. Another equated the hairdo joke to the racially tinged three-day bashing of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson by U.S. senators.
We’ve come to take ourselves way too seriously — always aggrieved, quick to anger, looking for reasons to be offended and entitled to act out, while seldom willing to let even small stuff go.
It’s mass egomania, and this is exactly the wrong time to be discouraging humor. There’s so much about us that’s totally ridiculous and cries to be pointed out. We should be able to deal with an awful joke at the Academy Awards maturely and proportionately.
In my own case, I know some of what I write stings, so I don’t complain about what comes back at me — even when it’s obscene insults about my appearance, ethnicity, religion and disability.
Never have I wished for a 6-foot-2 spouse to protect poor triggered me.
I hadn’t thought much about getting hit by a politician offended by what I wrote. Most pols I’ve known didn’t pack much punch, and those who did possessed enough self-assurance to not feel a need to start throwing.
After my disability put me in a wheelchair, I was semi-assaulted by a public official who repeatedly jabbed my shoulder with his finger while alternately calling me a “cowardly liar” and a “lying coward.”
I finally powered up my wheelchair, which weighs 425 pounds before I get in it, and calmly advised that he was welcome to call me names, but if he poked me again I’d roll over him until he was a stain on the sidewalk. He got the message and stopped.
Our national consciousness would be less bruised if the offended actor had gone the more measured way of a private talk with the comic after the show.
Or better yet, if he’d let his capable wife speak for herself.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
