In Defence of “Irresponsible” Jokes

British comedian Rosie Jones has spoken to Attitude to “offer her advice on how to tell a joke responsibly”. If there’s one thing I need my jokes to be, it’s responsible. I also need my rock music to be wholesome and my alcoholic drinks to be nutritious.

Jones has broken her advice down into “three steps”. Why not more? And should we not all convene meetings with HR before telling a joke?

“First,” says Jones:

… who are you? Do you have lived experience, or experience close to you?”

The idea that one needs “lived experience” to make a joke about something, or someone, is just absurd. Can a woman not make a joke about men, not have been a man? Can an atheist not make a joke about Christianity, not having been a Christian? Should Bill Hicks have worked in advertising before joking about advertisers?

Now, I do agree with Jones that one should have knowledge of something before joking about it. In theory, I could make a good joke about life in Malaysia despite never having lived there. As it is, I know almost nothing about Malaysia, so I couldn’t. “What’s the deal with Kuala Lumpa. Is it, er, lumpy there?” Still, the fact remains that one can know about something from the outside as well as from the inside. Indeed, one can have a valuable perspective from that vantage point.

“Second,” Jones says:

… who is your joke about? What is your intention – is it positive or negative? Are you punching up or punching down?

I agree with Jones that there is a difference between warm jokes and cold jokes. I can make a mean joke about my best friend that lands differently than if I made it about a stranger because it very clearly comes from a place of love.

Actually, I think the best “edgy” comedy often comes from a place of affectionate bemusement rather than anger or disdain. Peter Cook, who arguably fathered modern satire in Britain, claimed to rather like the politicians he was satirising. It keeps things funny rather than just bilious.

Still, I think there is a danger of confusing a joke with a punch. A joke can be a hostile act (think Nicholas Fuentes talking about Jews). But there is no essential malice in amusement. That is the problem with talk about “punching up” and “punching down”. There is no necessary goal behind a joke other than funniness — and everyone, from a homeless person to the President of the USA, can be funny. Yes, if someone only talked about homeless people, it would start to look insulting. But human beings are such an essentially comic species that if we claim that any class of people is beyond the domain of jokes, we actually rob those people of part of their humanity.

Besides, I don’t think we can make a clean distinction between people at whom we “punch up” and people at whom we “punch down”. I’m sure we can agree that it would be “punching up” to joke about Donald Trump and “punching down” to joke about a poor drug addict from Chicago. But would it be “punching up” to joke Ibram X. Kendi and “punching down” to joke about Toothless Joe from Alabama? I think so — but I’m not sure Jones would agree.

Anyways, making a mean joke about a homeless person for being a homeless would be cheap. But what about making a mean joke about a homeless person who stole my bike? The fact is that it can be permissible to “punch down” if a short person deserves it. After all, it’s not as if they can’t hit me in the groin.

“Third, why are you telling the joke?” Jones continues:

Are you asking a question to open up a conversation and make people think differently, or are you saying it simply to be controversial?

A joke doesn’t need to “open up a conversation”. It can, of course. But it can also just be funny.

That said, I do agree with Jones that some comedians put being controversial — or, indeed, being seen to be controversial — before being funny.

For one thing, provocative humour can be provocative, but it has to be humourous as well. Someone telling AI to generate a bikini on the corpse of a woman who has just been shot to death, as I saw on X yesterday, is offering no humourous insight. They are just being a soulless attention-seeking prick.

Besides, even in far less egregious forms, it can become extremely smug. I think Ricky Gervais is a talented man, for example. The Office is an all-time great comedy programme. But it sometimes feels like if Gervais wore a perfume, it would be Eau de Ricky Gervais’s Farts. Longtime Joe Rogan sidekick Tony Hinchcliffe is an even bigger offender. His “jokes” at a Trump rally were controversial. But what was more pertinent is that they weren’t funny enough to make Donald Trump supporters — surely not the most hyper-critical audience in the world — so much as giggle.

As I wrote before for The Washington Examiner:

It’s … unfortunate when provocation takes precedence over humor — or when it becomes a cheap ploy for gaining unearned artistic status. The late Norm Macdonald was as entertaining when he made fun of bad Carrot Top films as when he satirized PC priorities or mocked sentimentality about 9/11. His jokes could be extremely provocative, but that seemed almost incidental to being funny.

Comedians should be very free to be controversial, then. But they should also challenge themselves to be thoughtful, and incisive, and surprising. I don’t think that jokes about transgenderism should be off-limits, for example (unlike Jones, who claims that it is “none of their fucking business” — because comedians should always limit themselves to subjects that they are personally invested in?). But it’s true that I’ve been bored of jokes about transgenderism since everybody with a podcast and a Patreon started making jokes about them. It just gets tedious. And if there’s one thing comedians have no excuse for being, it’s dull. “Irresponsible” comedy can be a lot of fun. Lazy comedy? Not so much.