“Stand-up comics are the frontline fighters of the culture war for a reason: It is their job, more so than even musicians or artists, to push boundaries, to turn sacred cows into hamburgers. They identify and probe societal tension without any mandate to heal the fissures — though humor itself can serve as a salve. This is undeniably healthy for a society, but it’s also what makes the industry unacceptable to the militant humorlessness of “cancel culture.”

(…)

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Everything, today, is problematic. Everything is about power and privilege.

Identity politics has become enshrined as a sacred religion on the Left, and it is enforced by armies of humorless, finger-wagging scolds. As Helen Pluckrose, one of the co-authors of The Grievance Studies explained to me, “The people who have the ability to recognize their own implicit bias and, with the help of critical theory, see the powerful discourses oppressing people, are woke.”

One of the most popular ideas wokeism preaches is that “speech is violence.” It has gained traction among a generation of coddled minds raised with trigger warnings, safe spaces, and cry closets. But the idea that speech is violence is death to a comedian. Their livelihoods depend on the ability to be hyperbolic. And the Church of Woke and its devotees engage in relentless prosecution of ever-changing and random rules.

(…)

An important function of the comedian is to find what we aren’t allowed to talk about, mine the deeply buried preconceived notions, poke fun at stereotypes, disrupt the status quo, and release the pressure.

Woke killing the joke left millions of people longing for the good ol’ days of escapism. Comedy used to be the place where you could express yourself freely. Now, jokes are weapons that can be dragged up and used against you. Chappelle noted what happened to his friend Kevin Hart, one of the most commercially successful comics, who lost his dream of hosting the Oscars over old tweets.

(…)

And the critics misunderstood the phenomenon, calling it “punching down” and insisting that this isn’t true comedy. But the “punching up vs. punching down” dichotomy isn’t about bullying. First, cancel culture has plenty of power, so the distinction is a bit blurry. Second, the audience isn’t looking to gang up on the downtrodden. They’re seeking to do what comedy has always done: put society under a microscope.

The realization that cancel culture was toothless against those who’d already achieved widespread fame only supercharged the comedy sets of those without much of a filter to begin with.

(…)

Cancel culture’s relative powerlessness against comedy’s top rank creates another problem for it: the unintentional bulletproofing of those it has had some success against, allowing the comic to develop a sort of immunity to shaming.

(…)

A key point here is that they’re not ignoring the critics. They’re listening attentively. The difference is that they don’t plead their case for being the hero or even being innocent. Instead, they are telling the woke scolds, “You’re the villains here.”

(…)

Many of their critics accuse them of acting like victims when, in fact, they’re on the attack. They’re rejecting victimhood. They’re not offended. They’re going on the offense. They’re not triggered. They’re on the assault.