Silverman has become an important member of a guerrilla vanguard in the culture wars that we might call the “meta-bigots”…. The meta-bigots work at social problems indirectly; instead of discussing race, rape, abortion, incest, or mass starvation, they parody our discussions of them. They manipulate stereotypes about stereotypes. It’s a dangerous game: If you’re humorless, distracted, or even just inordinately history-conscious, meta-bigotry can look suspiciously like actual bigotry.

[...]

All of Silverman’s controversies are essentially large-scale pieces of PC performance art—but instead of settling anything about race and humor in America, they just expose the incoherence of the debate. If her humor does have a larger purpose, it is that it maps the outer limits of our tolerance; it exposes ambiguities in the discussion that we don’t like to acknowledge; it taps into our giant unspoken mass of assumptions, tensions, fears, and hatreds—not to resolve them, but to remind us that they’re there. (She told the Believerrecently that she likes the idea of “saying things that force people to have opinions.”) By reducing all of this toxic material into a logical game, she creates a kind of public catharsis. The point of Silverman’s humor—the final translation of all that irony—might simply be that, no matter how much we pretend, we’re notready for her humor. These are life-and-death problems, and our laughter has terror in it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Wonder Showzen: Where will you hide when the revolution comes?

This is from a couple years ago, but I have never forgotten it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The book is a series of 3-5 page interviews with comedians and satirists from Paul Krassner to Rosanne Barr. Every single one has surprised me with some kind of insight. It’s quickly become one of my favorite books and I haven’t even finished it yet. Here’s a link for it on Amazon.

And a description of the book from the publisher:

Our nation’s finest comedians, contrarians, and comic subversives come together to discuss the nature of humor, its relevance to society, and how simply speaking the truth as one sees it can give life meaning

We are living in a new golden age of satire. In a nation divided, polarized, and cynical of “official” news and information, it’s no surprise that more young people get their news today from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from 60 Minutes and CNN—the people who speak the most openly and fearlessly are our satirists. Politics and culture are analyzed, criticized, scandalized, and energized by comedians with no agenda other than to create the laughter and shock that comes from recognition and truth.

Perhaps the greatest collection of comic talents ever between two covers, ¡Satiristas! is a collaboration between Paul Provenza—comedy’s insider inquisitor extraordinaire, director/co-creator of the film The Aristocrats, and star of Showtime’s The Green Room with Paul Provenza—and Dan Dion, comedy’s most celebrated portrait photographer. A virtual who’s who of iconoclastic comedy, the book is an epic, hilarious, multivoiced manifesto on satire and comedy, and a revelatory study of the complexities and inner workings of the comic mind.

Balancing on the razor’s edge of communicating important ideas without pretense or condescension, political comedians Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, and Lewis Black weigh in with late-night monologists Jay Leno and Craig Ferguson. Veterans like Conan O’Brien, Robin Williams, Richard Lewis, and Roseanne Barr speak their minds alongside comedy legends such as the Smothers Brothers, Tom Lehrer, Lily Tomlin, and the late, great George Carlin. Also represented are creators, writers, and producers of The Daily Show, South Park, Mr. Show, This Is Spinal Tap, Wonder Showzen, Kids in the Hall, Freaks and Geeks, Superbad, The Simpsons, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and Saturday Night Live as well as fresh, up-and-coming talents and a new generation of comedy stars. Together, this cross-section of subversive comic artists offers insight into what drives them and makes them tick, and what drives them crazy and ticks them off.

Paul Provenza’s casual, intimate, artist-to-artist interviews are intelligent, outrageous, controversial, and even downright sick—but no idea or opinion is censored, and the unabashed honesty that results is funny, thought-provoking and inspirational.

The intimate photographic portraits by Dan Dion, comedy’s Richard Avedon, are art pieces that take us through the stand-up routine to the person underneath, making ¡Satiristas! something that will change the way you look at comedians and the art of comedy.

W. KAMAU BELL is one of the fastest-rising socio-political comics in the United States, best known for his critically acclaimed solo show “The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour.” Praised by Punchline Magazine as “one of our nation’s most adept racial commentators with a blistering wit,” Kamau has been voted San Francisco’s best comedian by three different publications. His new stand up album, Face Full of Flour, made the 10 Best Comedy Albums of 2010 list at iTunes and Punchline Magazine. Kamau recently performed at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, where his set was filmed for HBO Canada. He also performed at the New York Comedy Festival, where he was a critic’s pick in Time Out NY, who gave his solo show “FOUR STARS” and offered that, “Bell finds comic gold in the wide range of material he mines, offering provocative insights into an ugly reality.” The SF Weekly has called Kamau “smart, stylish, and very much in the mold of politically outspoken comedians like Dave Chappelle and Margaret Cho.”

I regularly recommend his Face Full of Flour album to my students because it’s such a great example of speaking intelligently about difficult issues in a language that everyone understands: comedy.

Here’s a SF Public Television segment on him:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now Bell, Nato Green, and Janine Brito are heading out to perform in some of the most most contentious areas of the United States.

The list of locations (so far) is as follows:

We’re hitting six hot spots (with potentially more to be added):

Madison, Wisconsin
Republican Governor Scott Walker’s attempts to eliminate union rights for public workers have galvanized a student-labor movement to save the state. Governor Walker’s hubris may turn Wisconsin into the Waterloo of the Tea Party. But first the Tea Party will have to look up the word “Waterloo”.

Phoenix, Arizona
From Sheriff Joe Arpaio, to banning ethnic studies, to the fact that it’s now so illegal to be Mexican that people are putting ketchup on their tacos, Arizona is now the heavyweight champion of crazy. Arizona has gotten too weird for people from Florida. Even Alabama is keeping its distance.

New Orleans, Louisiana
Remember how New Orleans was destroyed by a hurricane and everybody said it would be rebuilt so college kids could keep getting drunk for Mardi Gras? And then remember how Kanye West called George W. out on TV? And then we got a black president? Everything must be back to normal down there now right? Hey, what’s that black spot in the ocean?

Dearborn/Detroit twofer, Michigan
Dearborn is home to America’s largest Muslim community. LATM will prove once and for all that Islam is no scarier than Christianity…OK, good point. It’s probably way less scary. Meanwhile, is Detroit a decaying carcass of a rusty metropolis, or is something being born here more exciting than Eminem’s kids?

Washington, DC
We’ll visit the people who live in the seat of our democracy, the denizens of the capital of the world’s last superpower…ok most recent superpower, until China decides to collect. DC is where even baristas have lobbyists. PS – Let’s see if we can get that President guy to show up. He’s supposed to have such a good sense of humor…

Check out the project and lend it your support. The Kamau Bell album makes it worth it alone!

So where Surnow was wrong was in presuming that effective comedy tilts right or left, because the tilt of truly effective comedy, comedy that affects and resonates, is either inwards or upwards.

And the concept may resonate beyond the world of comedy.

Bottom line though, which is somewhat supported in the piece, I think conservatives generally don’t have as good a sense of humor.

Read the whole piece.

WBC’s hate-promoting signs were answered by multiple signs of randomness, nonsensical yelling, and even a unicorn. A portable stereo blared Lady GaGa, while press and people passing by ignored the WBC signs and took pictures and videos of the more entertaining signs. I was also there and turned on the video camera while holding my sign.

Via Laughing Squid

Click to play or download here: Al Gore On Creative Activism.

The Community Avengers are a team of residents from Miami who are standing up in these trying times, calling out the criminal bankers, and inspiring action. They have been spotted tumbling out of a van at a recent Miami Dade County budget hearing, moving into the seething crowd and taking to task politicians with their lively chants and street theater. After mixing with all those malcontented with proposed cuts to the Miami Dade County budget, the Community Avengers did a double header and headed over to a health care town hall for a show down with the riled up right wing.

Just this week the Community Avengers joined forces with residents and pastors from Miami Gardens to fight back against banks bent on eviction rather than loan modification.
Always on call to do battle with the villains of bad government and corporate greed, the Community Avengers rallied to support an ordinance that would sanction foreclosing banks.

Click here to read more about this action: http://tinyurl.com/Communityavengers

It is time for progressive people everywhere to learn a lesson from the Community Avengers. Let’s creatively mobilize and call out the culprits across the country. Where right wing pundits play on irrational fears, we will be there. Where greedy bankers rob our people, we will be there. Where government bows to a marginal and maniac minority, we will be there.

You too can be a Community Avenger!

- Joseph Phelan, Miami Workers Center