So much of comedy,
like almost all aspects of our popular culture, has been co-opted by the left
who argues that it is supposed to be about ‘speaking truth to power’. I’ve
often wondered what some of the previous generation of comedians might think.
I’ve recently had
the great pleasure of rewatching one of my favorite stand-up comedy specials of
all time Richard Jeni’s classic HBO special: A Big Steaming Pile of Me. And
while he sadly passed away in 2007 before much of this became gospel, I know
what he would say to this: “Oh my God. I’ve clearly been doing this wrong my
entire life. I better retire right now before I get sued for false advertising!
I yield the stage to my fellow truth-tellers!”
And because he was
Jeni he would do so not with snark but self-deprecation bordering on apology.
Richard Jeni, like
so many white male comics of his era, made some attempts to crossover into film
and television. His biggest role on film was Charlie, the best friend of Jim
Carrey’s Stanley in The Mask and he had a short run TV series called Platypus
Man. But basically his entire career was in stand-up. Jeni seemed
completely fine with that because he was very good at it. Unlike many of his
contemporaries such as Bill Maher and Denis Leary, his standup was never the
harangue or lecture of the world with none of the smugness or preaching that
seemed to be preeminent among so many of his colleagues. Rather his approach
was affability and self-deprecation. This was not uncommon among many of his
contemporaries: his style was not much different from Colin Quinn or Jon Stewart
and not long after his tragic death John Mulaney would adapt a similar
approach.
In that sense he
never missed an opportunity to make himself part of the joke, something that
his contemporaries such as Maher or Leary never were willing to do. One got
that feeling in Steaming Pile which aired in 2005 and would sadly be the
last work he would ever do. Joe Rogan called it one of his favorite specials of
all time and 20 years after it debuted I couldn’t agree more.
The special aired
not long after George W. Bush had been reelected President and we were dealing
with both the War on Terror and the first real movement of comedians being the
victims of backlash from the world for their jokes. Politically Incorrect had
been cancelled and other comedians were dealing with censorship. Many of them –
the overwhelming majority of them white males – were beginning to double down
on their behavior and becoming more aggressive and baiting in their humor,
waiting for the knives to come out. Jeni makes sure he confronts this on in his
opening material – but as in keeping with who he is, keeps it light.
“Keeping my
audience happy is the second easiest job in the world. The easiest: putting
Michael Jackosn in the witness chair and creating (air quotes) ‘reasonable
doubt’.”
Jackson was facing
his most recent court challenge.
After a while: “It’s
good to start a show with a little Michael Jackson humor. Because it’s good to
have three, four minutes and the start of the show where someone isn’t pissed
off at me.” He says this wryly not angrily, the only anger in Jeni is clearly
mockingly and sly rather than strident. “Michael Jackson is the only person in
America you can make fun of without pissing somebody off.” And then he goes on with
an Irish brogue for reasons that will become obvious:
You wait a goddamn
minute! You’ll be keeping your dirty mouth of the King of Pop. A man is
innocent of child molesting until he’s proven guilty! And any man who says any
different will be dealing with me! Father Murphy of the Boston Archdiocese!”
And Jeni’s audience
explodes into laughter as he starts shadowboxing. When it dies out:
And that
concludes our ‘not pissing off anybody’ portion of the show.
He then begins to
deal with the problems of everybody having their opinions in comedy but even
this is mild.
And it used to
be when people got mad at you comedy, they just wrote you a letter. Now I have
a website and email and they can threaten my life by the hundreds.
Jeni then tells
about why he’s had to deal with extra security and he said
There’s two
things I do not like. The disgraceful practice of racial profiling…and guys wearing
turbans on my flight.
He points out the
arguments about turbans. He acknowledges I know that wearing a turban doesn’t
make you a terrorist.
“All I’m asking is that you don’t wear it for
the three shitty hours we’re trapped on an airplane? Have you not been watching
the news? You’re making everybody nervous. When you’re off the plane, make up for
the lack of a turban!”
He deals with the
issues of respecting religious beliefs gently. I’m a Christian. I don’t go bouncing
on to a jet spiked to a big, wooden cross!” (resignedly) I suppose I have the right
to do it…but it’s a narrow aisle, it’s a big cross.”
Then after having
gone through this he has his ‘heckler’ say: “You’re not even a practicing
Christian.”
He’s got me
there. I’m a Catholic the same way if a cow’s born in a tree, it’s a bird. I
wouldn’t say I’m a fanatic.
He justifies it by
arguing that these reactions while unfair are primitive and rarely helped. He
traces it back to one of our childhood fears of a monster being under the bed
and why we don’t do certain things into our adulthood. This is a very lucid and
rational response.
After this he gets
into the politics and the very extreme and even though his material is 20 years
old, it has barely aged.
“If you’re on
the far right or the far left, you know what you’ve done? You’ve gone too far.
He says after 9/11
he decided to become a conservative and he moves the right of the stage:
“There they are.
There’s your right-wing crew. A bunch of money-grubbing, greenhouse gassing,
seal-clubbing, oil drilling, bible thumping, missile firing, right to lifing,
lethal injecting hypocrites!”
(enormous
laughter and applause)
There they are.
People whose idea of a good time is to strap a dead panda to the front of a
Lincoln navigator and running over everybody in a gay parade
(It’s actually
frightening how foresighted Jeni was on that last one.)
Then he decides to
go to the left side “with all these loony, lefty, liberal people.
He trots to the far
left of the stage:
And there’s the
crew. A bunch of bong-smoking, America-bashing, flag-burning, yoga-posing, incense
burning, dolphin saving, salmon-eating hypocrites!”
(enormous laughter
“These are the sensitive
liberal people who are always preaching of everybody’s ‘freedom of expression.’
Unless you say something that pisses them off! Then they can’t wait to
tie your ass to the back of a Toyota hybrid and drive you to the Berkley campus
and drop your carcass at the Berkley campus at the Fidel Castro building of Why
America Sucks.
(Again incredible
foresight.)
And lest you think
Jeni is going to leave us moderates out he then moves to the center of the
stage where he says he is:
“A bunch of flip-flopping,
fence sitting, half-in, half-out, half-assed, not voting so they can bitch
no matter who wins…Right here, guys!
Then he gets a
little deeper: “But the ones who annoy me slightly more then all the
rest of us are the trillionaire liberals. People who are going to change the
world if they have to spend every buck of your money to do it.”
People who live
in a mansion with 20 rooms that nobody lives in. They’re all air-conditioned.
Got a pool that nobody goes in, it’s heated. Flying across the country on a twenty-person
jet all by themselves because they don’t want to be late for a speech about
energy conservation.”
He then gives them
both a middle-fingered salute. But then he says something telling: “They remind
of that asshole, what’s his name. Me! And you. Cause we’re all a bit hypocritical.
We could all do more, but we don’t.”
He then talks about
one of those infamous adds where it says for $9 a week you can feed a starving
kid.
Everybody’s got
the nine bucks; how do you not give it to them? You rationalize it. Somehow you
gotta go…’that kid doesn’t look that hungry to me…How can you feed a kid for
nine dollars a week? That’s impossible! A non-fat low-carb latte is $4.50….What’s
that kid gonna due with two giant cups of coffee? I’m actually doing him a
favor by not giving him that nine bucks because there’s nothing worse than
being wide awake and starving.”
Anyone who has spent
their lives listening to all of those heartbreaking ASPCA ads about mistreated
animals but has yet to donate a dime can relate.
Eventually he gets
to the War in Iraq, albeit indirectly:
A war starts and
my liberal friends will go: ‘Dude, violence never solves anything. I go, eh, it
solved World War II. I’m not saying it’s the BEST solution but it’s A solution…Violence
is one of the only things that permanently solves anything.
This could be
remarkable bleak, if accurate. But then Jeni takes away the focus.
“Have you ever
been on vacation with six friends? Tried to decide where to eat dinner and then
watch that war break out…But if one of you had a gun…it would be over. (He
fires in the air) We’re going to Wendy’s!”
He then gets back
to the war on terror and one of my bugbears. “You can’t have a war on a word?
How do you know who you’re fighting against?
There’s clues. A
bunch of Americans get killed, you turn on the TV, people jumping up dancing
and singing, there they are.
Then after a dance number:
God you French motherf---ers!
And then drives the
point home with one of favorite jokes of all time:
“When the
Germans found out that the Americans were mistreating people in a prison, WHOA.
They were this close to suing us for copyright infringement!”
In the hands of a
strident, more lecturing comic (I have some names from the past, you have some
from the day) this could become unpleasant and repetitive. But the thing about
Jeni’s delivery was that he always came across like your next door neighbor
telling you about the weirdest stuff he heard from his best friend and saying: “Isn’t
this the funniest thing you’ve ever heard?” And in his tone, it always did.
Steaming Pile of
Me has quite a bit of 2000s material that hasn’t aged poorly. He talks
about how he admires Kevorkian but wouldn’t be his roommate, how in a world with so much crime the government
decided to “nail Martha Stewart’s ass to the wall!” (the special is worth it
for that alone) his thinking the Vagina Monologues would be a ventriloquist
show and his own arguments with the failures of being a white male. “You killed
the Indians,” he’s told. “I think I’d remember something like that” he says.
Steaming Pile was
Jeni final standup special that celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year.
(I didn’t realize that until I looked it up online.) Two years later Jeni would
be dead. The man had suffered from schizophrenia much of his life and he would commit
suicide. His death did strike me hard when it happened and I suppose I could
look at this special with a sense of mourning.
But the thing is
Jeni was always so cheerful in his comedy and in a world with so much tragedy and
tumult in our everyday lives, I find myself hopeful in Jeni’s optimism, however
misplaced it might have been. Perhaps that comes with one of the most famous
routines from his bit where he things that they could fix America if they only
had the right slogan. After going through some brilliant bits at the world of
advertising he comes up with one that makes perfect sense even now.
Here it is:
America! 20 million illegal aliens can’t be wrong. There it is!
The slogan is greeted
with incredible laughter and applause. And for those who want to point all that’s
wrong with that he puts up a wonderful bit in which he reminds that despite all
of the things we say about there still aren’t nearly as many people – the trillionaire
liberals among them – deciding to go somewhere else. After all where else could
we take the flaky and buttery croissant and stuff it with crappy hand and lousy
cheese and throw at you through a drive-thru?
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