CHAPTER 171

The author interviews @9amburritos, who called Kevin a racist,

Author: I can understand people like yourself who are very outspoken about, you know, ensuring there’s progressiveness. I can understand you guys becoming more … And I’m kind of left and liberal, but I’m not as outspoken as people like you … I think I can understand why you become more defensive about it all now, and police it more, because you can see the wider stuff that’s happening in society. Is that correct? You can see the Trump thing happening, so you’re thinking, well, I can’t do anything about Trump, but I can do something about this stuff in front of me?

@9amburritos: Yeah, right. Because in that room there was a lot of bystander effect going on. Like, I shouldn’t be the one. Diffusion of responsibility, you know? It’s like watching an accident happen, like watching someone hurt in front of you. Who’s going to … It’s not my responsibility to say … And I wasn’t even the minority that was being attacked. I think I would have flipped out even harder if he was talking about Asians. But I think there’s a lack of empathy that is happening, because there is so many things to care about now, to be upset about and … I don’t know, I think people are just exhausted, empathetically exhausted. And I forgot to say this, but after I heckled, a woman who I think was sitting at the same table, but her back was to me, she turned around and was like, ‘I’m an Arab and I’m okay with that joke.’ She said that, you know. That just made me so sad.

[After thirty-nine minutes]

@9amburritos: I think a lot of what the older generation of comedians is scared about is, ‘Where’s the line? Like, if I can’t talk about this then what can I talk about?’ And I think it’s all about doing it in an intelligent way. And another thing is, what they say is, ‘It’s just comedy, it’s just a joke, it doesn’t mean the person is racist, it doesn’t mean the person is sexist,’ but I think that having the platform to say something and to have people laugh at it, I think it makes the thing you say socially acceptable. Like, if you say something and the crowd laughs at it, the audience, they look around and they’re like, ‘Oh, this is socially acceptable.’ And I think this is kind of analogous to the presidency in a way, because when Donald Trump first became president people were like, ‘He’s just one guy, it’s not going to change the mindset of American people,’ but it did just that.

Author: You said in one of your emails that it was a kind of green light to people to talk a certain way and show certain attitudes.

@9amburritos: Right, so when Kevin Brennan, someone who’s paid to say things onstage goes up there, says something, the crowd laughs, maybe there’s someone in the crowd who goes, ‘Hey, that’s a chill thing to say, so I’m going to start saying that, so that’s an okay thing to think,’ even though it’s presented in a joke. So I don’t think it matters whether someone is inherently a racist. I think it’s what you put out there that matters.