COMEDIANS: The New Revolutionaries

 Harry Targ

(As Stephen Colbert nears the end of his run as a host on late night television, it is becoming clearer than ever that the forces of repression seek to crush what Michael Denning called "the Cultural Front," including the comedians. That is in popular culture today the most penetrating critiques of the drift toward American fascism are found among the comedians. And reflecting on our past, the era of the Spanish American War, Jim Crow, McCarthyism and now Trumpism, it is the comedians who have popularized and legitimized critiques of  the rich and powerful. As with other sectors of progressivism, our comedians need to be defended.)

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"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!". ^{Karl Marx}

“Comedians of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your jokes.” Harry Targ

 The twenty-first century is strange. Most of the modest social benefits provided by many governments are being reversed. Contrary to expectations in a “post-Cold War” world, violence has increased and competition between Cold War adversaries continues. And to quote from Vijay Prashad, we are living in an “age of cruelty.” We are helpless observers as a holocaust is being perpetrated on the people in Gaza. And while a police state is rounding up “illegals,” convicted felons are being pardoned, (and some elected or appointed to office), masses of people are hitting the streets to protest virtually all these egregious immoralities perpetrated by ruling classes and political elites. And it has gotten to the point with these horrific developments that we must look to comedians to save us.

And before we look askance at a defense of comedians, we should recognize that they historically have stimulated us to think about the human condition. Paradoxically profit and criticism have over the years conflicted. In the post World War Two period a panoply of comedians have surfaced who generated popularity and profit, and at the same time challenged the evils of capitalism, war-making, class antagonisms, racism, and patriarchy.

For those of us growing up in the fifties Tom Lehrer was cheerfully accessible while communicating ideas about atomic war, hate, and militarism. And while Lenny Bruce was too acerbic for some he spawned subsequent generations of very radical comedic talents including George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Lily Tomlin. And then radical/political humor became mainstreamed on television including Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show and the John Oliver program. Television series such as MASH critiqued war, Other programs, some funny and some serious, analyzed commercialism, greed, ruling classes, and racism.

So now in a period where democratic discourse is more threatened than ever, even more than the McCarthy era of the 1950s, fascist sectors of the ruling class, after attacking the universities, the media, protesters, and “foreigners,” are targeting the comedians, the last refuge of deep criticism of the US political economy. 

As we rise to defend academic freedom in the universities, vibrant curricula in K- twelve educational institutions, the right to protest (and vote) and independent media, we cannot forget the comedians. Historically, they have communicated radical ideas to larger sections of the population than many others who have resisted monopoly capitalism and war.