Is this kind of thing still socially acceptable on the left?

[Tom Pitt]

I was going through old Chris Rock stand up videos on youtube, and stumbled on this one. I'm a 90s kid and this video came out about 29 years ago. I am really surprised this was apparently socially acceptable to say at the time. This site seems more liberal leaning than the typical american. Would you say this is socially acceptable today on the left coming from a black man? It seems like the goal posts have shifted a bit


View: https://youtu.be/f3PJF0YE-x4

 

[gandalfe]

It wasn't socially acceptable for 99.9% of people to say, but Rock was a very good black comedian, he was able to get away with it because he was making people think about it - like Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, etc, etc, etc.

If I recall, this was the bit that Michael Scott did in the Office and got in trouble for. Or was it David Brent?

 

[Sardines]

I was going through old Chris Rock stand up videos on youtube, and stumbled on this one. I'm a 90s kid and this video came out about 29 years ago. I am really surprised this was apparently socially acceptable to say at the time. This site seems more liberal leaning than the typical american. Would you say this is socially acceptable today on the left coming from a black man? It seems like the goal posts have shifted a bit


View: https://youtu.be/f3PJF0YE-x4

I didn't like this set then and I don't like it now.

Too many times hearing this joke before he said it from racist white dudes. This was an old joke when he did that set.

 

[Tom Pitt]

I didn't like this set then and I don't like it now.

Too many times hearing this joke before he said it from racist white dudes. This was an old joke when he did that set.

In fairness the 40 states with trashy white people living in a trailer eating mayonnaise sandwiches boinking their sister listen to John Cougar Mellenkamp was in it. Pretty funny that part haha

 

[Sardines]

In fairness the 40 states with trashy white people living in a trailer eating mayonnaise sandwiches boinking their sister listen to John Cougar Mellenkamp was in it. Pretty funny that part haha

I'm not into racial humor. Never have been.

 

[fishonjazz]

I'm not into racial humor. Never have been.

I was years ago but not anymore

 

[LogGrad98]

I was years ago but not anymore

It got old and tired really. When I was a kid it was everywhere, in the 70's and early 80's. Eenie meenie minie moe ended in "catch a N****er by the toe", and pollock, mexican, and black jokes were everywhere as kids. We didn't even really know what it meant. But now it is just tired and old and dumb. Time to move on, imo.

 

[AlaskanAssassin]

It's not just racial stand up, you could do this with a ton of general comedy movies from the past. In general it seems like society has less tolerance for mildly offensive material.

Maybe it's not society in general, but rather there is now a critical mass of people that either don't enjoy this type of comedy, or don't think this type of comedy should even exist.

 

[Miggs]

It's not just racial stand up, you could do this with a ton of general comedy movies from the past. In general it seems like society has less tolerance for mildly offensive material.

Maybe it's not society in general, but rather there is now a critical mass of people that either don't enjoy this type of comedy, or don't think this type of comedy should even exist.

Oftentimes, those people don’t enjoy much of anything and are always miserable about something.

 

[Sardines]

Oftentimes, those people don’t enjoy much of anything and are always miserable about something.

People that don't enjoy uncreative and flawed racial humor?

 

[Eminence]

Hadn't seen it before, didn't find it funny, may have in middle school.

Don't care at all that a comedian made the set.

 

[Miggs]

People that don't enjoy uncreative and flawed racial humor?

I didn’t watch the bit so I don’t know exactly what was said but in general, people look to get upset about things. Comedians being ones of those things is sort of laughable.

 

[Sardines]

I didn’t watch the bit so I don’t know exactly what was said but in general, people look to get upset about things. Comedians being ones of those things is sort of laughable.

But let's say no one is upset, they just didn't laugh...

 

[Tom Pitt]

It's not just racial stand up, you could do this with a ton of general comedy movies from the past. In general it seems like society has less tolerance for mildly offensive material.

Maybe it's not society in general, but rather there is now a critical mass of people that either don't enjoy this type of comedy, or don't think this type of comedy should even exist.

I feel like there is pros and cons to the way we've gone culturally. political correctness actually originates from Bolshevism/soviet Russia where they would literally lie about certain things because it wasn't part of the party narrative. That scares me cause it seemed like a whole lot of people in the country are/were okay with that. Western civilization seems to have a rather robust immune system to ward off genuine far right extremism from becoming mainstream...what is called far right now days is often what middle of the road liberals advocated for in the 90s through 2005 or so. I actually think bolshavism/marxism/communism is just as dangerous as nazism but hardly anyone on the left I think would acknowledge that.. I mean it sure as hell killed more people and resulted in more oppression. I would venture to say some of the right that use the term wokeness are really just talking about what they perceive as cultural marxism or racial marxism. in the 60s, many prominent marxists in America said they'd use race to erode the fabric of the West. BLM for example is pretty clearly a marxist organization... one of the founders said it would be an honor to be compared to Mao who killed tens of millions of people... their website literally says one of their goals is to disrupt the nuclear family... and what did they do with the money they got...Bought 6 million dollar mansion haha!

Some of my favorite comedies came from mid 90s-mid 00s. It's not just race, everyone is so offended by everything I can't imagine some of those Adam Sandler/Chris Farley movies being made today. Can you imagine What Women Want with Mel Gibson being made today? haha. Instead they just make the opposite version poking fun at men which is socially acceptable but the latter isn't anymore... because men are less oppressed and can take it I guess would be the rationale. In the current cultural climate on the left, it seems the less oppressed a certain demographic is, the more ripe they are to be a punching bag. I'm not offering a critique of that, I'm just pointing it out. I think the part that is unhelpful, is it does occur to me, some data must not be acknowledged even if true because it doesn't fit a certain narrative. which is counter productive to solving problems eh? so there is certainly tradeoffs. There was maybe a little bit of a backtracking with that stuff leading to Trump winning the election...I mean as they say politics is downstream of culture.

 

[Rubashov]

I feel like there is pros and cons to the way we've gone culturally. political correctness actually originates from Bolshevism/soviet Russia where they would literally lie about certain things because it wasn't part of the party narrative. That scares me cause it seemed like a whole lot of people in the country are/were okay with that. Western civilization seems to have a rather robust immune system to ward off genuine far right extremism from becoming mainstream...what is called far right now days is often what middle of the road liberals advocated for in the 90s through 2005 or so. I actually think bolshavism/marxism/communism is just as dangerous as nazism but hardly anyone on the left I think would acknowledge that.. I mean it sure as hell killed more people and resulted in more oppression. I would venture to say some of the right that use the term wokeness are really just talking about what they perceive as cultural marxism or racial marxism. in the 60s, many prominent marxists in America said they'd use race to erode the fabric of the West. BLM for example is pretty clearly a marxist organization... one of the founders said it would be an honor to be compared to Mao who killed tens of millions of people... their website literally says one of their goals is to disrupt the nuclear family... and what did they do with the money they got...Bought 6 million dollar mansion haha!

Some of my favorite comedies came from mid 90s-mid 00s. It's not just race, everyone is so offended by everything I can't imagine some of those Adam Sandler/Chris Farley movies being made today. Can you imagine What Women Want with Mel Gibson being made today? haha. Instead they just make the opposite version poking fun at men which is socially acceptable but the latter isn't anymore... because men are less oppressed and can take it I guess would be the rationale. In the current cultural climate on the left, it seems the less oppressed a certain demographic is, the more ripe they are to be a punching bag. I'm not offering a critique of that, I'm just pointing it out. I think the part that is unhelpful, is it does occur to me, some data must not be acknowledged even if true because it doesn't fit a certain narrative. which is counter productive to solving problems eh? so there is certainly tradeoffs. There was maybe a little bit of a backtracking with that stuff leading to Trump winning the election...I mean as they say politics is downstream of culture.

The early Soviet period saw an explosion of expression and arts in Russia. The conservatism came significantly later, in the 50s, part of what brought down the Soviet Union was Gorbachev's was Glasnost which was a new policy of openness and tolerance. Hardliners saw this as the beginning of the end. I have no idea where you are finding living breathing Leninism/Marxism or communism of any significance anywhere in the world. Mind you I can point to any number of far right regimes that are not part of a liberal democratic continuum, that are actually historically scary.

Lets turn to this idea the BLM is a Marxist organisation, every significant social justice movement in the US since the 30s has been called by the right a communist front. Its nothing new its an old trope and it never gets old. The actual funny part is calling a social justice movement a communist organisation requires evidence and the existence of a real, organised and funded Marxist movement. Which pretty much hasn't existed anywhere since the late 90s.

I'm not a fan of woke culture or cancel culture, I think it has absolutely nothing to do with Leninism, Marxism, socialism. I'm not a fan of cancelling comedians cause people are offended by their humour, who ****ing cares if you're offended by a comedian? Don't watch them. Hate speech is a different matter, but peoples threshold for offence is simply a matter of taste. Wokeness in the workplace has been driven by lawyers and risk adverse management, after one of about 20 seminars at work about it, one of guys basically turned to me and said that I'll be reduced to only being able to say yes and no at work. He wasn't far from the truth.

 

[Tom Pitt]

The early Soviet period saw an explosion of expression and arts in Russia. The conservatism came significantly later, in the 50s, part of what brought down the Soviet Union was Gorbachev's was Glasnost which was a new policy of openness and tolerance. Hardliners saw this as the beginning of the end. I have no idea where you are finding living breathing Leninism/Marxism or communism of any significance anywhere in the world. Mind you I can point to any number of far right regimes that are not part of a liberal democratic continuum, that are actually historically scary.

Lets turn to this idea the BLM is a Marxist organisation, every significant social justice movement in the US since the 30s has been called by the right a communist front. Its nothing new its an old trope and it never gets old. The actual funny part is calling a social justice movement a communist organisation requires evidence and the existence of a real, organised and funded Marxist movement. Which pretty much hasn't existed anywhere since the late 90s.

I'm not a fan of woke culture or cancel culture, I think it has absolutely nothing to do with Leninism, Marxism, socialism. I'm not a fan of cancelling comedian cause people are offended by their humour, who ****ing cares if your offended by a comedian? Don't watch them. Hate speech is a different matter, but peoples threshold for offence is simply a matter of taste. Wokeness in the workplace has been driven by lawyers and risk adverse management, after one of about 20 seminars at work about it, one of guys basically turned to me and said that I'll be reduced to only being able to say yes and no at work. He wasn't far from the truth.

woke culture or cancel culture is by nature problematic... it's a slippery slope. Wasn't it Huxley who said like 80% of the general population just roll with the overton window... so if the ideology on the left becomes a net negative and people are ostracized for thinking outside the Overton window in a way that is a net positive... i mean. Wokeness is essentially a new iteration of political correctness. It's one thing to be cancelled over hate speech. That's fine. It's another thing to be cancelled for asking honest sincere questions because they don't fit a certain narrative. We've recovered a bit from some of that insanity with the dynamic tension between the left and right which is a good thing imo.

But like wokeness or neo liberalism, or cultural marxism or racial Marxism or whatever you want to call it... it's not an exact approximation of the Marxism we saw with the Bolsheviks or Stalin's Russia or Mao's cultural revolution. It has to be more subtle and veiled in the virtues of the West to make headway. It's tailored for America and the West. That doesn't make it less subversive. Consider... why is it that every major city in America since the 1940s has experienced greater rates of crime? Is America less ideologically cohesive than any time over the past 125 years? Why are media narratives on both sides disingenuous? Why is far right a term used for people who are politically aligned with 90s president Bill Clinton? These are genuine questions I pose with sincerity.

 

[Sardines]

I agree that wokeness is a revised version of political correctness.

They both mean whatever the individual judging something to be "woke" or "PC" wants them to mean and at the same time mean essentially nothing at all. They are used as a multi-tool to identify anything the collective conservatives deem undesirable as the enemy of the good.

 

[Rubashov]

woke culture or cancel culture is by nature problematic... it's a slippery slope. Wasn't it Huxley who said like 80% of the general population just roll with the overton window... so if the ideology on the left becomes a net negative and people are ostracized for thinking outside the Overton window in a way that is a net positive... i mean. Wokeness is essentially a new iteration of political correctness. It's one thing to be cancelled over hate speech. That's fine. It's another thing to be cancelled for asking honest sincere questions because they don't fit a certain narrative. We've recovered a bit from some of that insanity with the dynamic tension between the left and right which is a good thing imo.

But like wokeness or neo liberalism, or cultural marxism or racial Marxism or whatever you want to call it... it's not an exact approximation of the Marxism we saw with the Bolsheviks or Stalin's Russia or Mao's cultural revolution. It has to be more subtle and veiled in the virtues of the West to make headway. It's tailored for America and the West. That doesn't make it less subversive. Consider... why is it that every major city in America since the 1940s has experienced greater rates of crime? Is America less ideologically cohesive than any time over the past 125 years? Why are media narratives on both sides disingenuous? Why is far right a term used for people who are politically aligned with 90s president Bill Clinton? These are genuine questions I pose with sincerity.

Well lets unpack this word salad, neo-liberalism is actually an economic and social program favoured by right wing governments to drastically reduce the size of government and increase the power of corporations, also generally favours market solutions and free trade. Has nothing to do with being woke and is generally focused on destroying unions and the welfare safety net.

Cultural Marxism, racial Marxism, are inventions of Fox news and the far right, they are nonsense terms and mean ****ing nothing. I've studied Marxism, written thesis on it, none of this is remotely Marxist. Marxism is a about redefining who owns the means of production and controls scarcity in the economy. It is essentially about removing entrenched privilege in a society, fundamentally it is an economic movement that advocates for wealth to be transferred from the few to the many. Now i can go on for hours about what happened in Russia, and I can talk about the differences between, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, the Moscow-Beijing split in the Communist Party, how that rippled through the communist world and divided the party. When I hear Trump and others in his junta talk about Marxism, I ****ing laugh, America barely has a history of socialism let alone Marxism.

What you would call political correctness is in my thinking an extension of the social changes that began with the counter culture movement of the 1960s. Again very little of 60s counter culture was driven by anything Marxist, 60s counter culture was only possible because of the economic wealth and surplus caused by the Keynesian post war miracle. Fundamentally counter culture belonged to the middle class and the "new youth culture" driven by New York ad agencies and the failures of traditional institutions like politics, church and families.

Crime is down is most counties in the west, my guess is gun control would help lower the crime rate. The lack of cohesion in the US probably has a heap more to do with the drastic increase in poverty the US over the last 40 years.

I use the term far right because it is the appropriate term, in Melbourne we have Neo-Nazis marching in the streets, this didn't even happen in the 30s. (It did in Sydney) The world is fundamentally more right wing than ever, part of it is because of the weakness if the organised left, or in fact its absence. Even my current labor government, is probably the most conservative Labor government in history.

 

[fishonjazz]

Well lets unpack this word salad, neo-liberalism is actually an economic and social program favoured by right wing governments to drastically reduce the size of government and increase the power of corporations, also generally favours market solutions and free trade. Has nothing to do with being woke and is generally focused on destroying unions and the welfare safety net.

Cultural Marxism, racial Marxism, are inventions of Fox news and the far right, they are nonsense terms and mean ****ing nothing. I've studied Marxism, written thesis on it, none of this is remotely Marxist. Marxism is a about redefining who owns the means of production and controls scarcity in the economy. It is essentially about removing entrenched privilege in a society, fundamentally it is an economic movement that advocates for wealth to be transferred from the few to the many. Now i can go on for hours about what happened in Russia, and I can talk about the differences between, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, the Moscow-Beijing split in the Communist Party, how that rippled through the communist world and divided the party. When I hear Trump and others in his junta talk about Marxism, I ****ing laugh, America barely has a history of socialism let alone Marxism.

What you would call political correctness is in my thinking an extension of the social changes that began with the counter culture movement of the 1960s. Again very little of 60s counter culture was driven by anything Marxist, 60s counter culture was only possible because of the economic wealth and surplus caused by the Keynesian post war miracle. Fundamentally counter culture belonged to the middle class and the "new youth culture" driven by New York ad agencies and the failures of traditional institutions like politics, church and families.

Crime is down is most counties in the west, my guess is gun control would help lower the crime rate. The lack of cohesion in the US probably has a heap more to do with the drastic increase in poverty the US over the last 40 years.

I use the term far right because it is the appropriate term, in Melbourne we have Neo-Nazis marching in the streets, this didn't even happen in the 30s. (It did in Sydney) The world is fundamentally more right wing than ever, part of it is because of the weakness if the organised left, or in fact its absence. Even my current labor government, is probably the most conservative Labor government in history.

Hell of a post

 

[LogGrad98]

Well lets unpack this word salad, neo-liberalism is actually an economic and social program favoured by right wing governments to drastically reduce the size of government and increase the power of corporations, also generally favours market solutions and free trade. Has nothing to do with being woke and is generally focused on destroying unions and the welfare safety net.

Cultural Marxism, racial Marxism, are inventions of Fox news and the far right, they are nonsense terms and mean ****ing nothing. I've studied Marxism, written thesis on it, none of this is remotely Marxist. Marxism is a about redefining who owns the means of production and controls scarcity in the economy. It is essentially about removing entrenched privilege in a society, fundamentally it is an economic movement that advocates for wealth to be transferred from the few to the many. Now i can go on for hours about what happened in Russia, and I can talk about the differences between, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, the Moscow-Beijing split in the Communist Party, how that rippled through the communist world and divided the party. When I hear Trump and others in his junta talk about Marxism, I ****ing laugh, America barely has a history of socialism let alone Marxism.

What you would call political correctness is in my thinking an extension of the social changes that began with the counter culture movement of the 1960s. Again very little of 60s counter culture was driven by anything Marxist, 60s counter culture was only possible because of the economic wealth and surplus caused by the Keynesian post war miracle. Fundamentally counter culture belonged to the middle class and the "new youth culture" driven by New York ad agencies and the failures of traditional institutions like politics, church and families.

Crime is down is most counties in the west, my guess is gun control would help lower the crime rate. The lack of cohesion in the US probably has a heap more to do with the drastic increase in poverty the US over the last 40 years.

I use the term far right because it is the appropriate term, in Melbourne we have Neo-Nazis marching in the streets, this didn't even happen in the 30s. (It did in Sydney) The world is fundamentally more right wing than ever, part of it is because of the weakness if the organised left, or in fact its absence. Even my current labor government, is probably the most conservative Labor government in history.

Fantastic post.. I'm glad you ran out of fosters for a night so you could be lucid enough for this one. Seriously though, great post.

One thing that needs to be analyzed in this context though is the relative difference in the definition of the term "poverty". Poverty doesn't mean now what it did even 20 years ago. Prosperity by every measure is at a high point in nearly every country on the planet. I think this is one reason, albeit just one reason, that set up such a movement like this in America. When the masses don't feel the oppression they are much more likely to allow it, embrace it even. I've commented on this a lot before but we instinctually are constantly on the lookout for existential threats, it's how we evolved to be where we are now, and when there is no ready existential threat, we grasp on to any we can find. Trump and his ilk tap into that and give them a new one, the "other", and people are happy to have someone to hate. So we are in a lot of ways in an environment that is going to be increasingly challenging, because it is driven by something our species isn't used to navigating, unprecedented prosperity as a means of manipulation by the billionaire class.