History of Feminism

Hamblin: Are these jokes real or some kind of performance-art parody?

Kornhaber: That would be nice, if it turned out to be a parody of some sort. I guess. But it’d have to have been started back in 2009, which would make for a pretty long-running conspiracy. The first thing that strikes me about these tweets is just how inept they are as attempts at humor. They didn’t make me chuckle guiltily. They just made me embarrassed for him. Right?

Hamblin: Most of these are old, from four to five years ago, so maybe it was just his racism/sexism/anti-Semitic phase? Like Picasso had his Blue Period? A lot of comedians change dramatically as they get older. Louis CK wrote and directed the film Pootie Tang.

Kornhaber: Yeah, it's interesting to look at the timestamps. His more recent controversial tweets are, at least, attempts at jokes, not just repeating old stereotypes. The Bruce Jenner one from last month—not exactly enlightened but, meh, fine. #BeatsByDreidel in May of 2014 indulges some not-s0-helpful thoughts about Jews controlling the world, but actually is almost a punchline, at least. The older stuff is just such a fascinating glimpse at what makes bad humor bad—the idea that you’re doing something exciting by saying something offensive, when really you’re just outing yourself as a deeply unoriginal thinker who has a tragically commonplace obsession with Jews. Or you're outing yourself as the stereotype of a frat-bro when it comes to attitudes toward women. You have a little bit of a standup background, Jim. What do you make of this stuff?