Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Like many people, I spent some time watching great video clips of Trevor Noah’s standup routines (compiled here by Vox) and laughing. I certainly enjoyed his first appearance on the Daily Show, which I happened to catch live (I don’t watch the show routinely, but like many people consume clips via the internet the next …
The apartheid government of South Africa had a problem (well, it had a lot of them, but bear with me). It wanted to discriminate by race, but how does one deal with mixed-race people? It came up with the infamous “pencil test,” in which a pencil is pushed through a person’s hair, and how easily …
[Content Note: Ableist Speech including use of the “r-word.” Later, I quote a passage from Huckleberry Finn that contains the n-word, not spelled out.] This post works with a 1996 piece from David Sedaris and This American Life that contains terrible depictions of the intellectually disabled. It was re-broadcast in 2013. I’d like to see content notes …
I have a piece up on CNN today about comedy and disability, focusing on an episode of This American Life. I’m interested in the use of disclaimers, something I’ve talked about before, as a way to try to escape the consequences of one’s words. I know some will disagree. They’ll say it’s just comedy. Or …
I’m interested in disclaimers in comedy, as well as offensive language and its permutations more generally (see here and here). In general, I argue that the speaker doesn’t get to control whether or not something is offensive. The speaker only controls whether or not he/she cares. Right now, I’ve got a piece working on comedy, disability, …