When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.
- Robert Pirsig
But, There Are Rules
To be absolutely clear: I'm not suggesting some sort of ethical anarchy for comedians. There are certain social standards to abide by, and more importantly, there are probably some topics that are generally speaking just simply off limits.
Among comedians, there is a sort of metajoke called "The Aristocrats." For the uninitiated, this is basically a joke wherein the joke-teller improvises the foulest, most horrible, most offensive sequence of events possible, and then ends with an utterly banal punchline, which goes: "What do you call it?" "The Aristocrats."
The reason it's funny to comedians is that it's the bare, raw material of comedy that comedians dare not show to audiences. In the same way a professional chef might appreciate the flavor of a raw onion, but would never serve it as such, a comedian works with every type of untouchable topic in order to serve up meaningful jokes. For example, most comedians would not do a joke that was simply about a death in wartime. It's sad, gruesome, and horrible. However, no comedian would shy away from a joke about the Iraq war. And yet the reason the latter will be funny is in large part due to the former. Jokes about the Iraq war are poignant because, at core, they are about something unspeakable. The horror of war is the raw onion. The Iraq joke is the onion soup.
In other words, as a comedian, you have to deal with topics that are far past the line in order to be able to do the necessary task of skirting the line. For any time someone says to you "That joke disgusted me," you will be able to think "you should've seen the one I didn't do!" Occasionally, we all slip and do "the one I didn't do." It's inevitable, and perhaps regrettable. But, it's part of the game.
In Conclusion
I want to close by saying to all the other comedians who get the Mom call that you should be pleased whenever it happens. I know several comedians who lament that their parents don't care enough to even read their comics, much less call. The irony is that the people most likely to get the call are also the people most likely to be upset by it. I am an unapologetically insensitive bastard, but when I get the Mom call, it still turns my stomach upside down. Upside down enough, in fact, that I feel the need to spent my evening writing a 3,000 word essay to falteringly (and not without fear of making the situation worse) prove that I am, indeed, a good kid.
- Zach Weiner, SMBC
