SNL’s Pete Davidson has joined Jerry Seinfeld in swearing off doing shows on college campuses.
The reason? Students are so politically correct that they are easily offended.
In other words, they’ve lost their senses of humor.
Davidson revealed that he will stop campus gigs in an interview with Paper magazine (hat tip: Hot Air). Here are the relevant sections from the interview:
Compared to when you were first starting out in comedy, the world seems like a more hyper-sensitive place where you can’t say anything without somebody being offended. What does that feel like as a comic?
It makes doing college [shows] really hard. I refuse to do a college after this year ’cause it’s like, you’re just setting yourself up for trouble… Comedy is just, like, getting destroyed. Standup’s about to be about, like, sneakers. Like, “Hey, everyone like sneakers?” You can’t talk about anything. You can’t. The second you open your mouth and have an opinion, you lose money today. And I don’t think that’s a safe place to live in.
Creatively, it seems like it would stunt you.
It’s the worst! It’s why I got rid of the Internet…
Do you say s**t that you regret in your sets? And how do you deal with that?
Yeah, look, when I’m doing standup and stuff, nothing I ever say is coming from a hateful place. And you can’t know what’s funny until you try it, you know? But anything I’ve ever said on stage or made a joke about, I don’t regret it. I mean, some jokes I’m like, “Welp, that joke sucked.” You know? But I’m never like, “Aw f**k!” ‘Cause there are times I try things that I think are ridiculous and they work. And that’s what sucks about political correctness in comedy, I think that you need freedom.
It would have been interesting if the interviewer, who seemed mostly concerned with how Davidson, who is straight, relates to the LGBT community, had asked about the cultural climate on college campuses. Why is it hostile to to humor? But he didn’t bother with followup questions.
So, we don’t know whether Davidson has made jokes that bombed because they were politically incorrect. We don’t get any reflections on the relationship of freedom to humor. He hints that he may have lost money because of politically incorrect jokes. Is this the case? That would have been interesting to ask. Think how insufferable the dour students of today will be in a few years!
Hot Air’s John Sexton comments on the state of comedy on college campuses:
Last year, SNL writer Nimesh Patel was invited to perform at an event at Columbia University hosted by the Asian American Alliance. Part of the way through his set, Patel told a joke that some in the audience didn’t like and his microphone was cut off.
It’s not just college campuses where jokes aren’t funny anymore. Back in August there was a backlash against Dave Chappelle over comments he made about cancel culture and jokes about trans people in his latest comedy special. Critics trashed the special while most viewers praised it.
I think John Cleese summed up the problem in 2017 when he said, “a lot of the politically correct people have no sense of humor.”
I would have thought, from the very little I know about him, that Davidson would be welcome on campus.
This unfunny joke is a goodly part of my store of knowledge about Mr. Davidson.