The Critical Comic

Warning: “explicit language.”

Bill Maher said the “N-word” (Bailey, DeMarche, Guerrasio, Italiano, Itzkoff, Kiefer, Lopez, Obeidallah, Parker, Phillips, Sasse, Schultz, Sharpton, Wamsley).

Or did he say “n—-r” (Guerrasio, Herreria & Morgan, Schultz, Sieczkowski)? Or did he say “n—–” (Littleton, Phillips)?  Or did he say “n*****” (Bailey, Lopez, Obeidallah)?  The “N-bomb” (Italiano)?  Or just “[expletive]” (DeMarche)?

As both rapper Killer Mike, a frequent guest on the show, and (white) Twitter critic James Burgos note – and here I’ll quote Chris Rock talking about the Michael Richards incident from 2006 – “He said Nigger.”

As I ask my college classes: What’s the difference?  We all know the word to which we refer with these other terms.

Is it better than saying the word if I quote Chris Rock, or if New York Times columnists Dave Itzkoff or Wesley Morris or Twitter critic, James Burgos, quotes Bill Maher himself using the term?

What if I just included the clip of Maher saying the word, as does Jason Guerrasio of Business Insider, Carla Herreria & Lee Moran of the Huffington Post, Laura Italiano of Page Six, Kristine Phillips of the Washington Post, German Lopez of Vox, and as does prominent Black Lives Matter Activist DeRay McKesson in his Tweet? Dean Obedallah of NPR delivers one of the most scathing critiques of Maher, yet his column is accompanied by a pop-up of the clip that is difficult to avoid – NSFW indeed.  What if I just include McKesson’s or Burgos’ Tweet, which includes the word or the clip, as do Itzkoff and Halle Kiefer of Vulture.com respectively?

Why does one of these “refer” to the word, without carrying the same baggage as the word itself? Is it hypocritical to critique Maher, while perpetuating the violence you claim he inflicted?  And why does the word necessarily carry baggage at all? Shouldn’t we be looking at the usage?

Perhaps this is a deeper discussion than we need to get into here, and I and many others have addressed some of it elsewhere (for perhaps the best example, see Judith Butler, Excitable Speech, 1997).  Suffice it to say that I’m one of those who argues that we give words power, and making a word taboo only increases that power and limits what it can do. In the immortal words of Hermione Granger:

Instead, we should allow the word to change meanings with use; basically that writing the word when talking about it is not the same as calling someone one. However, Michael Eric Dyson might be changing my mind on this, so I’ll not drop it again.

However, this brief introduction does lead to the better questions:

“What’s the joke?” and “Where did he cross the line”?

Is the joke the use of the word, or is there something else there?  For many, it’s unclear why the comments are offensive. In a public statement, HBO vaguely denounced the remark as ‘completely inexcusable and tasteless,” and vowed to edit the “deeply offensive comment.”  But what made it offensive?

For some, the problem is “Maher’s poor attempt at trying to get a few laughs by invoking the ‘N-word'” (Obeidallah). Dave Itzkoff calls the word a “racial epithet,” which seems softer than Edmund DeMarche of Fox News, Carla Herreria & Lee Moran and also Cavan Sieczkowski of the Huffington Post, and Kristine Phillips of the Washington Post, who call it a “racial slur.”

Similarly, German Lopez of Vox states that Maher “crossed one of those lines that should never be crossed: He dropped the N-word on live television.”

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), also had a problem with the word, Tweeting,

I’m a 1st Amendment absolutist. Comedians get latitude to cross hard lines. But free speech comes with a responsibility to speak up when folks use that word. Me just cringing last night wasn’t good enough. Here’s what I wish I’d been quick enough to say in the moment: ‘Hold up, why would you think it’s OK to use that word? … The history of the n-word is an attack on universal human dignity. It’s therefore an attack on the American Creed. Don’t use it.’

Rev. Al Sharpton also took umbrage with the use of the word, stating that such use “normalized” it: “He doesn’t get a pass because we’re friends,” Sharpton said. “What Bill Maher did was normalize a word that is anything but normal.” Sharpton said civil rights activists must be consistent in their outrage when the N-word is used – even by their friends.

Maher himself apologized for “the word I used in the banter of a live moment. The word was offensive, and I regret saying it and am very sorry.”

Doubtless, one could laugh at the use of the word.  Used to refer to Maher, it’s incongruous and unexpected, it’s also particularly base, which makes it’s use both carnivalesque (in the simple sense) and thereby invokes tension that begs for release.  Extending this farther, one could just laugh at a feeling of superiority over minorities, or for that matter over Maher for thinking the term could apply to him.  We can’t go back and poll the audience after the fact in any meaningful way, so we can only state possibilities.

If Maher were simply going for a laugh at the use of the word, especially in shock and surprise at its use, then it falls under obscene or “blue humor,” which follows the logic of the “dick joke.”

Dick jokes vs. Sexual jokes

Betsy Borns differentiates the dick joke from sexual jokes as based on “what makes the joke funny: if people laugh because the word ‘fuck’ is used, that’s a dick joke (and an easy laugh); if people laugh in reacting to an insightful observation about sex, that’s a sexual joke” (45).

In the hierarchy of comedy, sexual jokes are generally considered “better,” as dick jokes garner cheap laughs.  So we ask, is the racial equivalent of a dick joke?  Maher himself would argue yes.

However, for some it’s so much more.  Dean Obeidallah of CNN characterizes it as “A white comedian co-opting the horrific suffering of slaves for a joke and for some media attention.” He further states, “This was truly white privilege on parade. You have Maher and a white Republican senator yucking it up over a racial epithet and the plight of slaves.” While the word was also a problem, Obeidallah notes,

It wasn’t a joke that took on a person in power. It was the opposite. Maher’s joke made light of the darkest time in American history while using a word that white supremacists used to dehumanize a race of people.

In a tweet addressing Maher and Griffin, Cornell William Brooks, president of the NAACP, said: “Great comedians make us think & laugh. When our humanity is the punchline, it hurts too much to think or laugh.”

Intentionality

However, this requires us to believe that Bill Maher, in an unscripted interview, was making light of the “plight of slaves” and “the darkest time in American history” (and further, that he knew, in advance, that he’d gain media attention).  I’d love to give Maher that much credit, but I can’t.

Further, as I’ve argued elsewhere, a standard notion in stand-up – which is, after all, where Maher began – is that comics are primarily trying to make us laugh.  That’s their primary intention.

Political activist and blogger Egberto Willies notes the lack of intended harm: “We spent an inordinate amount of time on a joke that was clearly said without malice.”

Larry King also came to Maher’s defense, saying on Twitter that he’s been friends with the comic for years “and there’s not a racist bone in his body. Let’s accept his apology and move on.”  While we may not be able to accept this latter absence of racism on face, the former claim of no malice seems likely.

Summary

A general premise of my criticism is that good (ethical, just) comedy maximizes the ways marginalized people are lifted up or empowered by possible interpretations of the joke, and minimizes the possible ways they are belittled or ridiculed by the joke.  By this standard, Maher doesn’t fare well.

My take is that Maher seemed to try to be self-deprecating in the presence of a Republican Senator from a red state by casting himself as a “city slicker,” but that term, we can agree, wouldn’t have been very funny.  So instead he went with the dick joke/”N-bomb.”

Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Maher heard “field,” and in a hurried search for the most humorous of all the uses of and references to the term that his audience would get, came up with “field n—-r,” and put himself in opposition to that as a “house n—-r.”  It was a bit too simple and for that, alone, we could critique him.

Further, by comparing himself to a slave, yes, he does to an extent make light of their plight.  Not his finest hour.

[Update 6/6/2017] I wanted to clarify here: If he had said “house slave” it would be no better.  It makes light not just because he’s making a hyperbolic comparison – like someone saying “woe is me, I’m practically a slave” – but because he doesn’t even have a basis of bad treatment or lack of compensation, let alone threat of punishment, to warrant such a comparison.  Yeah, rich media talking head… Totally a slave.

Further still, he knew it was wrong the moment he said it, because he hears something from the audience that led him to instantly clarify, “It’s a joke!”  I’ve talked elsewhere about the “I’m joking/Just kidding” defense. By that immediate defense, which would be unnecessary had the line been a good one, he displays the heart of the problem – it wasn’t.