My Response To Knee-Jerk Negative Responses To the 9/11 Haiku

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/6e7358e478/a-video-haiku

Thanks to everyone who had kind words to say about the clip.

I am slightly baffled, though, at someone of the negative reactions it has elicited, especially from other comedians.

This joke is making fun of the phenomenon of people co-opting the 9/11 emotional experience as if they were there when it happened.

It is definitely not "making fun" of 9/11.

Not to make light of the individual 9/11 experiences anyone had who remembers that day, but there is an undeniably large group of people who, for whatever sick psychological reasons, get off on embellishing upon the impact 9/11 truly had on them.

There are a lot of people who like to use 9/11 to satisfy an emotionally stunted thrill of perceiving themselves as victims, by exaggerating the effect it had on their daily lives. Typically with these people, there seems to be a correlation between one's actual proximity to NYC on that day and the degree to which they trumpet their own "suffering" from the experience and associate it with the arbitrary minutia of their own lives or sense of purpose.

As for me, I was actually here.

I saw it live with my own eyes, and I breathed air filled with the evaporated corpses of the real victims for weeks afterwards.

So, no- I don't think the events of 9/11 are funny.

However, there are lots of cultural and social trends born out of 9/11 that ARE funny or ridiculous, at the very least worth criticizing or poking fun at.

That includes making fun of people who are too ignorant or emotionally stubborn to allow their minds to discern between the two.

The haiku is, at face value, as clever as it is crude.

But give me the benefit of the doubt that I don't find the events of 9/11 to be humorous in any way.

Despite what anyone thinks of my stand up material, do me a favor and indulge me by considering the possibility that one's "stage persona" isn't necessarily the person they are 24 hours a day.

I know that's a really lofty concept that doesn't always fit into the average 25 year old comedian's pre-conceptions about "alt comedy" or performing in general, but then again, I was a smug bastard when I was in my early 20s, too. Which is why I can usually forgive others for being the same way.

But don't be a hypocrite, either.

If you tell jokes that are sexist or misogynistic, or homophobic, or about AIDS, or about Nazi Germany, or any jokes that make light of the oppressive, hurtful realities of human existence, you are in NO place to criticize someone for doing a 9/11 joke.

At the very least, if you are a working or aspiring comedian, and can't grasp the concept of "devil's advocacy," well... best of luck to you.

Your Friend,

bc

PS- If you tell jokes about "fat girls" on stage, you are way more of an asshole than I am.