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ROBERT GEORGE

July 8, 2015 | 8:15pm

OPINION

PC dweebs don’t get AmySchumer’s jokes

So, after having the hottest show on Comedy Central, amuch-buzzed-about movie opening next week andChris Rock directing her upcoming HBO special, AmySchumer has fallen afoul of the modern-day Calvinists.

You know, those PC-loving censors who are furious thatsomeone somewhere is laughing at something theydeem inappropriate.

I’d hoped there might be some other Catholic, WestIndian, black Republican editorial writer whomoonlights as a comic rushing to Schumer’s aid. But,no, it looks like it’s going to be me.

The backlash has been growing for some time.

By Robert George

Amy SchumerPhoto: AP

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9/18/15, 10:34 AMPC dweebs don’t get Amy Schumer’s jokes | New York Post

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The UK Guardian went after the native New Yorker’s“blind spot on race” last month, citing standup jokeslike, “Nothing works 100 percent of the time, exceptMexicans,” and “I used to date Hispanic guys, but now Iprefer consensual.”

It reached a fever pitch Tuesday. In The WashingtonPost, Stacey Patton and David Leonard called Schumer a

racist on par with Donald Trump. They closed with this haymaker:

“While black families are burying their dead, churches are burning, black womenchurch pastors are receiving death threats and the KKK is planning rallies in SouthCarolina, Schumer is ‘playing’ with race. While Latinos are being deported in recordnumbers, while ‘80 percent of Central American girls and women crossing Mexico enroute to the United States are raped,’ while children are languishing in camps in theSouthwest, Schumer has got jokes, and only white America is laughing.”

Isn’t that just a bit . . . dramatic?

Schumer’s comedy can hardly be called conservative.

Her on-stage persona is decidedly New York urban: F-bombs are dropped on a regularbasis; she happily extols — often in graphic detail — the highlights of her sex life.

Like her generational cohort Lena Dunham, Schumer is edgy, sometimes just to beedgy — but also to make serious points.

Indeed, even the Washington Post writers admit that her sketches skewering “rapeculture” or “fat shaming” are excellent examples of social satire.

Patton and Leonard have their own handy rule: “[T]he motivation of the joke-tellerand what compels laughter is not at issue. What matters is the costs and consequencesof these ‘jokes’ to those being objectified.”

Call this the “disparate impact” theory of joke-writing. Intent doesn’t matter, onlyeffect.

Aside from demanding ideological intent in humor, this completely ignores a majorpoint — how jokes are actually written: They’re perpetual works-in-progress.

Classic bits like George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” or Chris Rock’s “N***as vs. BlackPeople” didn’t just pop up out of thin air. They were the end point of years of workingand refining.

An awkward “offensive” joke Amy Schumer delivers onstage today might be part of anextended, stunning, satirical monologue or sketch next week, next month or next year.

So, liberal Comedy Censors: What are the rules? Using the WaPo authors’ ownexamples about the troubles Latinos currently face, is it OK for a white comic to notethe absurd irony of a black president (whose polyglot background has been the targetof political and comedic musings) holding the “record” for deporting the most illegalimmigrants — er, “undocumented workers”?

Possible non-PC punchline: “Damn! We should have elected one of them a long timeago!”

What observations are people of color “allowed” to make? Can black comics makejokes about Hispanics taking jobs? Can Latino comics joke about blacks being onwelfare — while they’re working “100 percent”? Are such comics borderline racist (soto speak) if white people happen to tune in and start laughing?

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Comedy Censors want separate (but unequal?) silos where only blacks can mock blacks(and whites and Latinos), only women can mock women (and men), but not the otherway around.

Now that gays have “won” on marriage — is it OK to make jokes about them, sincethey’re slightly less “oppressed”?

Or do we still have to wait until the Employment Non-Discrimination Act becomeslaw? (Apparently, there’s no ENDA this navel-gazing!)

Memo to the censors: If you believe there shouldn’t be jokes as long as there’ssomething bad happening to someone somewhere, well, enjoy your mirthlessexistence. Just don’t steal everyone else’s joy in the process.

Robert A. George performs with the Electoral Dysfunction troupe every Saturday night atthe People’s Improv Theater.

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