So I didnt watch this whole thing, but it did come up when I was watching other stuff due to autoplay, but I watched the first few minutes of the Majority Report ripping Jerry Seinfeld for saying that comedy isn't funny any more because wokeism, and citing all in the family and I did want to correct a few things.
Basically, Sam Seder's take was that All in the Family was progressive and blah blah blah, and he didn't get the criticism to some extent. And then he talked about how a lot of comedies he watched in the 80s-2000s were very offensive by today's standards, and I do want to clarify what I think Seinfeld meant.
Yes, All in the Family was "woke" in a sense. it was a very liberal sitcom. BUT....it was also patently offensive in a way that would make it unsuitable for broadcast today. All in the Family was a sitcom of a 1970s American family. You had Archie Bunker, who was this conservative WWII veteran who basically was like a Reaganite before Reagan was a thing. And he was often horribly offensive on the show with blatant racism all the time and calling people slurs and blah blah blah. But then you'd have his daughter's son in law, Mike, who basically was this hippie liberal type who was in college to eventually become a college professor, and he would always pushed back vs Archie. And Archie would have these ridiculous conservative takes, and Mike would offer the more sane liberal take. And then you'd have something happen that basically proves Mike right. I mean, the show was offensive, but it had a good purpose for doing so. it was creating a caricature of a horribly offensive conservative rightoid for the purpose of lampooning that behavior. it wasnt an endorsement of those views. It was basically there for humor.
But that's the thing. If you put that on TV these days, the woke people would lose their crap. Because it's "racist". And you can say that. And we have to have this weird no tolerance thing where we cant even discuss these issues, and anything less than just yay diversity, yay wokeism, we're so good and moral and these evil people are so evil and blah blah blah. And it's not really healthy for society. Basically, we're overstigmatizing stuff that is offensive. And maybe we should be more tolerant of offensive things. Rather than shrilly screaming it should be BANNED BANNED BANNED and trying to ruin peoples' lives for ever uttering the things that they deem offensive with no sense of nuance at all, maybe we should just...let people say what they wanna say. And maybe we should let people take care of the right and their offense...by lampooning them, and making fun of them. And making them look stupid, rather than turning everything into a fricking moral panic.
And you know what? While I do find modern stuff funny, I do miss the previous era of comedy, where we COULD be offensive. And maybe some people used that power for wrong. But a lot of people used that stuff for good too. And you know what? It would be for the market and consumer to decide. These fricking cancel culture morons sucked the fun out of everything. They have the same vibe as the weirdos who hated harry potter and pokemon for being demonic. Now they just hate harry potter because the author hates trans people, and how DARE YOU ever give her financial support by supporting her art. No fun things allowed.
I think that's what the problem really comes down to with the modern left. They HAVE morphed into the left wing equivalent of your stuffy boomer suburban mom who wanted to take away your pokemon cards and harry potter because it was an affront to Jesus. Now they wanna take away your harry potter and offensive humor because "wokeness." And that ain't cool.
Keep in mind, this is, IMO, the GOOD kind of conservatism here. Hey, society was fine the way it was, no need to fix what wasnt broken, and these guys are hell bent on being the fun police and "fixing it" in the name of their radical ideology. They're basically religious psychos from the left. And yeah we should push back against them. And I think that's what people are talking about.
And I do get annoyed at how lefties like to ignore this stuff exists or gaslight us and pretend this stuff doesnt exist, or ask us "well what exactly cant you say any more?" knowing that the person is gonna have to say "yeah, the offensive stuff". Because play well politically. Even if you can make a valid moral point about it, like I do, arguing for freedom of expression and how this stuff can be used for good, with All in the Family basically being an example of that Sam Seder ironically agrees with, most people are just gonna devolve to "hurr durr so you're racist and wanna be racist and say racist things" while giving us the "free speech doesnt mean freedom from consequences" speech for the 203829289th time. I say if there are consequences to free speech, it's not really free, now is it?
But yeah. I admit I am conservative in the sense that I defend the previous era of offensive humor that isnt allowed to be said any more. And things were better when we could say some things without the fear of an angry mob trying to ruin our lives for it. people need to stop acting like this "wokeism" stuff isn't a thing and that it isnt a rather radical secular religion intended to erode the principles of liberal democracy like free speech and sometimes the rule of law, in the name of furthering "equality" and "tolerance." Because that's exactly what it is, and like it or not, we should admit it's a thing instead of doing this dishonest thing lefties like to do of dancing around it and playing mind games with critics of it.
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