Well, that was then and this is now, and civilization has moved on, to rape, the New York Times would have us believe. Thanks to Sarah Silverman and her children, says Timesman Jason Zinoman, “coarse, sexually frank female comics” are having a ball with rape. “It’s startlingly rare to watch an evening of stand-up in New York without any mention of rape,” according to the Zinoman.
Other bad girls named in Zinoman’s article are Whitney Cummings, Phoebe Robinson (who, Zinoman points out, is from Cleveland, as if that is somehow important*), and Amy Schumer, but for some reason he omits Chelsea Handler, who must have made a rape joke or two, while riffing on vodka and masturbation.
Afterwords
The Times generously praises George Carlin for getting the ball rolling, who cited Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd as “funny rape,” although I think it would be funnier the other way around. Although I’m not bald and don’t have a speech impediment or a shotgun, I always rather identified with Elmer, and often wished he would, you know, blow Bugs’s brains out. Now that would have been funny.
*If you know your Bette Midler concert films, there’s a bit where someone in the audience yells for her to do “the taco joke,” causing Bette to exclaim “Now I know I’m in Cleveland,” the taco joke being “If God didn’t want man to eat pussy, why did he make it look like a taco?”
