Last week, the Leftist “anti-racist” flashmob came for Naomi Schaefer Riley, a neocon Wall Street Journal type whose husband, Jason Riley, is actually black (and has been guilty of some silly "anti racist" smearing of his own). But that didn’t save her from being fired from her blogging gig at the Chronicle of Higher Education, any more than having a Chinese wife saved John Derbyshire from similarly being thrown overboard from National Review. See also the case of Robert Weissberg. (Hypocritically, National Review has criticized CHE:
This is a test of integrity
—Mona Charen).
It’s getting to be a pattern.
Wouldn’t be funny if there were no repercussions for committing the ultimate, unforgivable sin in modern America: eschewing political correctness to point out the absurdities of our new “diverse” official culture?
Really funny.
Tosh.O funny.
Followers of the extraordinary career of comedian Daniel Tosh since he started his Comedy Central TV show Tosh.0, know just how funny. Tosh, a gangly white 36-year-old Floridian, is easily the hottest comedian in America right now. His Tosh.0 replaced The Daily Show and The Colbert Report as the highest rated non-cartoon program on Comedy Central in 2010 and hasn’t looked back since. [New Comedy Central star outdraws Stewart, Colbert, By James Hibberd, Reuters, July 12, 2010]
The reason is simple: Tosh invites his viewers, watching safely on their own televisions, to enjoy jokes so verboten that they cannot be repeated in public without bringing on the flashmobs and the diversity commissars.
Playing a character of ambiguous sexuality, cracking jokes that can be construed as both pro-gay and homophobic at the same time, Tosh hosts a show that is a 21st century version of America’s Funniest Home Videos. He picks the most hilarious/outrageous clips uploaded to the Internet and showcases them along with his comic commentary.
Tosh also offers what he calls “web redemptions” to the people who star in his featured videos—people who are, more often than not, black. Generally, this segment involves blacks being the butt of Tosh’s jokes until they finally are afforded the chance to ameliorate the situation by engaging in some hilarious act of redemption.
One such video and redemption focused on amateur black rapper Optimo, whose homemade rap video was cut short when, rapping and dancing in traffic, he was hit full on by an ice cream truck. (This really happened).
The video was posted online, went viral, and was then featured on Tosh.O. In Optimo’s “web redemption,” Tosh dresses up as a crossing guard and teases Optimo about traffic safety before helping him make a new rap video featuring kids dancing around an ice cream truck driven by Tosh himself.
The pretentious character that Tosh plays on the show and has perfected to snarky brilliance is basically a walking caricature of Christian Landers’ Stuff White People Like’s famous numbered list, which in itself is one of the most subversive literary works of this century.
If there is one thing about the type of whites lampooned in SWPL that Landers has gotten right, it’s that all they covet is status. In Occupied America, where paying homage to diversity, equality, and the myth of white privilege is necessary for a peaceful life and secure employment, this status-seeking game played by SWPL type whites results in earning enough money to insulate their family from living near black people—and increasingly other non-whites—of the type observable by a glance at web site World Star Hip Hop (WSHH).
What is WSHH? Supposedly it’s a promotional website for up-and-coming black performers, a place where they can upload videos and photographs of themselves demonstrating their talents in the hopes of getting signed to a record or making it big in the modeling world. In reality, it is more like an online ghetto where black thugs and prostitutes post graphic depictions of all the world’s vices.
Looking at the videos—which black people willingly upload to WSHH—many showing young black males randomly attacking elderly black people, packs of black people attacking non-blacks, and local news network broadcasts of strange black behavior—the white viewer slowly begins to realize there is something fundamentally different between those appearing on WSHH, and themselves.
Tosh has made millions of dollars highlighting these videos on Tosh.0. Earlier this year, the show debuted its fourth season to massive numbers:
“On the night he announced the Tosh Tour Twenty Twelve, Daniel Tosh returned to COMEDY CENTRAL for the 4th Season Premiere of “Tosh.0” and recorded the series’ biggest premiere among young men, dominating the night across all of television…
“Tosh.0” drew 3.1 million total viewers to its season premiere, along with a 2.3 adult 18-49 rating, 4.1 men 18-34 rating and a 4.6 men 18-24 rating. A huge hit with young men, “Tosh.0” was the #1 series in Prime on Tuesday night across all of television with men 18-34 and men 18-24, scoring the best rating among men 18-24 for any of the series’ season premieres.”[“Tosh.0” Season Premiere Pulls In 3.1 Million Total Viewers, Commedy Central Press Release, February 1, 2012]
No episode cuts to the essence of what Tosh.0 is all about more than his commemoration of Black History Month. In a mere 22 minutes, he did more to knock down racial GoodThink than any MSM coverage of a black-on-white murder or horrendous crime will ever do.
The episode opened with a video clip of one of the too-numerous fights that break out between black women, this one at a restaurant. It inevitably descends into a Pier-Six brawl.
“That’s going to hurt their Zagat rating,” Tosh says, as the clip rolls of black women absolutely destroying the inside of the restaurant.
“I’m sure they left a nice tip,” he slyly comments as the clip ends. The studio audience (very largely but not exclusively white) immediately laughs—knowing the time-honored and proven stereotype that black people don’t tip. (See To Insure Prejudice: Racial Disparities in Taxicab Tipping, by Ian Ayres, Fredrick E. Vars, and Nasser Zakariya, Yale Law Journal, Vol. 114, p. 1613, 2005, if wyoure’ one of those people who doesn’t believe in stereotypes.)
Then, Tosh shares the first of a series of little-known Black History Month facts: “Speaking of cleaning up messes [a nod to the previous black fight clip video], did you know L.P. Ray invented the dust pan in 1897?”[Transcript]
His studio audience laughs, nervously at this point. But as the episode progresses, the absurdity of each fact becomes more apparent. Even better, Tosh point out the invention of the Super Soaker by Lonnie Johnson, a black man. This invention, transforming backyard water fights the world over, represents perhaps the greatest contribution of a black scientist to the advancement of weapons technology.
It was this joke that prompted one viewer I know to remark: “Tosh or one of his writers reads StuffBlackPeopleDontLike.com.”
Indeed, the rest of the episode was in effect dedicated to pointing out that the only significant black contributions have come primarily from music or sports. One of the Black History Month facts was NBA player Dwayne Wade’s stat line from the night before.
Were the writers of Tosh.0 making a joke out of what the month of February has become: a celebration of the minor contributions of black individuals as if they somehow are representative of the entire black race? If so, shouldn’t this bring down the wrath of the Diversity Gods?
The MSM hasn’t seemed to notice.
Entertainment Weekly profiled Tosh, writing this:
This is a tough argument to make, but if anybody can pull it off, it’s Tosh.0 host Daniel Tosh: “I’m not a misogynistic and racist person,” the very un-PC Comedy Central personality tells critics at TCA. “But I do find those jokes funny, so I say them.”
In other words: He’s not racist, he just plays one on TV. And he doesn’t even really do that, does he? Tosh manages to get away with some of the most envelope-pushing jokes around; lines that would draw outraged headlines coming from almost any other TV personality. Something about that big grin and his “I’m just playing” demeanor manages to dial back the edge — at least, in the court of public opinion. Plus, he smartly contextualizes his jokes, especially during the very on-point segment titled “Is It Racist?” He’s just asking, he explains (though typically the answer is a firm “yes”).
[Daniel Tosh at TCA: 'I'm not sexist or racist, I just like the jokes', by James Hibberd, Entertainment Weekly, January 5, 2012]
Racial jokes strike a chord for a reason. Were the jokes Tosh.0 not based in some truth, they wouldn’t be funny, he wouldn’t be attracting millions of viewers, people wouldn’t be flocking to his live shows, and his net worth wouldn’t be nearing eight digits. They would merely be seen as mean and silly.
And laughing at these jokes is a subtle form of protest. Through the medium of comedy, Daniel Tosh has shown that there are tens of million of people who are skeptical of the Politically Correct culture now being imposed upon America.
For now, watching Tosh.0 is a therapeutic salve for this totalitarian culture’s increasingly onerous demands. Who knows how long he’ll survive.
But it’s only comedy, right?
Paul Kersey[Email him] is the author of the blog SBPDL, and has published the books SBPDL Year One, Hollywood in Blackface and Captain America and Whiteness: The Dilemma of the Superhero.
