While thinking about this thing that’s been bugging me lately, I reached for Lenny Bruce. This thing is a question concerning the “P.C agenda” and a part of the surge of people saying whatever comes into their heads, without thinking twice, that’s not alright babe. Backed up by political celebrities.
To those who like Boris, and who like his species of unfiltered commentary on contemporary life, you should get hip to Lenny Bruce, a comedic philosopher who kinda’ invented the genre of offensive performance art by daring to tell the truth. On the back cover, there’s a blurb that for me, gets at the root of the difference between good funny intelligent comedy, and idiotic, cheap, political coercion.
“Lenny Bruce has in effect composed a social document…He searches for truth with pick-axe and rapier, saying the unsayable, sparing nothing and no one, including himself”–Library Journal.
There, right at the end. “Sparing nothing and no one, Including himself”. That’s the difference with Boris, and most other politicians, leaders, royals, CEO’s, they rarely turn their wit on themselves. Self-deprecating humour, there’s a thing that not many well known public figures can do. It’s all one way, e.g comparing Muslim women to letter-boxes. To mean, the day Boris comes out and calls himself a fool and a clown, and any other politician for that matter, although he kind of takes the biscuit within UK politics in 2019, is the day I could consider defending his right to speak about things he does not like or understand.
I’d go further, and propose that a sense of self-deprecating humour, along with other kinds of sense of humour, are suspiciously absent the further you head out toward the edge of any political party. See Nigel Farage, who’s about as funny as an improvised roadside bomb.
Listen and read Lenny Bruce and get your own house in order first. Note to self 😉
I almost forgot to finish my story, while thinking of all this, I opened the Lenny Bruce autobiography somewhat randomly and found this quote:
“When I talk on the stage, people often have the impression that I make things up as I go along. This isn’t true. I know a lot of things I want to say; I’m just not sure exactly when I will say them. This process of allowing one subject spontaneously to associate itself with another is equivalent to James Joyce’s stream of consciousness.”–Lenny Bruce, How To Talk Dirty And Influence People, CHapter 10, pg. 92.
DEEP SCRATCH (REMIX) 