The best comedy is funny because it is based at least in part on truth. Stereotypes while politically incorrect are funny if part of what is said in jest reflects reality.
When I was much younger, I read at least one of comedian Raybon Kan’s books and thoroughly enjoyed it. He was witty and clever. I came across one of his tweets yesterday that accompanied a photo of him standing with New Zealand’s new Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon and while his tweet was funny it also contained a very uncomfortable truth.
Ordinarily one would not associate censorship or a crackdown on free speech with a Race Relations Commissioner, but in today’s offence culture everyone including comedians are increasingly having to censor what they say for fear of having their careers destroyed.
The very fact that Kan was joking about Meng Foon allowing him to have free speech reveals that he knows that there is more than a grain of truth in the commissioner’s job being all about controlling our speech; by labelling opinions that he disagrees with hate speech and lobbying for it to be criminalised.
Forgive me if I don’t laugh.
