Gays vs. Faggots

Went to a pretty funny comedy show on the cruise boat. A Latino, he took some POC (person of color) privilege to make a number of jokes about Black people that were pretty funny. He then moved on to the Gays. The crowd's discomfort with gayness was palpable--when he started talking that gay people need to have the right to marry, I was one of two people who cheered. He made some funny comments about being dick-phobic and not homophobic--I thought it was a good distinction. Then he launched into a gay vs. faggots bit, which reminded me of Chris Rock's black folk vs niggas bit--the only difference was Chris Rock is Black, and the comedian was a self-proclaimed Straight.

I just kept on wondering what brought him to the point of making that distinction? Like, what in his life prompted him to write those jokes? And they weren't very interesting: basically a gay is nice, and a faggot is an uptight asshole (no pun intended). And the joke is where...? What made it worse was knowing that the audience wasn't necessarily pro-gay, and so the crowd wasn't very supportive (meanwhile, the jokes about marriage and blowjobs got resounding laughs). It rubbed me the wrong way. Even as a anti-PC comedian, I simply didn't get the point he was making, and it seemed like he was able to capitalize on his straightness to be able to make those jokes. Would a gay comedian have been able to do the same? Why or why not?



- Posted using BlogPress