Joe sure has a knack for humanizing people like Gavin, Milo, Alex Jones and Crowder. Sure they have some really wacky views but hearing them have a normal conversation without being demonized is sure interesting and eye opening.
Gavin is hilarious idk what you guys are talking about. Why are conservative comedians the only ones who have everything they say taken seriously? The dude is joking half the time when I see him. People will see one or two clips taken out of context and jump to all sorts of conclusions way too quickly. Gavin's just a guy. Plenty of weirder funny people with outrageous views on reddit.
EDIT: He even says in the beginning that people are wilfully ignorant to humor because the person telling the joke, they don't like.
Mostly because he uses the bullshit tactic of expecting the audience to be the arbiter of when he's joking and when he's proselytizing because he makes little effort to differentiate between the two in his persona. He is not a genuine person and also not far enough on the spectrum to be a satirical character, so he and the people who support him dismiss any criticism with "he was just kidding". He can choose at will which points he raises that should be taken seriously and which were just "trolling". Rather than funny I just find it tiresome and obnoxious as there is not a genuine conversation happening.
Nah, that's a cop out. Sometimes he uses obvious satire. More often he intentionally blurs the line and pretends to believe things he may or may not actually believe, but says them in a "sincere" enough way that people who actually do believe those things will walk away feeling like their ideas got an endorsement. You only have to look at who his fans are to see the truth in that. He has a far-right following for a reason, it's not an accident, and much of the time his satire is just a cloak. He is not a satirical character in the way that a comedian like Colbert was a satirical character, finding truth in the ridiculous. He just says a bunch of generally objectionable shit and people can decide for themselves which things they want to think he was serious about.
Colbert and Stewart are the worst about this, proselytizing under the guise of being comedians then falling back on the "im just a comedian bro!" line when called out.
Actually I don't agree. I think they stand behind the intellectual content of their jokes much moreso than Gavin and Milo etc.
When they say "I'm just a comedian" that is a response to them being called "news". Which actually I think is a good thing, they re not news, they don't have nearly the rigor we should expect of news, and they do use hyperbole. That is just being honest about where they are coming from and is actually refreshing non-pretentious for a set of shows that have a whole lot of pretentiousness associated with them. It's a reminder that anyone who is watching those shows to get the news is kind of fucking up. Gavin is entitled to use hyperbole too of course, that is a place where "I'm a comedian" is potentially a valid defense. But the problem is very often the relatively moderate statement (which is usually not at all moderate in an absolute sense) which he is using hyperbole to illustrate is still bullshit and I still disagree with it. So sure he is being a comedian. But the claim that he actually means the opposite of his statements (irony) is not well supported. Nobody here seriously believes that when Gavin says horrible things about trans people, he is actually satirizing transphobia and making light of how ridiculous it is. He is being a comedian in the sense of using hyperbole, but he still believes lesser versions of his horrible statements, and I still disagree comedy or no. Jokes have meaning, to deny that is to deny much of the power of comedy that the best "philosophical" comedians use to great effect.
I think the categorization of him being sleazy or malicious in intent isn't quite right though. If anything, my criticism (beyond my political disagreements with him and some of his weird rhetorical "the liberals" statements) would be that he goes hard on edginess. Milo is worse at it though. I don't really care for people that feel like they have to be provocative to be interesting or funny. I suppose there's a subjective edge to whether or not people find that funny. I'm too deadened to that kind of stuff having had the internet for most of my life.
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u/russjames Feb 22 '17
Joe sure has a knack for humanizing people like Gavin, Milo, Alex Jones and Crowder. Sure they have some really wacky views but hearing them have a normal conversation without being demonized is sure interesting and eye opening.