Bill Maher on political satire and Twitter
These days, comedy and satire have few boundaries. And the vast echo-chamber of the internet has made any boundaries left, even blurrier. Where tasteful boundaries do exist, and are crossed,…
By Avishay Artsy • • 1 min readBill Maher and the Twitter bird
These days, comedy and satire have few boundaries. And the vast echo-chamber of the internet has made any boundaries left, even blurrier. Where tasteful boundaries do exist, and are crossed, the blowback can be not-so-funny.
Take Stephen Colbert, who made a joke on his satire show – in his conservative persona – praising the owner of the Washington Redskins for creating a foundation about Native Americans.
But then Colbert’s twitter account – which is run by Comedy Central, not Colbert – tweeted a joke to further the so-called funny. And used racially tasteless verbiage about what a foundation for Asians would be called.
An Asian activist saw it, and started a trend on Twitter to #CancelColbert. Colbert responded this week by pretending to blow up Twitter on the show.
So where’s the line in comedy and satire? Is there a line?
KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis spoke to comedian Bill Maher this week about how comedy continues on in the age of the Internet.
Bill Maher will be doing a stand-up show at the Nokia Theater on Friday, April 18. More info here.