'SNL' Star Says He Won't Play Colleges Because the Woke Generation Can't Comprehend Comedy

In September, I wrote an article asking, “Are Comedians Finally Fighting Back Against the Far Left’s Cultural Clampdown?”

I believe the answer is Yes, but — in my view — there’s a more important question: Has cultural Marxism gone too far for us to ever return to the days of free expression from the stage?

I believe that answer may be Yes as well.

In the 80’s, there was virtually no such thing as “too offensive, therefore off limits.”

Then came years of comedians selling themselves with “You won’t believe what she says!” “He says what you think but are afraid to say!”

Problem was, it was all a…joke — those acts were homogenously “politically correct,” aka left-wing.

Comedy had conformed to a singular perspective.

Humor had always been about gags, but not the kind over your mouth.

Now, though some comics want it removed, I can’t imagine another George Carlin, (young) Eddie Murphy, or (80’s era) Andrew Dice Clay ever taking the mic.

But…I’d like to — I believe the spotlight should be a place for diversity, and the outrage machine could use a serious unplugging.

SNL star Pete Davidson seems to be of a similar mind.

The 26-year-old comedian recently told Paper Magazine he’s done playing colleges.

Why? Because everyone’s offended, and comedy is — to a great degree — the art of making fun of things.

What can you ridicule when everything’s off limits?

“It makes doing college [shows] really hard.”

So he’s out:

“I refuse to do a college after this year ’cause it’s like, you’re just setting yourself up for trouble. … Comedy is just, like, getting destroyed.”

Yes. It is.

Pete lamented that there are very few “safe” topics left:

“Stand-up’s about to be about, like, sneakers. Like, ‘Hey, everyone like sneakers?’ You can’t talk about anything. You can’t. The second you open your mouth and have an opinion, you lose money today. And I don’t think that’s a safe place to live in.”

Davidson’s fellow SNL actor Nimesh Patel knows a thing or two about that, as I covered back in December:

On Saturday night…SNL cast member Nimesh Patel took the stage to perform some comedy. He apparently hadn’t been reading my articles, so he expected campus life to be a microcosm of real-worldness.

Big mistake.

…

Nimesh delved into the ol’ basket of “offensive’ humor, including a claim that being a gay black man is surely not a choice, because “no one looks in the mirror and thinks, ‘this black thing is too easy, let me just add another thing to it.’”

…

Then halfway through, show organizers took to the stage, confiscated the mic, denounced Nimesh’s jokes, and requested that he wrap it up.

Nimesh asserted that he was only exposing students to “real world” ideas.

His mic was then cut, and students booted him from the stage.

Sounds about right.

Not only do many among the younger generation not understand comedy, but they’re also confused about what constitutes “safety” — as was the case with a student present at the Columbia kickout:

“When older generations say you need to stop being so sensitive, it’s like undermining what our generation is trying to do in accepting others and making it safer. Obviously the world is not a safe space but just accepting that it’s not and continuing to perpetuate the un-safeness of it… is saying that it can’t be changed.”

Yep.

Like I wrote at the time:

Columbia isn’t the only school trying hard to protect their students from the harshness of…harshness:

The University of Montana has banned mean speech (here).

Chick-fil-A got banned for not being left-wing (here).

Delaware University is trying to protect their fragile students from the terrors of snow (here).

And then, of course, there’s this.

Standup comedians have been avoiding college campuses for quite some time now; the audiences just can’t take it. Without a doubt, school is no longer a place of Reading, Writing, and Reality. Columbia’s official slogan is “In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen.”

Translation:

“In Thy light shall we see light.”

At Columbia, someone must’ve forgotten to pay the power bill.