Even as a fairly voracious consumer of stand up comedy, I have never been a huge fan of Amy Schumer’s schtick. It’s not that I find Schumer offensive; offensive comedy done well (see, e.g., Anthony Jeselnik) can be quite entertaining and willfully suspending your sense of outrage is a prerequisite to enjoying almost any stand up comedian. I just don’t think she’s very funny, when all is said and done.

Nevertheless, it appears that the collective American consciousness is determined to prove the old adage about there being no accounting for taste, and Schumer is enjoying a minute right now as perhaps the most successful female comedian in the country. The unexpected commercial success of her first feature film, Trainwreck, caused the nattering anti-fun brigade of liberals to undertake what they considered to be a merited examination of her comedy on the merits.

The results, predictably, were not pretty. Liberal authors immediately labeled Schumer’s comedy as rating several problematics on issues related to both gender and race (more here).

I’m not here to play referee in this particular liberal internecine fight. Here is my point – telling jokes professionally is what Amy Schumer does for a living. This is, so far as we know, her only area of expertise. The fact that liberals find fault with this aspect of her personality is evidence that they find fault with her entire professional schtick.

Apparently, Amy Schumer has decided to earn some head pats from liberals by coming out and taking a stand for gun control. What expertise does she have on these matters? What does she know about guns? What basis does she have to opine on public policy? None at all, so far as I (or anyone else) can tell. Literally the only qualification she has to hold forth on matters of public concern is that she is a person who is famous for telling jokes – jokes that the left rejects as being inappropriate and culturally insensitive.

And yet, predictably, the same liberals who criticize Amy Schumer’s comedy for being outside the pale are eating up her comments on gun control uncritically. By way of analogy, this would be roughly analogous to saying that Bobby Flay sucks at cooking, but taking his advice on open heart surgery.

If Amy Schumer is useful for anything (a point I’m not ready to concede), it is telling the jokes you all tsk tsk and write tedious think pieces about. Don’t criticize her art as worthless and then tell us that she ought to be taken seriously on a matter of actual national importance. It’s insulting to the intelligence of everyone involved.