Today’s college students can’t seem to take a joke.

[NobleSavage]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/thats-not-funny/399335/

Two of the most respected American comedians, Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld, have discussed the unique problems that comics face on college campuses. In November, Rock told Frank Rich in an interview for New York magazine that he no longer plays colleges, because they’re “too conservative.” He didn’t necessarily mean that the students were Republican; he meant that they were far too eager “not to offend anybody.” In college gigs, he said, “you can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.” Then, in June, Seinfeld reopened the debate—and set off a frenzied round of op-eds—when he said in a radio interview that comics warn him not to “go near colleges—they’re so PC.”

When I attended the convention in Minneapolis in February, I saw ample evidence of the repressive atmosphere that Rock and Seinfeld described, as well as another, not unrelated factor: the infantilization of the American undergraduate, and this character’s evolving status in the world of higher learning—less a student than a consumer, someone whose whims and affectations (political, sexual, pseudo-intellectual) must be constantly supported and championed. To understand this change, it helps to think of college not as an institution of scholarly pursuit but as the all-inclusive resort that it has in recent years become—and then to think of the undergraduate who drops out or transfers as an early checkout. Keeping hold of that kid for all four years has become a central obsession of the higher-ed-industrial complex. How do you do it? In part, by importing enough jesters and bards to keep him from wandering away to someplace more entertaining, taking his Pell grant and his 529 plan and his student loans with him.

I haven't been on a college campus in quite some time. Is this exaggerated?

 

[ideologyhunter]

It varies. Oberlin College and the like: Ye Gods!!!!! Jim Norton would not be welcome.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/thats-not-funny/399335/

When I attended the convention in Minneapolis in February, I saw ample evidence of the repressive atmosphere that Rock and Seinfeld described, as well as another, not unrelated factor: the infantilization of the American undergraduate, and this character’s evolving status in the world of higher learning—less a student than a consumer, someone whose whims and affectations (political, sexual, pseudo-intellectual) must be constantly supported and championed. To understand this change, it helps to think of college not as an institution of scholarly pursuit but as the all-inclusive resort that it has in recent years become—and then to think of the undergraduate who drops out or transfers as an early checkout. Keeping hold of that kid for all four years has become a central obsession of the higher-ed-industrial complex. How do you do it? In part, by importing enough jesters and bards to keep him from wandering away to someplace more entertaining, taking his Pell grant and his 529 plan and his student loans with him.

I haven't been on a college campus in quite some time. Is this exaggerated?

It is. The problem isn't offending the student body, but being prepared for the obvious criticisms from individuals of the community. (And the misguided characterization of the "average" parent the college administration holds.)

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Two comics say they won't play college campuses and we now have a national crisis? I don't think so. Other comics are playing colleges campuses and still more are clamoring to.

Remember these are the same college campuses that have fraternities that sing the praises of keeping their houses white and parade their pledges pass dormitories singing little ditties like this one

No means yes
Yes means anal

These actions do not strike me as the shenanigans of a population horrified by offense.

 

[credoconsolans]

I haven't been on a college campus in quite some time. Is this exaggerated?

It is. The problem isn't offending the student body, but being prepared for the obvious criticisms from individuals of the community. (And the misguided characterization of the "average" parent the college administration holds.)

Two comics say they won't play college campuses and we now have a national crisis? I don't think so. Other comics are playing colleges campuses and still more are clamoring to.

Remember these are the same college campuses that have fraternities that sing the praises of keeping their houses white and parade their pledges pass dormitories singing little ditties like this one

No means yes
Yes means anal

These actions do not strike me as the shenanigans of a population horrified by offense.

Agree.

Problem isn't that college campuses are too PC, it's that college campuses are diverse.

So you're always going to offend someone, and nowadays with social media, those few people who were offended can stir up enough noise by finding like-minded people nationally so that what 20 years ago wouldn't have been a blip on a molehill, becomes a mountain.

 

[laughing dog]

I read the article. One of the examples of a "comedian" who was having trouble getting college bookings had in his repertoire jokes about " giving his girlfriend herpes and banging his grandma". While he knew those jokes were "out" perhaps the problem was being unfunny.

 

[dismal]

Two comics say they won't play college campuses and we now have a national crisis? I don't think so. Other comics are playing colleges campuses and still more are clamoring to.

Remember these are the same college campuses that have fraternities that sing the praises of keeping their houses white and parade their pledges pass dormitories singing little ditties like this one

No means yes
Yes means anal

These actions do not strike me as the shenanigans of a population horrified by offense.

Yes, the important thing is we don't make sweeping generalizations about college campuses based on isolated data points -- unless we want them to be true.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Man, I would have killed to get Seinfeld or Rock at my school. I remember the comedian before Midnight Madness and it was perhaps one of the most unfunny things ever. It was painful.

 

[repoman]

I would like to see how full on sets by Doug Stanhope and Frankie Boyle would be recieved on Campus. They are brilliant satirists who are actually left wing, but if you are used to taking offense you might think they are bigots. But Ok, Frankie sometimes is just mean, like his Richard Hammond jokes.

 

[repoman]

I saw Leno doing a joke about trans fats being from liposuction of trannies. Can't remember the setup, but even for myself I was cringeing at it and the crowd had a fair amount of boos.

I wonder how it would go if Grier and Wayans took the Men on Film show on campus now. I saw it recently on youtube and unlike leno I did not cringe.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Bill Maher was talking about this last week. I remember he rattled off a long list of items that were forbidden to be included in any comedy routine on campus (although I don't remember which college it was). Among the items I remember were "fat", "people of size", "terrorism", "stupid", etc. Also, considering the student-led demonstrations for banning certain speakers on campus over the last few years, combined with various polls indicating that students often support cutailing speech of certain types, seems to indicate a lack of respect for free speech.

Now, this is all anecdotal on my part, but if one really were interested, I'm sure they could do some Internet research to either verify or falsify this stuff. I'm at work and too lazy at the moment.

 

[ksen]

My college brought in Meatloaf once.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I saw Leno doing a joke about trans fats being from liposuction of trannies. Can't remember the setup, but even for myself I was cringeing at it and the crowd had a fair amount of boos.

I wonder how it would go if Grier and Wayans took the Men on Film show on campus now. I saw it recently on youtube and unlike leno I did not cringe.

Men on Film was hyperbole. Hyperbole is fine as long as it is crafted. The trans-fat joke just doesn't make any sense.

In Living Color hasn't aged well, like many comedies fail in doing. But I think it was a stepping stone and helped develop what we have today. It was rather cutting edge in its day.

Students on campus, who the heck knows. There are roughly a bazillion campuses in the US. And over half of them make up a majority of the schools. Take that for what it's worth.

- - - Updated - - -

My college brought in Meatloaf once.

We had C&C Music Factory play on campus, but it wasn't the whole group.

Come to think of it, may have only been the ampersand.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Two comics say they won't play college campuses and we now have a national crisis? I don't think so. Other comics are playing colleges campuses and still more are clamoring to.

Remember these are the same college campuses that have fraternities that sing the praises of keeping their houses white and parade their pledges pass dormitories singing little ditties like this one

No means yes
Yes means anal

These actions do not strike me as the shenanigans of a population horrified by offense.

Ya, I agree with Athena. That chant is pretty funny.

 

[Toni]

Two comics say they won't play college campuses and we now have a national crisis? I don't think so. Other comics are playing colleges campuses and still more are clamoring to.

Remember these are the same college campuses that have fraternities that sing the praises of keeping their houses white and parade their pledges pass dormitories singing little ditties like this one

No means yes
Yes means anal

These actions do not strike me as the shenanigans of a population horrified by offense.

Ya, I agree with Athena. That chant is pretty funny.

Well, the chant is indicative of those who won't tolerate any challenge to whatever it is that they think or want.

BTW, that attitude which is prevalent on campuses: "I know more than you Professor about (politics, economics, sociology) or at least my (vastly informed) opinion is on par with and probably trumps (pun intended) your well thought out well informed presentation about theories in the discipline(s) in which you hold Ph.D.s even though I am 18 years old because my daddy has enough money to pay and he's paying your salary so there. Plus I have testicles. Wanna see?"

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, the chant is indicative of those who won't tolerate any challenge to whatever it is that they think or want.

BTW, that attitude which is prevalent on campuses: "I know more than you Professor about (politics, economics, sociology) or at least my (vastly informed) opinion is on par with and probably trumps (pun intended) your well thought out well informed presentation about theories in the discipline(s) in which you hold Ph.D.s even though I am 18 years old because my daddy has enough money to pay and he's paying your salary so there. Plus I have testicles. Wanna see?"

I don't know where it is that you learnt about college life, but you can't actually take your testicles out in class. It's not PC.

 

[Toni]

Well, the chant is indicative of those who won't tolerate any challenge to whatever it is that they think or want.

BTW, that attitude which is prevalent on campuses: "I know more than you Professor about (politics, economics, sociology) or at least my (vastly informed) opinion is on par with and probably trumps (pun intended) your well thought out well informed presentation about theories in the discipline(s) in which you hold Ph.D.s even though I am 18 years old because my daddy has enough money to pay and he's paying your salary so there. Plus I have testicles. Wanna see?"

I don't know where it is that you learnt about college life, but you can't actually take your testicles out in class. It's not PC.

Or physically comfortable, I would think.

And yet, a coworker apparently did walk around campus with his testicles hanging out. Which makes me think either his testicles were really small or that he was lying but to tell the truth, I thought that before he told the testicles story...

 

[dismal]

My college brought in Meatloaf once.

Check your privilege.

 

[dismal]

Two comics say they won't play college campuses and we now have a national crisis? I don't think so. Other comics are playing colleges campuses and still more are clamoring to.

Remember these are the same college campuses that have fraternities that sing the praises of keeping their houses white and parade their pledges pass dormitories singing little ditties like this one

No means yes
Yes means anal

These actions do not strike me as the shenanigans of a population horrified by offense.

Ya, I agree with Athena. That chant is pretty funny.

And not particularly well tolerated by the colleges, IIRC.

Maybe the OP was right.

 

[Bacillus anthracis]

I think it's a general truth. It can't be applied to every situation or every campus, but I do believe that what Rock and Seinfeld say is generally accurate.

I recently went back to college and graduated from a Cal-State school here in California. The PC thing is real there. Maybe it's just that school but I doubt it. Whatever the case, I left that school more conservative than when I entered because of the dishonest and one-sided discourse that took place there. There is more to literature than women's issues. More to it than minority issues. More to it than grievances against white males. Yet, if one were to come from another planet and go to the same classes I went to, they wouldn't know otherwise. Want an easy A or B? Write a paper about how any subject affects women or minorities--or how it affected them in the past.

It creates thin-skinned, poorly educated students, which, along with the encouragement of such by the faculty, makes the honest discussion of certain issues impossible.

And by that I mean that whatever problems exist in a given community are not discussed unless it's with an eye to what those outside of that community must do to address past wrongs. The idea that certain problems exist in a given community and can only be addressed from within = racism or bigotry of some kind. Therefore, a comedian like Chris Rock, who has been critical of the "black community" (a term I'm loathe to use) is seen as a traitor to be shouted down. A female character in a story must be a strong leader or else the writer of that story is an ass-backward bigot, which precludes observational humor about male-female relationships. In other words, the narrative can't stray too far from oppressive or dumb white guy using his privilege to oppress everyone else. And that's death to humor. Humor cannot be prescriptive or narrowly confined.

One of the effects of all this is to leave serious issues unaddressed and mischaracterized (to a certain degree). It also helps to create in a young person an identity tied to a group they may or may not even actually belong to rather than helping to create a more self-aware, critically thinking person. They react to certain sentence constructions like dogs trained with shock collars. There is no balance; no middle ground. It's one or the other. You're either totally enlightened or you're a troglodyte.

And that's all I have to say about that - Forrest Gump