The New York Times actually has a comedy critic, Jason Zinoman, which is fine. Still, someone needs to tell him to avoid writing about ethics, which he apparently does not comprehend. I, in contrast, have extensive experience in both comedy and ethics, and can say with confidence that his column “Lying in Comedy Isn’t Always Wrong, but Hasan Minhaj Crossed a Line” is the worst published ethics analysis I have read this year, and perhaps ever. Zimmerman’s column is ethics nonsense from the headline to the end.

Let’s start with the headline. There is no lying in comedy, any more than there’s lying in any performing art. Since the sole purpose of comedy is to make a targeted audience laugh, anything goes, or should. (This is one of the rare instances of my being in agreement with Bill Maher). For now, I don’t want to be distracted into justifying anything other than making stuff up, which stand-up comics do regularly and should, but if they are pretending something is true when it isn’t, that’s not unethical. It isn’t unethical because they are comedians, and their audience knows—or should— what their purpose is not to inform, but to amuse.

Since so much of what a comic says is not true—a duck, a Canadian and an acrobat did not walk into a bar—-there is no breach of trust when that comic states anything else as a fact when it isn’t. Dave Chappelle often starts a story by saying, “This is true,” which means that he has decided that the story is going to be funnier if the audience thinks of it as really happening. I don’t assume the story is true because Chappelle says so, but he’s asking for the suspension of disbelief from his audience, just as “The Exorcist” was when it showed Regan’s head turn backwards. We suspend our disbelief in the possessed little girl to be horrified; we suspend disbelief in what comedians say to be amused.

The target of Zinoman’s accusation of unethical comedy is, as the headline states, Hasan Minhaj, who has a Netflix concert streaming. He can’t have “crossed a line” because there are no lines. There are no ethicd rules for comics, nor can or should there be.

Here is an example of what Zinoman calls “crossing a line”:

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On September 15, 2022, Calvin Ushery was clearly shown on a surveillance video as he stomped 68-year-old Chang Suh, a Korean-American jewelry shop owner and hit him over the head at least a dozen times, twice with a hammer. Ushery then stole about $100,000 in merchandise. The evidence, including the video, was indisputable and beyond rebuttal, so his lawyer argued for jury nullification, slyly, because in Delaware, like all but one state (New Hampshire), arguing that a jury should ignore the law is an ethics violation. He said the video would doubtlessly raise “a lot of emotion,” but argued that the jurors’ revulsion shouldn’t be focused on the defendant.

Oh. What? Who then? Surely not his victim, who after a year is still not recovered from the beating (that’s him in a shot from the video). Oh come on—you know the answer by now, don’t you? The emotion should be aimed at the systemic racism that made Ushery into the dangerous enemy of civilization that he is. He needs diversity, equity and inclusion, not punishment. What are we, barbarians?

And that defense message worked! The jury was hung, and a mistrial declared. In the eyes of the law, despite video evidence that he committed a brutal crime, Calvin Ushery is technically innocent.

Elie Mystal is surely thrilled. The racist, anti-police, anti-Constitution Marxist editor for “The Nation,” also a frequent visitor to MSNBC (naturally), argued in 2016 that black jurors should always vote to acquit black defendants, no matter how guilty they may be and no matter how horrible the crime.

“Maybe it’s time for black people to use the same tool white people have been using to defy a system they do not consent to: jury nullification,” Mystal wrote in an op-ed. “White juries regularly refuse to convict or indict cops for murder. White juries refuse to convict vigilantes who murder black children. White juries refuse to convict other white people for property crimes. Maybe it’s time minorities got in the game?” he continued. “Black people lucky enough to get on a jury could use that power to acquit any person charged with a crime against white men and white male institutions.”

Well, that’s our Elie! His degrees from Harvard and Harvard Law School didn’t imbue him with enough critical reasoning skill to overcome his hatred of anyone who isn’t black, and to see his his “burn, baby, burn” nostrums for societal improvement as the garbage that they are. True, Mystal was only hoping that blacks could abuse, rob, rape and kill white people, but nothing in his op-ed ruled out using jury nullification to let minorities—like Mr. Suh—be victimized without justice too. Black criminals’ lives matter more than the lives of law-abiding citizens, which is one prime reason why so many cities are descending into permanent chaos. Over-incarceration, don’t you know.

The Ushery verdict has so far escaped coverage in the mainstream media.

Frank Drebin would like a word…