What was this guy thinking?
It is decidedly strange for any stand-up comic to decide to emulate Michael Richards, the talented physical comic who played “Kramer” on “Seinfeld.” Richards inexplicably blew up his career and reputation during a stand-up appearance on November 17, 2006, at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. Richards was annoyed by some heckling from a group of black and Hispanic audience members, and lost his mind, screaming “Nigger!” several times and making other racist references as the audience sat stunned and unamused. His career never recovered, nor should it have. Richards has never adequately explained the incident.
Australian comedian Paul Currie, however, must have been impressed, or something. For his finale to a stand-up show at London’s Soho Theatre, the comedian placed a Ukrainian and a Palestinian flag on the stage and invited audience members to stand and applaud. Hilarious! Wait, no, it had to be a set-up for a gag, right?
No, it wasn’t. Currie confronted a man who remained seated and asked “Didn’t you like my show?” The man, who was Jewish, replied that he had been enjoying it until the Palestinian flag came out. Currie then did a Richards, telling the non-complying audience member to “get the fuck out of my theater! Get out, get the fuck out of my show, motherfuckers!”
All in good fun, of course. Just like Michael Richards. Currie’s been banned from the venue, but the way the world is trending right now an anti-Semitic comic will still probably have a career with plenty of fans. Richards clearly picked the wrong group to freak out on with his bigotry attack. Judging from some of the comments on various news reports about Currie’s outburst, there are plenty of people who think the comedian is being unfairly criticized.
The ethics breach here is simple: inviting an audience to openly take sides in any controversy without a gag attached is activism and not comedy. Comics like Dave Chappelle can make their own political or social positions clear if there is a laugh being sought somehow. Berating audience members for not embracing the comedian’s views and using the power position of the stage to humiliate them is comedy malpractice.
If Currie ends up in the same state Richards did—reviled and unemployed—he will have no one to blame but himself.
Ethics Alarms 
Currie must have thought he was in Dearborn or Minneapolis.
Malpractice usually implies an error or animation. This is straight up abuse of the platform. There is nothing funny about whipping out the flag of a cause and demanding that the audience applaud and there is absolutely nothing funny about yelling at someone to get out in a foul mouthed and aggressive way.
Frankly he’s lucky that these people he insulted didn’t assault him and beat the tobacco juice out of him. If they had, he would have deserved it. In my opinion, I think this would be a better world if occasionally people who got pushed too far turned on those who pushed them too far and hit them in the mouth and broke their jaw.
I know it’s not really all that ethical to use violence to solve problems, but sometimes nothing seems to get people’s attention like getting hurt.
Some comedians can make acting like an asshole funny, George Carlin was one, but there was nothing funny about this. I’ve made my share of vicious attacks here, and there was absolutely nothing’s funny about them. There is nothing funny about stringing a whole bunch of profanities together. There is nothing funny about using vulgar terms for the female anatomy, There is nothing funny about telling somebody that you would like to see them dead.
Hate is not funny in and of itself. I’ve heard many jokes that played to hatred. I’ve told a lot of jokes that played to hatred. Most of them are not funny objectively, although maybe you might think they are clever. It’s really not that funny to poke fun at things that people can’t change, like their color or their sexuality. Raw hate isn’t clever, it isn’t funny, and it isn’t ok.
I never realized George Carlin was “acting like an asshole.” I just thought he was an asshole.
As Sid Caesar once pointed out to Larry King, virtually all comedians are terrible people—including Sid. The comedy is a coping mechanism springing from entrenched misanthropy. There are exceptions, like Martin Short. Carlin was a smart, clever guy—but I bet even he would have admitted that he was an asshole.
“The comedy is a coping mechanism springing from entrenched misogyny”. Think you mean misandry, not misogyny?
No, I meant misanthropy. Thanks. I’ll fix that.
Maybe he might have admitted it, but maybe not. I’d hate to believe that comedians are terrible people, but the evidence is pointing that way. It’s just too easy to turn cruelty into humor.
It’s also not for nothing that Blanche Knott made a mint in the 1980s from publishing “Truly Tasteless Jokes.”it hit me the other day when I was standing in line for takeout that 20 years ago, in 2004 I could have (and would have) thrown out a casually racist joke and the odds are that everyone, including the cashier would have laughed at it. is it a question of people being thicker-skinned or people just being afraid to say something?
A lot of this approach to things is simply people throwing maturity out the window. Behaving like that is behaving like an arrested 14 year old, being as obnoxious and defiant as possible.
“There are exceptions, like Martin Short.“
Robin Williams?
PWS
I’d say not. Williams did some pretty awful things when he was young and self-medicating. To his credit, all reports are that he became a good man as he got control of his demons and mental illness.