More of the accumulating evidence that our society’s standards and ethics are rotting from the head down…
Comedian George Lopez walked off the stage at Eagle Mountain Casino in Porterville, California mid-way through his stand-up set when hecklers and inebriated members of his audience made it impossible for him to continue in his judgment. (He oughta know, after all.)
The comic gave the group three chances to quiet down, and when they did not, put the microphone back on the stand, said, “That’s cool, thanks,” waved goodbye and walked out. It was not cool, of course, and Lopez accused the casino of failing to provide adequate security and management. “It’s the venue or casino’s job to provide a good experience for both the artist and the fans, but the casino failed in this regard. The audience was overserved and unruly, and the casino staff was unable to provide a safe and enjoyable experience for the artist and guests,” Lopez’s representative said. “George is not obligated to perform in an unsafe environment. He feels badly that those who came to see the show were unable to do so as a result.”
Indeed. I would think that goes without saying, which is our way of saying “res ipsa loquitur.” Naturally, however, as is the growing trend among those in positions of responsibility these days, the casino management refused to accept responsibility, blaming Lopez.
In a press release, the casino management accused Lopez of not giving them a chance to address the problem. “It was the job of Lopez’s private security team to inform casino security if they wanted to escort anyone out which never occurred. Under the casino’s discretion, no guests were unruly or providing an unsafe environment.”
Suuuure. If a performer has to tell an audience three times that it is misbehaving so badly that he will not be able to continue, there is no further need for the casino’s staff to be “informed” that there is a problem.
In the continuing trail of excuses and rationalizations, the casino also said that while the guests were loud, it was not clear that they were disrupting the show. [If an audience for a live performance is so loud the performer can’t perform and the act isn’t Elvis or The Beatles, then the show is being disrupted.] If Lopez asked for assistance in removing disruptive members of the audience,, the venue security would have done so, the statement also said. This is the “You didn’t ask!” rationalization, which I just realized needs to be added to the list.
Then the casino argued that the two acts appearing before Lopez had no problems with the audience, which is especially lame. A.) Drunks tend to get drunker over time, and B) the fact that previous acts either did not experience the same hostile conditions or were willing to tolerate them despite the entertainment value of their work being diminished for civil members of the audience doesn’t obligate Lopez, the headliner, to follow their unprofessional example.
Full disclosure: I have had to take aggressive counter measures in response to disruptive audience members, on the grounds that it was my responsibility to give civil and attentive members of those audieces every chance to enjoy a performance. Once, I was fired for it.
In a vacuum, the disruption of a mediocre comics stand-up act at a California casino doesn’t matter: I wouldn’t cross the street to watch a George Lopez performance. However, we are seeing rude, inconsiderate, selfish, self-righteous Americans behaving this way and being excused for it in much more important venues, such as the U.S. Congress and university campuses. Several stand-up stars, including Steve Harvey and Jerry Seinfeld, have opined that their craft is becoming impossible because audience members feel they have a right to shout down anything they disapprove of. Meanwhile, weenie-ism increasingly reigns supreme among the leadership of organizations and institutions. The canary slaughter in our metaphorical society mines began accelerating with the acceptance of the Black Lives Matter “mostly peaceful demonstrations.” Then came the rush to defund the police and to shrug off “little things” like shoplifting. The January 6 debacle was another big fat, dead canary, but since those were all white conservatives, at least there was an effort to hold them accountable.
Who would have thought that an unanticipated consequence of these events could be the disruption of a George Lopez comedy act? Well, I would, for one, and the late Michael Crichton, channeling Edward Lorenz, would have too. Society standards and ethics rot from the head down, and where it stops, nobody knows.
If it stops at all. Someone, or some thing, has to stop it.
Ethics Alarms 
“…audience members feel they have a right to shout down anything they disapprove of.”
I’d go a step beyond that, Jack. At this point, at least some audience members believe they have a DUTY to shout down whatever they find offensive.
The people of this country have spent at least the last five years, maybe longer, being bombarded with slogans like “silence is violence” and harangued that just not being racist, sexist or whatever isn’t enough, you have to be actively anti-racist, etc., which means challenging offensive statements or material wherever you encounter it.
This is another example of the monster that the left created and finally brought to life in 2020 now destroying things it never was intended to destroy. I don’t think it was intended to destroy simple comedy or other entertainment. I also don’t think it was intended to make everyone think they should be heckling and abusing everyone they disagree with or reducing everyone to the maturity level of poorly controlled seventh graders, yelling, cursing and insulting others simply because they don’t like whoever.
Any reportage on what the unruly audience members were objecting to? Nothing to see there?
Your speech is violence; our violence is speech.
“This is the “You didn’t ask!” rationalization, which I just realized needs to be added to the list.”
And its companion, “You didn’t tell me not to”. Aka “Where’s the Sign?”
The lazy argument that doing the right thing or not doing the wrong thing requires that a person be told. It’s the way obnoxious customers try to take advantage of businesses by demanding to know where the sign is that forbids certain behavior or articulates specific policies detrimental to the consumer in question.
Sometimes they just want to get away with boorish behavior. A few years ago, while I was at a bank, a woman came into the bank with her dog which she had been out walking. She was not there to do business. She sat down in one of the chairs to rest because she was tired and hot. An employee attempted to explain that the chairs were for customers. She argued that she was tired and was going to rest and that there wasn’t a sign saying that she and her dog weren’t allowed to do that.
And sometimes they are just clueless. Remember the fan I wrote about several months ago who’d been emailing and sending gifts to her favorite celebrity until she met him in person, he recognized her and told her to knock it off? I’d suspected she’d ignored warning signs that she was pushing boundaries. When I asked her if he’d ever responded to her gifts or messages, she’d admitted he hadn’t. She supposed some people would have taken the hint, but she’d thought that, if he’d wanted her to stop, he would have told her before it became a problem.
Regardless of the reason, they make it much harder for the rest of us.
Hunter Biden is guilty. They ought to tell him spill on his dad or they’ll put him in with the skinheads and other far right types.
Win or lose, Joe will pardon him. If Joe loses, the pardon will be a final “kiss my ass” from the Biden family. If Joe wins, he’ll be in for another four years and won’t be running again so he won’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks. He’ll take the victory as a mandate to pardon his poor addicted errant son. (Dems take every victory as a mandate.)
I thought about that.
It reminds me of something that Cokie Roberts (I believe) said when Bill Clinton pardoned Roger Clinton for an old drug conviction. She said something to the effect of “what good is it to have a brother who is President if you don’t get pardoned,” or “when you are President, it is the least you can do.”
As you can tell, my memory of what EXACTLY what was said is pretty bad. The gist of it was undoubtedly a rationalization of the decision to pardon him and there is nothing wrong with a guy getting a benefit when his brother is the President.
It’s as if she completely forgot about Billy Beer.
-Jut
Of course that won’t stop him from getting a beatdown over the head or finding out what it feels like to have a subway up his ass.