I honestly find the amount of text people have devoted to WHY they don’t like Silverman kind of funny, as if the sentiment really is no longer about her not being funny so much as her making these people uncomfortable in a way. There’s no way I could see myself spending as much text arguing why I don’t think so-and-so is NOT funny. I would have just stated it, and only given a short reason to the extent I thought one was meaningful, and left everyone to enjoy their own visions of talentless chicanery unfettered.

If you want to talk funny Jewish comedians, I’m putting my money on Jon Stewart before Sarah Silverman.

The thing about context is that you can’t be selective about applying it. If vulgarity is not a part of social criticism /there/ I don’t see why it is such a leap to conclude that it has to do with personal displays being more acceptable publicly. It’s not a good idea to go half-way with an analogy and say that an idea should be regarded in the same way while simultaneously neglecting the precise difference in environments in which that idea has meaning.

You’re obviously right that this can continue going in circles. Especially when you keep repeating these veiled straw men about me finding Silverman especially funny when I said no such thing. I could have let you have the last word, but the fallacies do get a little personal when you keep reading past what I’ve said, only to NOW decide to agree on disagreements re: humor being not worth debating. Which I’ve said all along. But I’m glad you at least got to that point – of clarifying the same opinion you first voiced many posts ago – except minus the sense of justification that it never required in the first place. It gives us the freedom to not debate the undebate-able as well as you the freedom to not like Silverman for what she seems to be free to make a good living at.

So now you’re saying that since Pamela Anderson was exposed in a sex tape, that she is already demeaned and referring to her asshole isn’t demeaning. If I get this logic, being captured on video in a sex act is demeaning. Is it the sex act that’s demeaning? I thought sex was a natural activity that only hypocrites disdain and people like Silverman exist in order to point out this hypocrisy.

The other possible version of what you said is that being captured on video having sex is – demeaning or not – sufficient exposure that Silverman calling out Anderson’s poop chute (I feel liberated from my hypocrisy!) is nothing special. So then, if it’s just another day talking about testicles on the chin and bleached assholes, what is so special about Silverman’s comedy?

Let’s stop going around in circles. You may disagree, but my opinion is that Silverman isn’t funny. Her crude humor is banal and contains no remarkable or even useful social function or meaning beyond enabling her to make a nice living.

As for the problem with hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of certain things not being acknowledged, not discussed, yet secretly obsessed over, you seem to have acknowledged the power and pervasive nature of this problem earlier. I’m not sure why you’re changing course now, especially when, if anything, we’ve pointed out even more prominent examples of the destruction of psychological censorship.

What I think is ironic, since every now and then I find something in your questions that I think I could possibly relate to and explore – you say that Silverman uses words about Anderson that demean sexuality in general. But I guess that would mean that you think her pornographic real-life sex tape that are referenced by those words didn’t already do the job, though?! Now that would be funny.

Giyoret, I’m pleased that your pointing out our verbosity implies that there’s something important to be said, but I’m really not sure how to explain the hypocrisy of sexual obsession/sexual repression in America any more than has been tried. If I come up with a better explanation, I’ll give it a go, but don’t take that to mean that I’m brushing you off. It just seems like a true challenge because to me (and I’m assuming I’m far from the only one) the issue seems obvious as daylight.

“The power of authority is never more subtle and effective than when it produces a psychological ‘atmosphere’ or ‘climate’ favourable to the life of certain modes of belief, unfavourable, and even fatal, to the life of others.”

Arthur Balfour

Okay, that seemed at least to be addressing some social issues.

This one, from the same roast, didn’t seem that different from Silverman. Maybe less angry and direct. I didn’t see any social commentary in there. She seemed to be trying to be funny, if in a vulgar setting and way. She is funnier than Silverman, to my taste, but still not much of a social commentator.

I just don’t see the depth y’all are seeing.

Montana, I’m not the one who mentions the asshole for effect, Silverman does. She does it not because it’s mentionable or appears in videos that Anderson may not have sought to have distributed all over the world. She does it because she is trying to elicit a laugh by referring to a body part that in polite company one would normally not mention. Isn’t that what you guys are saying? If I understand ck and your appreciation of her routine, it’s that she openly states things that make us see what we think but don’t say which is the reason we – that is, those of us who supposedly think about assholes being bleached and waxed but never discuss it publicly – are supposedly dishonest and hypocritical.

So Silverman stands in front of a woman who is a sex symbol and cuts her down to size by discussing her asshole. She could talk about Pamela’s “behind” or “tuches” or “butt” but she uses “asshole” to diminish sensuality and bring up a negative connotation to the body part and the body part’s owner. Wow, that is just genius! Then again, maybe it’s not genius and it’s not funny and it’s not social commentary. Maybe it’s so obvious and unsubtle that it’s nothing but a woman trying to make the argument that the attractive woman is not that attractive. Or maybe she thinks that if she uses really foul language or foul references to sexual organs, some in the audience will be so surprised that she’ll generate laughs. It reminds me of a child trying to shock his friends by using words that could get him in trouble with the adults. It causes embarrassed tittering for most kids, and maybe educates the naive kid who hasn’t been exposed to this language before, but it is nothing more than childish noise and has no greater meaning.

And on a related topic, I am wondering when the “America as publicly sexually repressed and privately completely sexually obsessed” idea is going to run out of gas. (“In *Europe* they show boobies in magazines and on the beach! They’re so HONEST and NATURAL! Just TRY to find the hypocrite in **Sweden** who thinks sex should be restrained in any way!”) Once and for all, I wish someone would tell me WHERE on this planet these sexually balanced, un-hung-up societies are located. The ones who are doing it right. Seriously, tell me what society that is–and not just examples here and there of topless beaches and legal prostitution.

You all seem to have a lot to say, and I don’t mean that sarcastically.

Clearly the cognitive dissonance bred by all the hypocrisy in this country, by encouraging such a disconnect between achieving an honest understanding of what people really want and what they are afraid of not proclaiming in public is more damaging – at least when one looks at how badly it f’s up the political process. At some point people should use their brains to encourage all of us to be more honest w/at least ourselves first, and then with others. But that’s just my opinion.