[Gilbert] I'd like to apologize
if I hurt anyone
with anything I'm going to say
or if it's an opposing viewpoint
to one you might have.
And if I look like I'm thinking
about something that might be offensive,
please, I apologize for hurting you.
[music]
And I'm very sorry
that I bothered you or upset any of you.
[music]
I genuinely...
am deeply sorry to anyone
who's ever been affected by that term.
I'm sorry I did that.
I want to apologize
for a comment that I made on last night's Fashion Police
about Zendaya's hair.
I'm embarrassed that I did that.
I've learned it is not my intent that matters,
it's the result.
And the result is that people
are offended.
I did a bad thing.
I cannot spend every night apologizing.
I'm here to apologize.
I'm sorry.
I hope you'll accept my apology.
-Are you ready? -[all] Yeah.
Then light your torches and go.
[narrator] It doesn't take much to rile up
the outrage mob these days.
If you're a comedian, there might be calls
for your show to be cancelled
if someone takes offense at your joke.
You might have to kiss your big,
new gig good-bye.
You could get fired or get death threats.
You might even get attacked on stage.
Most people just give into the mob's demands,
but some comics are brave
or stupid enough to fight back.
I think people like to be offended because there's like
a really weird sense of empowerment
with being offended.
I think it's an attention-seeking device.
If you think you have the right
not to be offended,
either change your parameters
of what offends you
or just realize you're wrong.
Those are your two choices.
[narrator] Jim Norton devotes a lot of his act
to raging against outrage.
Why is comedy the only form of the arts
where people think that they have to agree with
or approve the content?
Why is that?
You don't walk through a museum with a towel
and throw it over paintings
that you don't like.
[audience laughing]
I don't want anybody else seeing this
because I didn't quite enjoy it.
[laughing continues]
Someone will find something about every jokes
down to the most benign subject
till we're all like five year olds
and can't say anything.
If comedians avoided every topic
that might offend someone, there's nothing to talk about.
Pressuring the person to make a fake apology
over whatever it is that he's said
that got your panties in a bunch.
I don't know why we look at this as progress.
If you're easily offended, please don't come
to a comedy show.
When people are outraged by something,
they're also patting themselves
on the back,
like, "Hey,
I'm a good person, I was outraged."
People just love
to be offended and they love to talk about it.
[narrator] More and more comedians are getting fed up
with outrage.
They say it's time for the mob
to learn how to take a joke.
[Penn] We don't have a legal right
to not be offended,
but you have a social right to avoid things
that offend you.
So, your feelings got hurt,
it's not the end of the world.
I've always refused to apologize for a joke.
There's a lot of people out there whose job is to be
offended for other people.
It's almost like people have gotten soft.
The Marx brothers
were rebellious.
Nowadays, you'd watch them and you go,
"Oh, he's advocating smoking
and the other guy is anti-Italian
and that guy is making fun of people
-who can't speak." -I get offended.
And we're getting to the point where
outrage is a powerful political tool.
There's plenty of things that have offended me,
but that's where it begins and ends.
I'm offended, who gives a fuck?
But people, like, wanna take it
a step further and go,
"I want you to know I'm offended
and I'd like something done."
[woman] Comedy's lovable queen of mean,
Lisa Lampanelli.
[cheers and applause]
[Lisa] Context in comedy is the be all and end all.
If I'm making fun of every single nationality,
race, height, weight, et cetera during my show,
the context is that
we're all the same,
we're all gonna get made fun of.
Thank you homos for skipping a night
of watching Bravo TV.
[audience laughing]
Oh, my God, that one who jumped up,
this big queen right here.
Oh!
He is so gay, he jerks off to Antique Roadshow.
By the end of the show the white guy
who got made fun of for being gay
or being, you know, blind,
or--I had a deaf guy a couple of weeks ago
who was amazing.
He suddenly goes,
"Oh, that's what black people feel like.
That's what the Asian people feel like."
So, I think that's what brings people together going,
"We all the same in this bitch."
My only line has ever been, if I can't make it funny
I'm not gonna do it.
Rape can't be taken off the table, AIDS, everything.
Every time I do an AIDS and a rape joke,
it kills and you know what,
it's because we're scared of it.
And if you're running away from it
and you're not confronting it,
you're a pussy and you're not standing up
to it.
So, I think that's why
you have to make fun of those subjects.
I think it's very hot that we have such sexy blacks
and spics at this show. [imitates cat's meow]
If I can't get raped by the end of this night,
I want my money back.
No, I mean, come on, man,
if this guy jumps me after the show,
that ain't a felony, that is lawful entry.
[audience laughing]
[narrator] Lisa Lampanelli markets herself
as an insult comic, but even she can't escape
the outrage mob.
[Lisa] If we as comics steered clear of every topic
that might offend someone, we would never open our mouth,
I mean, literally, because I have made a joke
about the band Journey once
and a guy almost stormed the stage.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
[crowd cheering]
Look up the funny and sue, you ugly fuck.
[cheers and applause]
[Lisa] I'm like, "Really?
You didn't mind spic, chink, kike,
Jew bastard, cocksucker, but Journey?"
That's Steve Perry, motherfucker.
[narrator] So, what's a comedian supposed to do these days,
play it safe?
[Gilbert] George Carlin once said
it's the duty of a comedian
to find out where the line is drawn
and deliberately cross over it.
I, of course, always like that line
because he says duty.
There so many times that, you know,
we get the wool pulled over our eyes
in society by, you know, certain powers
that be who wanna get away with stuff.
And I see the role of comedians
as the torch bearer.
You know, we shine the light
on what's really going on.
It's an amazing lineage of people
who've taken on that responsibility.
[narrator] Richard Pryor took on that responsibility.
And before him, George Carlin.
But today's stand-up comedians
trace their lineage back to Lenny Bruce.
[Steve Allen] Now, ladies and gentlemen
here is a very shocking comedian,
the most shocking comedian of our time,
a young man who is skyrocketing to fame,
Lenny Bruce.
Here he is.
[cheers and applause]
There are words that offend me.
Let's see.
Governor Faubus, segregation offend me,
nighttime television offends me,
some nighttime television.
He's honest, he's--he's smart,
he's funny,
and he's a hero.
[narrator] Penn Jillette is the taller,
louder half of the comedy and magic duo Penn & Teller.
He says Lenny Bruce was an early
showbiz inspiration.
[Penn] It was like nothing I'd ever seen
on TV or in situation comedies.
[narrator] The Beverly Hillbillies was America's
favorite sitcom when Lenny was trying
to make a name for himself.
It was the early '60s,
and ba-da-boomp jokes were all the rage.
Anyway, I'm back in television again,
I was on television about four weeks ago.
I received two offers for plastic surgery.
[audience laughing]
[narrator] Lenny turned comedy
in a different direction.
The personal quality of Lenny
talking about
his real life
was just mind-blowing.
That changed comedy forever.
[laughing]
You listen to Lenny Bruce and nothing is surprising
and that's because everyone ripped him off.
The whole world changed to come around to him.
[Ron] When I think of Lenny Bruce, one of the words
that comes to mind is risk.
He never saw a taboo he wasn't willing to bust.
He never saw a line he wasn't willing to cross.
[audience laughing]
[Ron] And where did he bust out? Did he bust out on television?
No. Did he bust out on radio?
No, not really.
He busted out in comedy clubs.
[audience laughing]
[Ron] Nobody ever complained to the authorities
about Lenny Bruce's act.
I mean, if you're worried about that,
you don't go to a venue after midnight,
you know, with a bunch of, you know,
bearded, beaded,
drunk, inebriated stoned people.
So, nobody ever complained, but the cops were there.
[narrator] It got to the point where Lenny expected cops
to attend his shows.
And Lenny Bruce would do things like,
you know, he'd go through a whole show
and no dirty words, and then come on,
let's, you know, do an encore
and the police are right there and said,
"You know, I'm sorry I disappointed you,
men in blue, by not saying cocksucker."
-Boom. -[narrator] And that's what
Lenny got arrested for in San Francisco.
He would later talk about the bust
during his act, tap dancing around
the forbidden word.
[Ron] Jokes about controversial issues.
Jokes about race, jokes about religion.
The Jews killed Christ.
I can't tell you how long I've had to listen
to this stuff.
Okay, let's set the record straight. It's true.
We killed him and if he comes back,
we'll kill him again.
Well, funny to the people, you know,
in the audience,
not so funny to the Irish cops there.
[narrator] Police arrested Lenny in Chicago,
in Los Angeles, in San Francisco.
Lenny had to worry about cops at his shows,
but nobody else complained.
Today, it's the reverse.
Cops no longer arrest comedians
at clubs, but the people are complaining.
It's almost as if we've been taught
to love censorship.
[music]
[narrator] Oh, college.
It's where you can finally live on your own.
Be free.
-Be yourself. -♪ And we're banned ♪
♪ From Argo, everyone ♪
♪ Banned from Argo just for having a little fun ♪
-♪ We spend... ♪ -[narrator] Just be careful
if you're trying to be funny.
We were accused of sexual harassment
for an April Fool's article.
[narrator] She's the editor of a student newspaper
at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
And her offense was running an article
about a vagina-shaped building.
[woman] Because it was a joke.
I was poking fun at the culture that we live in.
[narrator] And what about the good things Hitler did?
Rutgers University thought this
April fool's article was anti-Semitic.
So, what if the author is Jewish.
This Syracuse University law student
almost got kicked out of school
because some people said his satirical blog
was offensive.
Members of the Tufts University
rowing team were suspended for wearing this shirt
as in coxswain, as in this guy.
These days most colleges enforce strict speech codes
that punish students for everything
from telling jokes to committing the crime
of inappropriately directed laughter.
[Norton] Yeah, they're very uptight.
You know, we interviewed Carlin in 2007
and he said that, "I've been bashing colleges
for years for that."
And Carlin goes, "Man, I hate to say it,
but all the censorship is coming from the left
and it's coming from the college campuses."
We all got to understand that we could expect
censorship from the right wing,
but to expect it from the left wing,
from the politically correct people
in the campuses, that caught me by surprise.
[Noam] Good evening everybody,
welcome to the Comedy Cellar Show
here on Channel 99, SiriusXM world of comedy hits.
We have a very special guest here.
So, this man has devoted his life,
I'd say to free speech and he's quite an intersection
with comedian.
[narrator] Greg Lukianoff is the president of FIRE,
the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education,
a national nonprofit that fights
for free speech on college campuses.
I interned at the ACLU of Northern California.
I studied the history of censorship,
you know, going back to, like, the 16th century,
and nothing prepared me for how easy it is
to get in trouble on the modern college campus.
I think there is a direct line
between the stuff that's going on in campuses
and the idiots who I get angry emails from.
[narrator] New York City's legendary Comedy Cellar
has long been at the center of the stand-up world.
Before performances, owner Noam Dworman
hosts his SiriusXM Comedy Cellar Show.
Everybody feels they have a right
to be insulated from whatever it is
they decide offends them,
and we're getting emails all the time
from customers and it-- and it boggles my mind.
[man] But those customers have the right.
If you--yeah, those customers have the right to send you emails
-and they have the right to be offended. -They should also fucking
stay home if they don't wanna hear
this kind of humor.
[Chris] I've gone on the Klu Klux Klan site
to see some of their greatest jokes
and I'd say about 10% of them are winners.
Absolutely have me rolling.
90%, a little harsh.
My name is Christopher Lee.
I'm from Washington State University.
I wrote a play called Passion of the Musical,
which was about satire
about the last two days of Jesus.
[narrator] Lee cast himself in the role
of a cross-dressing Satan.
[Chris] This play was specifically designed
to offend everyone.
I went for the gold from whatever religion
you were to whatever you believed in,
to this country I love so dearly.
I wanna write something that makes people go,
"Yeah, that was hilarious,"
or they're so mad that they go,
"I'll tell you why my religion is important,
why women's rights is important."
[Greg] Nobody could've done a better job of saying,
"Hey, guys, if you don't wanna see
an offensive comedy,
don't come to this comedy musical
because I wrote it with the intention
of actually offending people."
Everyone had to sign a contract
coming into the show, knowing it would be offensive.
On the door, there was all the words
that I said including a giant banner that said,
"A song contains the word cunt 24 times."
[man] I'm offended.
[audience laughing]
[Chris] I had people who enjoyed certain parts.
They liked the Latino sweeping
the floor across the stage and taking a siesta.
But when I have giant letters that spell out AIDS
or cunt come across stage, you know,
and then people going, "Well, that's not funny."
And I was like, "I see so.
As long as it doesn't touch home base on you,
it's funny, but then as soon as it does,
that's the most offensive outrageous things
I've ever heard and you have no right
-to ever say it." -He was a sociology student
so he was kind of saying, "I'm gonna do this experiment.
It's gonna show, like, we're all way too uptight.
Everyone's gonna be getting along, it's gonna be fun,
and it didn't quite work out that way."
[all chattering]
[Chris] The university has contacted me and said,
"We have 40 people who'd like to see the show."
As soon as the show started off, they started--
they handed out little fliers saying,
"If they say something you don't like,
stand up and say 'I'm offended'."
And so, once the first song starts happening,
people started saying, "I'm offended.
I'm offended. I'm offended."
And then the "I'm offended"
changed into "You're gonna die.
We're gonna get you."
[Chris] The crowd had weapons.
I actually lost two cast members.
They ran outside.
We had to call the police halfway through the show,
and when we called the police
they're offended by the topics.
So, the cops stopped my show
and let me know that if I proceeded
and the crowd got up and attacked,
they would not help because they said
I would be kind of riling them up.
If I get attacked, the police would sit there,
and I was like, I guess watch me get assaulted
or whatever.
[Karith] College is supposed to be this place
where you go to grow, to explore,
to learn, to express yourself.
[narrator] Karith Foster performs at many top clubs,
like The Laugh Factory in Hollywood
and the Gotham Comedy Club in New York.
I used to be able
to describe myself in one word,
I could tell you, people, I was a Huxtable, right?
And people got it.
Like, a year ago, people were like, "Oh, yeah. Sure.
She comes from--in a fluent African-American family.
Her parents are professionals."
Now, I say that and people think my dad
was feeding my Girl Scout troop.
[audience laughing]
[narrator] She's also on a mission to get colleges
to loosen up.
[cheers and applause]
[Karith] I started a humorous diversity program
that I take to colleges with a fellow comedian,
a friend of mine, Adam Lehman,
he's a gay comic.
It's called Stereotype 101.
The idea is to use humor
to broach the sensitive topics.
There were 1,200 people in my graduating class
from high school, 12 of us were black.
That's 1%.
I had to import my prom date because I wanted a brown one.
[narrator] Now, of course, it takes many years
to learn how to make audiences laugh,
and that's why Foster says schools
should cut student comedians
lots of slack.
[Karith] Now, college is where you go to find out who you are.
It's also where you find your voice.
And, you know, that's a term we use in comedy as well,
"Finding your voice," when you figure out, you know,
your style.
[narrator] Salvador Rodriguez is a student comedian
at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
From the lush campus
to the mostly white student body,
the environment is quite a change for Rodriguez.
[Salvador] My father came to the United States
illegally from Mexico.
I went to high school in South Los Angeles
at a high school that was 70% black.
Reed isn't very easy to make jokes about it
because the people here, they have a lot of hang-ups
about a lot of words.
[Sean] Sal's style of humor
is fairly confrontational.
He likes to push buttons.
[audience laughing]
[narrator] The campus comedians enjoy performing
risque routines, and they warn people
who are easily offended to stay far away
-from their shows. -[Sean] Please welcome
Sal Rodriguez.
[cheers and applause]
[audience laughing]
[narrator] This show included some things
you probably won't see at your local comedy club.
[Salvador] The performer before me
got naked
and performed his entire act completely nude.
[narrator] The show chugged along through the nudity
and Rodriguez's blue material,
but when he started talking about
the majors women choose,
an audience member began heckling him.
[narrator] The heckling continued
and Rodriguez kind of lost his patience.
[Salvador] You fucking loudmouthed cunt.
Keep your mouth shut.
And it was at that point that she stormed the stage
and she grabbed the mic away.
[narrator] The following week,
the school paper ran a piece
that Rodriguez says got his act all wrong.
Whether they had seen it or not,
lots of students were offended.
Well, he got a lot of lash back.
The outcry at Reed was very much
against the speech that happened.
He's definitely gained a reputation
as an asshole on campus.
And I think that there should be
some sort of check on whether that sort of thing
should be allowed to happen again.
[Salvador] I yelled back at a--at a heckler.
In comedy clubs
it's well established that if you're a heckler
you can be yelled at.
[narrator] But the administration
launched an investigation, accusing him of offenses
like directing a hostile comment
at a female student,
and the Feminist Student Union
held a support group for those traumatized
by his act.
There's a support group.
Well, I hope that whoever ran the support group
for those students told them to get over it,
told them that this guy, whatever he said,
if it upset them, then he was being a jackass
and don't go to any more of his shows.
I actually went to the second oldest women's college
in the country, Stephens.
And one of the things
that I appreciated about that school
is that it was so not about being a victim,
it was so about being powerful.
As a mother of two daughters,
I don't want anyone's words
to affect who they become as adults.
I want them to be confident and strong
in who they are,
and not be deterred
by other people's stereotypes,
other people's ignorance.
[narrator] Back at Washington State University,
Chris Lee discovered a little something new
about the audience members who shouted down his musical.
[Chris] I didn't know it at the time,
but later we figured out
that the university paid these people
to come into my show and shout it down.
They came in there to shut down my show.
[narrator] It's actually pretty common
to see students shouting down speakers.
[woman] Shut your mouth!
[cheers and applause]
[Noam] Shouting someone down--
Shouting someone down. Yeah--
-...is not freedom of speech. -No, it's mob censorship.
And it's kind of like students going,
"Hey, there's two sides to each story?
I don't want to hear the other side."
[Lisa] When I hear a story
about this Chris Lee,
it's just clear bullying and threats to a comic.
[narrator] Today, many students hold their tongues
because they don't want to anger the outrage mob.
[Greg] In a 2010 study,
they asked 25,000 students, "Is it safe to merely hold
unpopular points of view on campus?"
This is the kind of question you ask
when you want a hundred percent
of people saying, "Well, yeah, sure,
it's safe to hold them."
Only 40% of students
strongly agreed with the statement
that it's safe to merely hold
unpopular points of view on campus.
But guess what?
Every single year, that number went down.
By senior year, only 30% strongly agreed
with the statement that it's safe to hold
unpopular points of view on campus.
[Chris] They were calling me Black Hitler
because the Jews weren't safe,
the blacks weren't safe, no one--no women weren't safe.
They said I was so outrageous that they were willing
to compare me to someone who did such atrocities.
[Chris] I'd let them know when I arrived on campus.
They'd come.
They'd make sure I got to class,
but they were like, "People are just expressing themselves.
They were kind of outraged with you.
They're not going to do anything."
I was like, "Well, why do I have security?"
It's like they literally endangered the kids' life, you know?
And it's just evil, and it's manipulative,
and awful, and I hope they get AIDS.
No, I do.
If you're listening, hi, AIDS.
Go attack those people.
[narrator] Lenny had become so consumed
with his legal troubles
that he began to read court transcripts
from his cases during performances.
And it--here it is. Oh, yeah.
[narrator] He figured the court system
wouldn't grant him a fair hearing,
so he pled his case to audiences instead.
[Ron] He'd been busted
in San Francisco.
He's busted in Los Angeles.
He's busted in Chicago.
So, by the time he gets to New York,
you know, his reputation has spread
and the police are there
that night at the Cafe au Go-Go.
[narrator] New York prosecutor, Richard Kuh,
had been expecting Lenny.
[Ron] He was absolutely determined
to send Lenny Bruce to jail.
[narrator] Bob Dylan, Woody Allen,
James Baldwin, and other famous artists
testified on his behalf,
during a trial that would last
for six months.
It's amazing.
I mean, for a few dirty words,
I mean, you know, all sorts of expert witnesses,
three judges, three.
[narrator] The long trial
had taken a mental toll on Lenny.
He became increasingly obsessed
with vindicating himself and his comedy.
He grew desperate, fired his lawyers,
and delivered
the closing arguments himself.
[Ron] The trial was both comic and tragic.
[narrator] On November 4th, 1964,
Lenny Bruce was found guilty of obscenity.
He was sentenced to four months behind bars.
But before being taken into custody,
he fled to Los Angeles
in an attempt to preserve his freedom.
[Ron] He was convicted
for using four letter words in a comedy club
in Greenwich Village after midnight.
A, B, and C, and we're gonna enforce a rule because...
[Ron] Lenny Bruce
is at the end of his rope.
They're about to foreclose on his home.
He doesn't have any money.
He can't get a job anywhere
because of all these obscenity prosecutions.
[Ron] He's got a pretty serious drug problem
and a pretty serious depression problem.
You mix them all together,
you know what happens.
[narrator] Lenny Bruce died of a drug overdose
on August 3rd, 1966.
He was 40 years old.
♪ All alone ♪
♪ I'll be rich ♪
♪ But so ♪
♪ All alone ♪
[Ron] But within a year after his death,
this great Phoenix rises.
There was a movie about Lenny Bruce
with Dustin Hoffman.
[man] He was a comic.
A cynic. A satirist.
A criminal. A genius.
[Dustin] Have you ever seen so much blue
in all your life?
[man] Newsweek described his cause of death
as an overdose of police.
[Ron] And he becomes this great American icon.
♪ Lenny Bruce was trying to tell you ♪
♪ Many things before he died ♪
♪ All that was covered by Lenny Bruce ♪
♪ Back in the day ♪
♪ Lenny Bruce declares a truce ♪
♪ Lenny Bruce is gone ♪
♪ But his spirit's living on ♪
♪ And on ♪
Your heroes can only be as good
as your villains, right?
So, Lenny Bruce
had the United States government to go up against.
To keep going with a bit
knowing where you're about to go.
He didn't care.
He did--he still did his bit,
like, that's outrageously awesome to me.
I'm ashamed of my country
for doing that.
I am--
I am disgusted
that that happened.
My sympathy and my empathy and my heart is with Lenny
that he had to go through that,
but motherfucker is that cool.
Doing your show
with cops on the side of the stage?
Fucking beat that anybody ever!
[man] It is now my pleasure
to introduce to you Mr. Lenny Bruce.
[applause]
[Ron] The last routine Lenny did,
it was at UCLA.
I will tell you this, there was any number
of Lenny Bruce's routines
though totally protected by the First Amendment
that if he did them on a number campuses today,
they would shut it down.
I don't think any college
would allow Lenny Bruce to come
-and perform there. -They would hate him.
Lenny Bruce would not last a minute
on the modern college campus.
[Norton] Because they had become what they hated.
You know, they had become the speech repressors.
They had become the free thought policers.
[Greg] And he also ended up being a great figure
in the fight against obscenity laws,
against the idea that we--
that the government should be policing speech.
So, he really ended up being a very influential figure,
not just for every comedian that's come after him,
but for a generation
of First Amendment lawyers too.
[narrator] Lukianoff says Lenny wasn't just fighting
for the First Amendment,
he was fighting for something more.
He was fighting for free speech.
Free speech and the First Amendment
are not the same thing.
And actually, the bigger, more beautiful, bolder,
braver concept is free speech.
And it requires a certain amount
of tolerance and a recognition
that you almost certainly don't know everything
and that you can still learn from hearing people out.
The problem is that as a society,
we haven't really learned deeply
that the solution to bad speech
is more speech.
You know, you have to go to Jonathan Rauch.
[Jonathan] The First Amendment,
although it's necessary, it's not sufficient.
It has to rest on a social foundation
of First Amendment values.
That is people who understand, who get the idea,
the critical exchange of speech,
often hurtful speech,
wrongheaded speech, even hateful speech.
Airing those ideas strengthen society
in the long run.
If people don't have that idea
in their hearts, then having it in the law
is not enough.
I'm the author of a book called
Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought.
And I'm a senior fellow at a think tank called
the Brookings Institution.
[man] Because the Americans
-love democracy and... -[man] Oh, I see.
That's one reason.
-Also... -[Jonathan] In any society
that is free enough to produce open debate,
it's also going to be free enough
so that some of us at any given time
are going to feel really upset.
[bleep] this [bleep] and their [bleep] yachts.
They aren't in here and they are not in our country!
[Jonathan] And no, that's not a great thing.
-It's a necessary thing. -Get the [bleep] out of here.
Get the [bleep] out of here. This is ours.
[Jonathan] Being hurt by words
is part of how we build knowledge
and it's our duty to, I think, accept that
in a free society.
You parasite socialists!
[narrator] Free speech isn't always pretty,
but it makes life better.
Ideas clash and the worst ones
get tossed aside.
Many advancements are the result
of heated debates, debates that offended
-lots of people. -[Jonathan] I grew up
as a gay American in the '60s and '70s
at a time where just saying
you were gay or being for gay rights
could cost you your job.
We were actually considered mentally disordered
and thrown into asylums.
[man] One never knows
when the homosexual is about.
He may appear normal and it may be too late
when you discover he is mentally ill.
[Jonathan] We dealt with terrorism
and violence on the streets.
If you called the police,
they wouldn't help you because, you know,
you were a queer, you were a faggot.
We didn't have votes. We didn't have support.
We were hiding in the closet.
The one thing we had,
the only thing we had
was our voices.
[narrator] Activists spoke up.
They persuaded more and more people
that laws should protect everyone equally.
The gay rights movement has come a long way
since the '60s,
but gays still face hostility.
Do I like that the Westboro Baptist Church
is allowed to say, "God hates fags,"
and "God hates the military," and blah, blah, blah?
The Episcopal church is a fag church.
[narrator] Members of the tiny
Westboro Baptist Church get lots of publicity
for their outlandish protests.
This kind of hate speech is legal and Rauch says
-that's actually good for gays. -[man] And there it says,
-"Fags are the--are beasts." -[man] Okay.
[Jonathan] There is only one way
to counter bad ideas and it is with good ideas
and you cannot do that
unless you're able to confront
the bad ideas.
And it kind of makes me mad.
We have free speech and I go,
"But wait a minute, we have to have it."
[Jonathan] The society that tries
to bury under the rug bad ideas is condemning itself
to live in a future with these bad ideas.
[crowd] We're here,
we're queer,
-we take it in the rear! -[Lisa] Hey!
[narrator] When the church threatened
to protest one of Lisa's shows,
she said, "Bring it on."
Promising to donate a thousand bucks
to a pro-gay charity
for each protester who showed up.
[Lisa] These assholes
have contributed
to the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
[narrator] Turns out 50 protesters showed,
so Lisa cut a check for 50 grand.
[crowd cheering]
[Lisa] They have their own special sign
for me by the way, "God hates Lisa."
And has a picture of a gorilla in a dress
with a wig which is fantastic.
I always-- I think you made it
when the WBC makes you a hate-filled sign.
Hi, fag haters!
Everybody wave bye the fag haters!
[cheering]
[Jonathan] I am actually grateful
that the Westboro Baptist Church exists
to be complete idiots
because every day they do that,
they use their voices
to demonstrate how pitiable they are
and why gay people
are making the better argument.
[Penn] The most important thing to a society,
what makes a society, is the--
is the exchange of ideas.
Free speech is important, I think, because,
like, that's the thing that makes us who we are.
I think free speech is important for society
because that's the only way change happens.
Free speech is extremely important
because me being a Jew,
I don't want to have to pay for speech.
I want free speech.
I want the kind of speech
where not only do you get free speech,
but they throw in a limerick
and a witty remark with it.
I want a whole bargain package.
[laughs]
[Heather] You know, the whole point is
if you're easily offended, please don't come
to a comedy show.
Like, this is not the thing for you.
When the other moms invite you, please pass.
[applause]
I also have a beautiful stepdaughter
and she's beautiful,
she's actually half Vietnamese,
so yes, I do enjoy the free foot massages
every other weekend.
-Thank you. -[audience laughing]
Now I get them all the time
because she lives with us full-time and.
Um...
and, you know, even though she lives with us,
her mom will still call
and leave me a million messages
about how to feed her and I'll have--in, like,
two days, I'll get six messages
that goes something like this,
"Hi, I'm McKinsey mom,
I'm just calling to make sure
that you give McKinsey broccoli.
She like a healthy food. She like a healthy broccoli.
Don't you just give a hotdog and popcorn
like you give to your boy.
And you can afford it. You can afford it.
You tell Peter he can afford it."
[audience laughing]
[narrator] Heather McDonald did that bit
at a different performance and learned
she had offended an audience member.
[Heather] And this woman came up to me after
and she goes, "I think you're so funny.
I just really find the accent really offensive."
And she was white.
I said, "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way.
It's based on a real person. That's exactly how she sounds.
I'm imitating a person to tell a true story better."
[narrator] Sometimes, nervous show producers
sanitize performances before audiences see them.
McDonald remembers one time
when she was performing with an improv group.
[Heather] I wanted to do this girl
that I had seen on a talk show
who was clearly white,
but spoke like she was a Latina gang member
and I just thought it was a funny character,
like a Jerry Springer type character.
[narrator] But that character made
the producer uncomfortable.
[Heather] And she said, "Well,
if you're going to do an accent or ethnicity,
make it be somebody that's not finan--
economically beneath a white person."
So, make fun of the French.
I'm like, "I don't find the French funny."
[narrator] And as Noam Dworman's co-host,
Dan Naturman knows
changing your act is no guarantee
that you'll avoid offending someone.
Dan was on America's Got Talent
and he told a joke
that had the word German in it.
It was not a joke at anybody German's expense.
He had to pick a country.
Actually, at the club, he doesn't even use German,
he uses Mexican, but they told him
don't say Mexican on TV, so they made him use German
because it was considered more innocuous.
[Dan] In America, we don't speak
different languages in America.
We speak English. Other countries, they speak different languages.
I got a friend Jurgen, he's from--
he's a countryman of Heidi's actually.
He lives in Berlin. He's speak-- do you know him?
He speaks four languages.
He said to me, "Dan, how come you Americans
don't learn other languages?"
I'm like, "I don't know.
Probably the same reason
people that can see don't learn Braille.
-That's probably why." -[audience laughing]
[Noam] Heidi Klum is a judge
-and she gets offended at his joke. -[Greg] Nice.
And I got news for you,
Braille would be more practical, right?
Because you might go blind one day,
that could happen.
But you ain't gonna go German, chances are.
[audience laughing]
Thank you, America, vote Naturman!
How'd he do? Did you laugh?
Well, not really.
It is impressive, though, that you managed to offend
almost every type of person on the planet
including the Germans.
[Noam] And she attacks him
and may very well have led to ending his run
at the championship of America's Got Talent.
[Dan] Oh, but I think it was going to go down anyway,
-but maybe. -So this exact phenomenon
that we're talking about, he had a bitter
firsthand experience with it.
[Gilbert] Nowadays, there's people
who might want to play it safe.
Me being an idiot, I don't.
[narrator] Comedy can help us get through tough times,
but doing comedy after a tragedy
is one of the biggest taboos.
Then again, Gilbert Gottfried
loves sinking his cold fangs into taboos.
It's kind of his thing.
I used to do a voice
for a certain insurance company
-[duck] Aflac! -[Gilbert] The tsunami
was hitting then.
So, I had handled that the way
I handle every big news item.
I was doing jokes about it on the Internet.
Mostly, if you're going to get offended,
you could get offended by how dumb
most of them were.
Like, I asked my Japanese real estate agent,
"Is there a school in the neighborhood?"
And she said, "No, but there will be one in five minutes."
-[man] A horrible thing to say in the midst of this tragedy. -[woman] Disgusting.
I couldn't believe he said that.
A well-known comedian is no longer
the voice of Aflac's duck today
because of a not-so-funny joke about Japan's tragedy.
They basically dropped me like
shit out of a duck's ass.
[woman] Aflac says, "There's no place
for anything but compassion and concern."
[narrator] But how surprised could Aflac have been?
After all, the famously raunchy Comedy Central roasts
often showcase Gilbert Gottfried
and his jackhammer tongue.
Donald always says money can't buy happiness,
but it can buy the best
Eastern European whores New York City has to offer.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] And the tsunami
wasn't the first time Gottfried made jokes
in the wake of a tragedy.
He did something similar
right after the September 11th attacks.
[Gilbert] I was at the Hugh Hefner's fryer's roast.
And I said, "Well I have to leave early tonight.
I couldn't get a direct flight,
we have to make a stop at the Empire State Building."
And the crowd was booing and hissing.
One guy yelled, "Too soon."
Which I thought meant I didn't take
a long enough pause between the set up and the punch line.
[narrator] But his 9/11 joke didn't leave
the world throbbing with outrage
like his tsunami jokes did.
Maybe it's because in 2001,
there was no Facebook, no Twitter,
no YouTube, no iPhone.
But today's supercharged Internet
blasts outrage all over the world
as fast as you can type 140 characters.
[Gilbert] The Internet makes me feel sentimental
about old-time lynch mobs.
Back then, you actually had to put your jacket on,
go outside, get your hands dirty,
and deal with other people.
You know, not everything is funny.
-Right. -And there's not a time to joke about everything,
but apparently, Gilbert Gottfried
-is learning that the hard way. -Didn't get the memo.
[Gilbert] And then when I go outside my house,
news cameras would appear out of nowhere,
like they were cornering someone
who was sending poisoned baby food.
[narrator] How did Gottfried eventually escape
the outrage mob?
A far more important story took his place.
[Gilbert] Chris Brown was backstage
and he got mad and threw a chair.
[man] There he is shirtless storming out of the studio.
[woman] Brown reportedly used a chair
to smash a window in his dressing room.
And that became the big news item.
See, I think nowadays,
there's the villain of the week.
And, like, at any given time,
there's the one guy we all hate
and then quickly,
it turns around to something else.
[Jon] People are getting destroyed, like, every day.
Sometimes, a number of times a day all over the world.
[narrator] In his book,
So You've Been Publicly Shamed,
author Jon Ronson tells the tale of Justine Sacco,
a young woman living in New York.
And with only 170 Twitter followers,
she's pretty much unknown.
[Jon] So, she's on vacation Christmas 2013,
heading from New York
to Heathrow to Cape Town.
And when she gets to Heathrow, she tweets
what she sees as a kind of funny acerbic joke
to her 170 Twitter followers that said...
She tweeted that joke
from Heathrow Airport,
wandered around the terminal,
sporadically checking Twitter,
got no replies, and found that sad too.
That sad feeling we all feel
when the Internet doesn't tell us,
"Well done. That was funny."
And then she got on the plane,
turned off her phone,
flew for 11 hours,
slept, woke up, turned on her phone,
and there was a text
from somebody she hadn't spoken to since high school
that said, "I am so sorry
to see what's happening to you."
The woman at the center of a digital uproar.
[man] At the center of a digital firestorm.
The woman who sparked a Twitter backlash
over an offensive tweet
that joked about AIDS in South Africa.
BuzzFeed tweeted it
as the worst tweet of all time.
[man] An incredibly offensive tweet
about AIDS and race.
[Jon] And the shaming came in waves.
First, there were the philanthropists
saying, "I am donating to aid to Africa."
But then it got darker, then it was like,
"Everybody go report this cunt."
There were people all over the world,
thousands, hundreds of thousands
of people who decided we must get this woman fired.
Most people didn't realize at this point
that she was on a plane
and oblivious to all of this.
But then her employers got involved.
[man] Quickly issued a statement
calling the comment outrageous and offensive.
And said, "This is an outrageous comment.
Employee currently unreachable
on an international flight."
And that's when the anger turned to excitement,
that we knew something that Justine didn't.
We knew that she was oblivious to her destruction.
[man] Sacco posted the tweet Friday,
just before a nearly 12-hour flight
from London to Cape Town, South Africa.
While she was apparently offline in midair,
millions were online,
anxiously waiting for her to land
and see the uproar her tweet caused.
The...
became an instant trend.
First, you have children dying,
you have children being born with AIDS.
It's really nothing to joke about.
[Jon] I was on Twitter that night
and I thought what everyone else thought,
"Wow! Somebody's fucked!"
And I kind of, you know, sat up in bed
and propped the pillow up behind my,
you know, and then I thought, "Well maybe the--
maybe it wasn't intended to be racist."
[narrator] Too late!
The outrage mob had already made up its mind.
I think she's basically got a race problem
and she deserved to be fired.
[narrator] Sacco was fired in midair.
[narrator] Meanwhile, the social media response
was getting violent.
[Jon] "Somebody HIV positive
should rape this bitch so then we'll find out
if her skin color protects her from AIDS."
The anger, the vitriol directed at her
such that even the company that fired her
had to ask people to go easy on her, what about that part?
[narrator] Eventually the backlash became so deranged
that the media grew horrified what they had helped create.
Even some death threats seen on Tweeter toward her
and she hadn't had a chance
to tell her side of the story yet.
Somebody went and live tweeted
her arrival and "photographed" her.
[narrator] When Sacco landed she was unemployed
and Twitter's number one worldwide trending topic.
The satisfied outrage mob
looked for a new target to destroy,
but Ronson was determined
to find out what became of Justine Sacco.
[Jon] So, I met her in a bar in downtown New York
and, you know, she was just broken
and she just kept crying
and it was like the Night of the Living Dead,
because she was this kind of spectral figure.
I asked her to explain the joke
and she said "Living in America puts us in a bubble
when it comes to what is going on in the Third World,
I was making fun of that bubble."
[narrator] Sacco's family is from South Africa
and she was born there.
Her father took the family to the United States,
because he didn't want his children to be raised
in such a racist culture.
Justine thought that she was
being a social justice person like the rest of us.
She thought she was making fun
of the bubble of privilege.
You know, there's a-- there's a comedic tradition
of mocking privilege by doing an extreme
exaggerated version of it.
Niggers, Jews, homosexuals, Mexicans, Arabs,
and all kinds of different Chinks stink!
[narrator] Dave Chappelle does a sketch
about a blind black man
who happens to be a white supremacist.
Chappelle uses racist language to make fun of racists.
[Dave] Let's talk about Chinese people.
What they're Kung Fu
and all that silly ching ching, chong, chong.
Oh, you come here,
you kiss my tea make her sweet.
I no need no sugar when you around.
[narrator] Stephen Colbert was doing the same thing
and the outraged mob called him a racist
and demanded his show be canceled.
Naturally, there was an official hashtag.
The hashtag, "CANCELCOLBERT" is trending.
-[woman] Cancel Colbert. -[man] Cancel Colbert.
-[woman] Cancel Colbert. -[narrator] Colbert weathered
the storm, but humor can be more dangerous for amateurs.
[Jon] She lost her job, she couldn't get another job.
Newspapers were following her to the gym,
she couldn't sleep, she couldn't date
because you Google everybody you date
and she was just the racist AIDS tweet woman.
[narrator] We're all just one clumsy joke away
from sharing Justine Sacco's fate.
[Jon] We're all a mix of clever and stupid,
you know, we're not these one dimensional things.
We fuck up.
And we don't fuck up.
We're wise and we're idiots.
So, many watching her demise online
while she was offline on a plane.
[Jon] Don't leap in on somebody
and destroy somebody for this drama.
For this fake social justice.
Let's not frighten people into being voiceless.
[narrator] The Adam Carolla show
is one of the world's most popular comedy podcasts,
and its host is known for his no-holds-barred
political and cultural rants.
[narrator] At this live taping,
Carolla was fuming about a recent exchange
with California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom,
who brought up economic challenges
facing black and Latino families.
[Gavin] Half of African Americans in the state of California
and roughly half of Latino families
have no access to a checking account
or an ATM, things we take for granted.
-They don't have a checking account. -What's wrong with them?
-Do Asians have this problem? -I mean, a lot of communities have this problem.
A lot of whites have these problems, but I just...
-Oh, so it's not just black and Hispanic. -No, but it--
-but I'm giving you-- -Then why did you bring up
-black and Hispanic? -Because the magnitude
-is ominous. -[narrator] Agree with him
or not, but Carolla prides himself
on speaking the unspeakable
and he often raises issues
that politicians are too afraid to touch.
Here he asks Newsom why Asians
-perform so well in school. -[Gavin] I'm not a sociologist,
-perhaps you could explain why. -[Adam] Okay.
-Well, I told you why. -Why?
[Adam] They have a family that puts an emphasis on education.
[Gavin] Which is a noble thing.
And a lot of Latinos have families have put
-emphasis on education. -A lot, but not enough.
-African Americans have emphasis on education. -A lot, but not enough.
[Adam] Their families are broken up.
Okay, Gavin. I get it.
When a white straight guy seems to...
White? What's white have to do with it?
What's white have to do with it?
Well, you've been accused of being racist.
[Adam] You have the racist finger out all the time.
But the finger you use for personal responsibility,
that stays up your ass!
And they misquote you
or they quote you out of context.
There's a weird, sort of mob,
witch hunt mentality.
[narrator] Carolla says some reporters
recently confronted him with audio proof
of his supposed racism.
♪ I got a little penis, I don't care ♪
♪ It can work if it has no hair ♪
[woman laughs]
♪ You see it right there ♪
♪ It's in your face... ♪
They think it's me doing a Jackie Chan voice.
They're doing the gotcha moment,
except for they're not smart enough
to do their research and realize that's Jo Koy
who's an Asian American comedian,
he's doing all the talking and making fun
of the Asian American stereotype.
[Jo] You can just be quiet for a second,
-you're interrupting. -[Adam] I can't, sir, I'm telling you.
[Jo] You know why? You're pissing me off.
-You know why? - I told them,
the guy who was doing the voice was Asian
and they were like...
"Well, that helps."
[Karith] You can say whatever you want to say,
but the rule in comedy is that it just has to be funny.
[narrator] But these days there's a pretty big list
of topics that are off limits,
topics that comedians are avoiding.
Topics comedians are avoiding, it seems like
you don't know what to avoid.
Racial ones are a big one for people to avoid,
sexual orientation jokes,
people have always avoided religion jokes,
Islam especially.
Christianity is kind of safe now.
A big taboo in the comic world
would be like, gun topics
because so, you know, so many school shootings
and this and that, but school shootings
have been happening forever,
it's just they've been happening
in bad neighborhoods first and no one cared
and now that it happens in good neighborhoods,
everyone is like, "Oh, you can't joke about that."
[narrator] And it's not just jokes.
The outrage mob
is also scaring people away from serious debate
about taboo topics.
We cannot discuss legislation on rape in this country.
We cannot discuss
sex crimes on college campuses.
You can't discuss that.
[protestors shouting]
[narrator] Here protesters shout down a panel discussion
-that addresses sex crimes. -[woman] Get the fuck out of here.
[narrator] Be careful discussing suicide.
After showbiz legend Robin Williams
committed suicide,
punk rocker Henry Rollins wrote
that parents shouldn't kill themselves
because it traumatizes their children.
Henry Rollins said that Robin
was selfish for doing it and blah, blah, blah,
and people went after him and he had to apologize.
[Norton] We have punk rockers now fucking apologizing.
And it's like you don't owe an apology, Henry.
Even if what you said was wrong.
Even if Robin was suffering and it wasn't selfish.
I don't think you're out of line to say,
"Is this a selfish fucking thing?"
[narrator] If you challenge society's taboos,
you might be looking to start a discussion,
but don't be surprised if you get called names instead.
[Carolla] All they're gonna do
is try to make you look like a bigoted,
sexist, xenophobic whatever...
You're just a privileged, white feminist bitch--
[narrator] That's how Twitter responded
to a British writer,
one of the few people who questioned
whether Justine Sacco's tweet
was really meant to be racist.
And she said to her shame she shut up
and watched Justine's life get ripped apart.
We have to learn
you can't have the exchange of ideas
if there's a chilling effect.
[narrator] A chilling effect.
It's when you see others getting shouted down
for voicing controversial opinions
and you decide to just shut up yourself.
Because, why bother?
It's like, "Hey these are opinions
that people disagree with."
Like, "Hey, United States there, buddy.
We're just one big pile
historically of opinions
that people disagreed with and that's fine."
[Jon] If this climate of fear continues,
what it will create
is a cold conservative conformist world.
Where what we're doing is tearing apart
the people who step out of line.
[narrator] MSNBC's Martin Bashir made pointed comments
about former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Harvard President Lawrence Summers speculated
about why there aren't more female science professors.
NPR's Juan Williams admitted to feeling nervous
when he saw people dressed in Muslim garb on airplanes.
They all stepped out of line and it cost them their jobs.
All we're doing is training each other to lie.
Training each other to toe the company line
and then sitting around
like a bunch of fucking dummies
going, "How come no one is honest anymore?"
I don't know, stupid, because the last time
someone told the truth, you jumped on them
and tried to get them fired.
That's not more debate, more speech, more thought.
That's a form of private censorship.
And it may be legal, but it's still usually
-a dangerous bad idea. -Here.
[narrator] The thing is taboos are always changing.
Talking race can be dicey today,
years ago it was sex that put everyone on edge.
In 1851, Gynecologist James Platt
got kicked out of the American Medical Association
after allowing students to watch
a consenting woman give birth.
In the 1970s, researcher Vern Bullough
landed on the FBI's list of dangerous Americans
because he supported things like legalizing oral sex.
Today, childbirth has become a lot safer
because we've opened up about it
and adults are no longer arrested
for oral sex.
In other words, the censors got it wrong.
If you're on the side of censorship,
you're on the side of an arrogant idea
that essentially you know where wisdom will come from
and you don't know where wisdom will come from.
Gavin Newsom can come back on my show
tomorrow if he likes.
The only way that we find truth
in any society is through public debate.
He will never show up again
because he does not wanna fucking lock antlers
with someone in a long-form discussion
on his policies.
Once you get into the business
of saying you're going to prohibit
things that people find offensive
or wrongheaded,
that's where the most sensitive person in society
gets to determine what all the rest of us can hear.
Cars, technology,
cellphones, like everything's this.
And then free speech,
we're pulling it back to the '40s.
[Ron] After Lenny Bruce died
something remarkable happened.
Was it a landmark Supreme Court opinion?
No.
Was it a major act passed by the Congress?
No.
The American culture
basically came to the conclusion
that never again will this or should this happen.
After Lenny Bruce died,
no comedian,
not a single comedian in any of the states
was ever again prosecuted
for obscenity
in a comedy club.
That's a remarkable feat.
And I think that's why
so many comedians today
revere Lenny Bruce.
Guys like Pryor and Carlin acknowledged,
Lenny is the guy that kicked the fucking door open
for everybody.
So, we all owe him a tremendous debt.
He was arrested for what he said.
I can't imagine that.
But we fixed a lot of that.
Oh, my God, yeah. We don't get arrested anymore.
Our punishment is now corporate
and you lose your gig on Comedy Central
or you have to apologize
because you lose a movie opportunity.
When Lenny did it, it was a real penalty.
It was fucking-- it was going to jail.
Lenny Bruce was sentenced to prison
'cause people didn't like his jokes.
I should be hung.
[narrator] The culture changed so much
that eventually even the state of New York
admitted how stupid it had been
to bust Lenny Bruce.
Ron Collins partnered with fellow
First Amendment Attorney Bob Corn-Revere
to petition Governor George Pataki
to clear Lenny's name.
[Ron] I never thought there was...
any chance at all
that the governor would pardon Lenny.
[narrator] It seemed impossible.
But then it happened.
[Bob] This is a copy
of the pardon itself.
"Therefore, know ye
that I have pardoned,
remised, and released
and by these presents do pardon,
remise and release
the said Leonard Alfred Schneider
aka Lenny Bruce."
Archaic legal language that basically says
Lenny Bruce has been pardoned.
[Ron] It was just a wonderful feeling.
I really felt
that for just a pinpoint in time,
the Earth shook, just a little bit.
[narrator] The pardon came 37 years
after Lenny's death.
Makes you wonder what Lenny would think of today's world.
[Bob] I think he would hear people using language
that he was afraid
he was going to go to jail over
and he would think, "My gosh, things are freer
than they've ever been,"
but at the same time
he would probably be confronted
with attitudes that...
he wouldn't be able
to get his mind around the idea
that if he said something offensive
that people would turn him in.
[narrator] It's a weird, terrifying,
and exhilarating time to be a comedian.
You don't have to worry about cops
arresting you at clubs,
and new technology like podcasts
lets you avoid corporate and government authorities.
Smartphones and social media
allow you to connect with fans
and build a following.
But it's that same liberating technology
that's fueling the outrage mob.
[Noam] We had thousands of people
tweeting against us.
[narrator] They demanded Noam Dworman
stop giving stage time to Artie Lange
because they were offended by one of his jokes.
"New York Comedy Cellar if you don't stop
using Artie Lange we're gonna bring
-the protest to you." -[Greg] Wow.
And this began to bubble up
to the point where I got scared
and actually pulled down all our podcasts off the--
off the air because I didn't want anybody
to start researching what other kinds of jokes
we might have made.
[gunshots]
[narrator] Times are especially tough
for comedy outside the U.S.
On January 7th, 2015
terrorists offended by cartoons
depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad
shot and killed 11 staff members
of the satirical magazine
Charlie Hebdo at their office in Paris.
[Greg] The Charlie Hebdo massacre
should've been a wakeup call to everyone
who believes in free speech all over the world.
That you can't have a right
not to be offended without it backfiring,
without it being a terrible disaster.
And there was a moment
when it looked like France and the European Union
have learned this lesson.
[Jonathan] Hundreds of thousands
of citizens of France
in the streets for free speech.
You know, it's like
we all take a bullet.
They killed people,
but all French people take a bullet.
[Greg] But within a week
of the massacre they were arresting
people for cracking jokes.
They go after a comedian
who kind of condones the terrorism
or makes fun of it.
Now, I think that comedian's opinion stinks,
but you--hey, dummies,
do you want free speech or don't you?
[narrator] A comedian called Dieudonné
was found guilty of condoning terrorism
and received a suspended two-month jail term
for a Facebook post.
He wrote that he felt "like Charlie Coulibaly,"
a play on the popular "I am Charlie Hebdo" slogan
that incorporated the name
of one of the Paris attackers.
[speaking French]
[narrator] He has been repeatedly fined
for anti-Semitic speech and local authorities
have banned his shows in several towns
because they see his act as a threat to public order.
I mean, yeah, you're not shooting people
like the Islamic militants did,
but you are arresting people.
You are penalizing people
for saying shit you don't like.
France, like...
all developed countries in the world
except the United States has hate speech laws.
France's free speech stinks.
Canada is not great with free speech.
They have a whole human rights commission
that penalizes people.
Britain kind of stinks for certain reasons.
You can get in big trouble for saying things.
[narrator] Britain jails people
who make comments
officials deem to be offensive,
and an accountant named Paul Chambers
was arrested for a Twitter joke
authorities misconstrued as a terrorist threat.
In France, Dieudonné's clashes
with authorities have fueled his popularity
and turned him into a martyr.
But today, more Americans support hate speech laws
than oppose them.
Yes, the same nation that thinks
it was ridiculous for cops
to arrest Lenny Bruce for words,
supports laws that would allow cops
to arrest people for words.
[Ron] We must not be afraid
to be free.
It's scary.
It really is.
And I think Lenny Bruce
brought that point home in spades.
[Bob] The pardon obviously
wasn't for Lenny Bruce
even though it was done in his name.
The pardon was really for the rest of us
to stand as sort of a public monument
to the values that we protect.
We do protect the outcasts.
We do protect the people who are there
and who will offend us.
If we can protect those people,
then all of us can sleep a little safer at night
because we know that we will be able
to express our ideas, too.
At the end of the day it's not like we have
all of the high cards when it comes to truth,
morality,
patriotism, what have you.
We need a few wild cards,
we need a few code breakers,
we need a few people
that are willing if you will to jerk our chains,
all right?
In other words,
we need more Lenny Bruces.
[Mel] You fucking offend me.
And you don't care about anyone but yourself.
[Gilbert] I remember when all the news stories
came out about Mel Gibson
being arrested for drunk driving.
The police woman was Jewish
and he started saying stuff about the Jews.
Then he started to say stuff
calling her sugar tits.
Then he started saying like,
that a group of African Americans,
only he didn't use the term African Americans,
should rape and kill his wife
or he was going to kill her, hitting her with a shovel
and burying her in the rose garden.
And after all that came out, all I could think is,
"Wait a minute,
what did he say about the Jews?"
So, I think people like to pick and choose
what to get offended by.
I think being offended is a smorgasbord
and you go, "Okay, I like this and this.
Oh, that I'm offended by, oh, this is good,
no, that one I'm offended."
Well, liberals are offended by certain things.
Blacks are offended by certain things.
Women are offended by certain things.
White Christian males are offended
by certain things.
We're all offended by whatever
violates our comfort zone.
[narrator] If comedians steered clear
of anything that violates someone's comfort zone,
imagine what the comedy shows of the future would be like.
[Jonathan] One of the first things you know
when a society is turning authoritarian
is the comedians start to worry.
When they start going for the comedians
everyone else needs to sweat.
Do you really want to live in a world
where people have to think twice
before they tell any kind of joke,
or question someone else's religion,
or question anybody at any level?
Because if you're going to say one person,
you know, who said something that you don't like,
doesn't have the right to do that,
then what about you?
What if you say something that someone doesn't like?
Along with the right to speak freely
comes a responsibility to have a thick skin.
Words can be hurtful
but they're not the same as violence
and they can be countered with other words.
And that's our responsibility.
It's the responsibility to put up
with being offended.
[narrator] So, where are we headed?
Will we embrace free speech
or will we turn toward America's past
and Europe's present
and arrest people for word crimes?
[Greg] The idea of a future in which we're all
always walking on eggshells does not appeal to me.
When I look ahead I see America
increasingly standing alone
as committed to the First Amendment in law.
And I don't think we're ever gonna get better with it.
This whole thing, like, every time
something big happens we're like,
"Oh, tide's about to turn."
It's never going to change.
It's gonna keep going downhill.
[Greg] There was this huge study that's done every year
and they ask citizens whether or not they think
the First Amendment went too far.
47% of people between the ages of 18 and 30
said the First Amendment goes too far.
This is terrifying to those of us
who care about free speech
and the future of free speech.
Everybody says, "I love free speech.
I love free thought, I love free expression,"
but deep down they're all going,
"Except for when, except for when."
There's always that little asterisk,
as to--it doesn't-- that doesn't apply here.
But you might be interested in how I became offensive.
[narrator] You know, a comedian changed
the culture once,
maybe comedians will do it again.
[Lisa] We're not backing down.
I mean, we're not gonna quit anytime soon.
And I think-- I think people are a little,
like...
sick of these politically correct folks.
I like to think
that really
the majority of people
do have a brain in their heads
and aren't getting offended if they hear a joke.
I used to not invite my friends
that had herpes
to this all girl stand-up show that I did
because this one girl that I performed with
had a really, really funny herpes joke.
I'm, like, so codependent that I thought,
"God, I'm just gonna see my friend in the audience
and she's gonna talk about herpes
and I know she has herpes.
And that'll really hurt her feelings."
So, I didn't invite her to several shows.
And then all of a sudden she was at the show
and here is the girl I'm performing with
does the herpes stuff and I was like, "Oh, no!"
And I look out and she's laughing
harder than anyone.
-My double D sister over there! -[narrator] Karith Foster
is still using comedy to start
honest conversations on campus
and students geek out on free speech
at conferences organized
by Greg Lukianoff's organization.
Chris Lee has graduated from college
and now AIDS and cancer charities hire him
to tell filthy jokes at their events.
[Chris] They don't go, "Ugh, that joke
ruined my night."
Because it can't. They beat cancer.
[narrator] The world of comedy
is one of the few places
where playing the outrage card
doesn't work too well.
Thank goodness, plenty of us
can still get offended without having a meltdown.
And thank goodness, so many of us
can still take a joke.
To get all these emails saying,
"Oh, my God, we'll be the four gay guys in the front.
Please call us this or call us that."
I have guys come up to me on the street and say,
"Hey, call my friend and call them this"
or "Call my wife and call her the 'C' word.
She'll--she loves you."
'Cause I've had handicapped people
come up to me or write me letters saying,
"I think it's bullshit that you don't make fun of us.
Like, we can't take a joke?"
The race to be the most outraged
is really, really awful stuff,
but you're not gonna be talking about this
in 20 years.
Yeah, this will be completely fixed.
We have to scream at it and stand on the mountaintops
and have no fear and yell,
"You cannot put a chilling effect
on our freedom of speech.
But, oh, by the way,
keep in mind while we're doing this
that we're gonna win."
[music]