Can We Take a Joke?: Comedians Fight for Free Speech

So, a priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk onto a college campus…

7.29.2016

A new documentary is hitting select theaters on Friday, featuring top comedians talking about the battle for free speech.

Supported by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Can We Take a Joke? When Outrage and Comedy Collide features Gilbert Gottfried, Adam Carolla, Lisa Lampanelli, Penn Jillette, and other top comics. Showings are happening in Los Angeles and New York City with streaming options coming in early August.

"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," comic Jim Norton says in the trailer.

"There's a lot of people out there whose job is to be offended for people," Carolla says.

"It's the duty of a comedian to find out where the line is drawn and deliberately cross over it," says Gottfried. "Free speech is extremely important, because me being a Jew, I don't want to have to pay for speech."

Our fundamental Constitutional rights are under attack. Conservatives are being banned on social media. Big-name comics, including Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, have vowed never to play colleges again because of the political correctness that has infected American campuses. This documentary takes a look at how comedy is one of the last bastions of free speech but one that the outrage culture is coming after.

"When they start going for the comedians, everyone else needs to sweat," a warning blasts in the trailer.

Others are jumping on the bandwagon, as well. The daughters of the godfathers of comedy Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and Lenny Bruce are also speaking out on how the outrage culture is affecting comedy and freedom of speech. In aninterview with FIRE, these women said there's too much political correctness nowadays and it's causing us all to self-censor everything we say.

Comedy audiences are changing, too, they added. Kitty Bruce said her father, the pioneer of shock comedy, would say things that either made his audiences grumble or walk out. But today, the audiences are charging the stage to confront who offended them.

But what they want everyone to remember is that Lenny Bruce was arrested multiple times in the 1960s for cursing on stage or talking about religion. George Carlin said the "seven words you can never say on television" and he, too, was arrested after doing so in the '70s. His daughter Kelly sees a trend swinging in that direction and warned, "If we're not careful, we could go back there."

The battle is on.

Watch the trailer for Can We Take a Joke? above and then check out the interview below: