Opinion Piece Responding to an Event

Title: "Don't Heckle Daniel Tosh" (Salon, July 13th)


Summary: This piece responds to the larger controversy surrounding comedian Daniel Tosh's questionable and tasteless "rape" jokes (metacommentary on the nature of comedy and the appropriateness of both material and response to it); however, the piece zeroes in on the reaction of an audience member, who heckled Tosh and yelled, "Rape jokes are never funny!" Columnist Mary Elizabeth Williams, while conceding that Tosh's choices were in poor taste and largely offensive, takes the (any, really) patron to task for interrupting the show. While she never explicitly indulges in the expected  "free speech" rationale, she cites both the performer's and the audience as deserving of respect regardless of a show's content: " don’t short-change everybody else in the room who did not pay to hear your opinions. The offensiveness of a performer is still not a license to be rude, to the person onstage or to your fellow patrons." Williams then proceeds to describe both a better approach to the delivery of one's moral outrage and social the role comedy plays in human interaction and understanding: "Great comedy," she notes, "is shocking and subversive and makes trouble. It throws bricks through life’s windows. It’s cathartic, it’s physical. It reaches into your gut and makes you feel better about the most nightmarish things imaginable."Williams puts the onus of the responsibility on the patron by articulating comedy's conventions and role in social life (as in, "don't go, or stand up and walk out, if aren't ready to be offended or can't handle the offense when it comes"). Ultimately, the argument here is that it's one's social duty to be a polite and unselfish patron, no matter the content (don't ruin it for everyone else -- as Williams claims, " A comedy club is not a town meeting. It is not a dialogue. Even if you’re going to see improv, and the comic is asking you to shout out suggestions, he is not inviting you to tell him that rape is not funny"). 


Reaction: I generally agree with Williams here, especially with regard to comedy's social function: it's supposed to be edgy, subversive, boundary-pushing. If you don't want to be offended, I'd suggest not going to a venue hosting a performer known for raunchy and tasteless jokes, but hey -- that's just me. If you do purchase tickets to an event and attend, you've got some sort of responsibility to, well, avoid being an a-hole while someone's onstage, no? Aren't we implicitly agreeing to/accepting the content of a performance by getting tickets/showing up? (Obviously, we're not talking about actions/content that could/does physically harm anyone, incite a riot, or the like.)

Rhetorical Maneuvering: 

Williams opens with a very simple, very explicit claim: "Don’t heckle. Just don’t. I don’t care what the guy or gal onstage just said. Don’t do it." Easy enough to follow. From there:

Williams makes a number of concessions pretty immediately, and I assume she does so because of the incendiary nature of the topic (best not to defend the rights of a guy making fun of rape without having already carefully laid some groundwork designed to keep the audience). This maneuvering makes sense. However, she tries a bit too hard, offering an analogy early on that falls flat: "I say this knowing that asking audiences to stop heckling comics is like asking commenters on YouTube to learn how to spell." Wa wa wa. I almost stopped reading right here. Just not funny, not clever (despite the sad, sad, inherent truth in the statement. Have you ever READ YouTube commentary?)

Next concession: "I say this as someone who just a few weeks ago cited Daniel Tosh as a compelling refutation of Adam Carolla’s assertion that women are inherently less funny than men." Another not particularly effective analogy, but she does appeal to her own authority (by way of referring to other published writing and a deeper familiarity with Tosh). Third and last concession: "I say this as a vagina-possessing individual appalled at how Daniel Tosh conducted himself toward that patron at the Laugh Factory." Here she acknowledges the event that's inspired all this comedy (said heckling occurred at Laugh Factory, incident went viral, here we are now)." Alright. She's certainly appealing to women here by identifying herself as a card-carrying feminist (of sorts) who's reaction is on par with most women's (feminist or otherwise). But . . . I'm sorry. "Vagina-possessing individual"? She has a huge opportunity here to get some laughs, lighten the mood, engage in some witty repartee. "Vagina-possessing" isn't witty or amusing, though. Just boring and ineffective.

Williams also uses anecdotes, rhetorical questions, heavy-handed sarcasm, appeals to logos (this makes sense; since the nature of the jokes is so sensitive and emotionally loaded, it makes sense that she would counteract this with logic), and the piece as a whole  appeals to readers' sense of ethics. The piece probably does more, but it's 1:00 am. and I'm pretty done.