I have thought about this a lot. I try very hard to avoid knee jerk commentary on comedy, and have a long standing personal choice to remove words like “sucks” from my language when referring to any art form, particularly comedy. The very worst I will say is I am not the audience for it.

That is because a simple dismissal of comedy or a comedy performance becomes a dismissal of the audience that does not share my view. I don’t, for example, care for Adam Sandler. I can explain exactly why, and what elements I do not like, and I can provide a thorough analysis of his technique. But many people don’t share my view. Millions of people like his work, and there is no possible way that I am smarter that all of them.

I am not his audience.

So when I saw a Tweet from Asian comic Peng Dang with a video of him introducing Tony Hinchcliffe, and saw how Hinchcliffe opened his set, I knew I wanted to say something about it. But I did not want my anger to dictate my words.

For those who have not seen it (and I will not link to it here, because I believe Hinchcliffe has gotten enough attention from it), Hinchcliffe’s first words were “Give it up for that filthy little fucking chink that was just up here”.

And it got a laugh. He continued in that vein, referring to the audience that laughed at Peng’s performance as “race traitors”. The laughs tapered off, but a few people did laugh.

This really tests my resolve. I do not want to simply dismiss Hinchcliffe with a simple one word assessment. I want to explain my reasoning.

To be shocking for shock value alone is hollow and meaningless. It says nothing. If you want to be thought provoking, the very least you can do is provoke thought. This didn’t challenge the audience. It offended them, and there is a huge difference. This was comic failure at some very basic levels, and ultimately revealed more about the comic than it did about society or societal norms.

It was vitriol and bile spat out at the audience. There was no sense of irony about it, I saw no element of an underlying point. It was exactly as it was presented. It had no depth.

Years ago Michael Richards, who played Kramer on “Seinfeld” was doing stand up. A group of people walked in and sat down while he was on stage. They were loud and pulled focus. Richards had to reclaim that focus, so he began to address this group, some of whom were black.

In frustration, Richards pulled out the word “nigger”. He later publicly gave what I thought was a very sincere apology, and he clearly had surprised himself. He did not think he was racist.

But people don’t pull these words out of a void. They have to already be there, lurking at the forefront of the psyche. They don’t tend to say things they haven’t thought before.

So yes. Richards had racist tendencies, and discovering that rattled him. He owned it, and admitted he had “some work to do.”

So far, I have not seen anything from Hinchcliffe, whether an apology or defense of his words. I have, hoewever, been seeing the standard defense posturing from some comics and his fans.

“It was a joke.”

It was an unsuccessful joke. There was no artistry or craftsmanship involved.

The comic mind is constantly filtering stimulus looking for the punch line. Looking for the laugh. Experienced comics perform this task with amazing speed, and the vast majority of comic possibilities are immediately dismissed, scrapped as not meeting the comic’s standard of what is funny.

This was conceived on the spot. It was not filtered out. It wasn’t a standard set opening. It was specific to opening this set after that introduction. Those words matched Hinchcliffe’s standard of what is funny.

“You should be able to say anything on stage!”

You can. There is not a single word in the English language that is not available for use. The artistry of comedy is in the way those words are chosen and used. Comics are aware of that and choose their words carefully to communicate a point of view in a humorous way. That is, quite literally, the job.

Hinchcliffe is in no way an inexperienced comic. He has been in the business for a long time, and is quite successful. This was a choice.

You can say anything on stage, but what you say has an effect. That is why you are on stage. Because you use your words to create laughter and present a point of view. Cause and effect. If you do not like the effect, don’t be that cause.

And my personal favorite – “Cancel culture!”

The new way of wailing “political correctness”.

Bullshit.

If there is a market for the things you say, you will get bookings. If there is not you won’t. It is not an attempt to control what you say or force you to behave in a certain way. It is economic. Club owners want butts in chairs and don’t really care all that much how they get them there.

If your words and behavior don’t make them money, they don’t have a place for you.

Comedy does not exist without an unspoken agreement between the performer and the audience that the topic and the way it is presented has humorous value. Without that agreement, you have no joke. Right now there is someone getting a huge belly laugh with an overtly racist joke, because they are telling it to someone who agrees.

Tony Hinchcliffe made a choice to open his set with a racist rant. The words went through that internal mental filter, and matched his standard of what is funny, and he assumed he had an audience who had signed on to that agreement. He is experienced enough to dismiss the idea that this was some sort of anomalous error.

Hinchcliffe failed to do what every comic at his level should do instinctively. He failed to read the room. And he failed to realize that for some topics in the 21st century, the room is much larger than he thinks.