The license to be funny in America

One of the most fundamental aspects of American democracy has been the public’s ability to critique power, whether that’s through protest, legislation, or a really funny joke. Today, we take a romp into the history of American comedy, showing no matter how crude, rude, or distasteful the humor may be, Americans have a constitutional right to stand up. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline https://feeds.npr.org/510333/plus.npr.org/throughline. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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  This is America in Pursuit, a limited run series from NPR and Throughline. I'm Rand Abdelfatah.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the U.S. that began 250 years ago. This week, the spirit of American humor.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  No matter how crude, rude, or distasteful, the Supreme Court has upheld that all people residing in the U.S. have the constitutional right to mock or criticize public figures and government officials.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  The First Amendment is first for a reason. The Second Amendment is just in case the first one doesn't work out.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  That's Dave Chappelle, accepting the Mark Twain Prize in 2019. And for his part, Mark Twain, the prolific American satirist from a century ago, didn't mince words about comedy. He wrote in 1897, "The secret source of humor is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven." And so, in that spirit, on this episode, we take a romp into American comedy and all its harshness and rawness, thanks to our colleagues in the NPR newsroom. Our first story is from Elizabeth Blair about the dance between comedians and politicians. That's coming up after a quick break.

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  Satirists are known to punch up, meaning people in power bear the brunt of their jokes. Here's Stephen Colbert on CBS.

• 3:13Speaker 09

  Apparently, Trump learned that violent mass goons are not crowd pleasers, and he learned that from his most trusted advisor, the TV. Reportedly--

• 3:22Speaker 08

  They offend. Here's Bill Maher on HBO Max.

• 3:25Speaker 10

  And I can't fix that what the Democrats are scared of more than anything else. I mean, obviously, besides gluten.

• 3:34Speaker 11

  Satire is a way of looking at reality and heightening reality to take down a worthy target.

• 3:42Speaker 08

  Satirist Andy Borowitz points to Will Rogers, who died in 1935. Rogers, one of the most influential American humorists, often said that Congress made writing jokes easy.

• 3:53Speaker 11

  He said that about 100 years ago, and it's still true. We have this target-rich environment of the government, but not just the government, the oligarchs, the institutions. So, we just wake up every morning and say, okay, who's it going to be today?

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  Early American satirists like Benjamin Franklin and Washington Irving were influenced by Anglo-Irish writers like Jonathan Swift and Oliver Goldsmith. But the GOAT of American satire is Mark Twain.

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  Man is the reasoning animal. Such is the claim. Though I do think that's open to dispute.

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  Actor Hal Holbrook in the CBS broadcast of Mark Twain Tonight in 1967.

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  Well, I've been studying this reasoning animal for years now, and I find the results humiliating.

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  Holbrook performed as Twain hundreds of times before he died in 2021. Actor Richard Thomas is touring the show now.

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  When Twain speaks, he frequently just sounds like one of us, rather than somebody who's giving wisdom.

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  Thomas says Twain would throw his darts, but was very careful not to simply offend.

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  He's always the first to recognize his own frailties, which means that even when he's challenging you, he's also your friend. You know, he's also intimate with you because he's revealing as much about himself.

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  Rich people were often the target of Twain's satire.

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  Incredibly contemptuous of big money, wealth, but, you know, constantly trying to be a mogul, trying to be rich. When he went out west, he said the gold and silver fever was running high out there, and I came down with the disease right away. I knew that money was the root of all evil, and I wanted all I could get.

• 5:36Speaker 08

  That intimacy with the audience is so powerful. Satirists are often more influential than politicians. Remember this?

• 5:44Speaker 14

  And I can see Russia from my house.

• 5:47Speaker 08

  Deena Faye's Saturday Night Live impression of Sarah Palin might be more memorable than Palin's actual campaign. Less than a month into President Trump's first term, Melissa McCarthy did an impression of Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

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  I would like you to begin today by apologizing on behalf of you to me for how you have treated me these last two weeks, and that apology is not accepted.

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  For me, it was just completely surreal.

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  Sean Spicer.

• 6:20Speaker 16

  I had a really tough, you know, time out of the gate at the White House. It's probably generous on my behalf. And so, look, it was fair. It was funny. It was a little well-deserved.

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  Political players have generally accepted the ridicule, at least publicly. In the 1960s, Vaughn Meters' parody album of The Kennedy Family was a sensation.

• 6:41Speaker 17

  Something must be done. Now, Bobby, it might just be a matter of a change of a few words. You know, for instance, let's take a word like vigor. I say vigor. How do you say vigor? Vigor.

• 6:52Speaker 08

  While Jacqueline Kennedy was not a fan, John F. Kennedy gave copies of The First Family as Christmas gifts. President Trump has vigorously criticized satirists who've joked about him, especially Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. Sean Spicer thinks it's justified. He says late-night comedy has taken a mean turn and become too political.

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  It's not about being funny and entertaining and telling jokes. It's about advancing a liberal agenda and one against Donald Trump.

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  It's the clearest indication of the power of satire.

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  Danielle Fuentes Morgan is an associate professor in the Department of English at Santa Clara University. She isn't surprised to see the president criticize comedians on his social media.

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  Because if it was just jokes, he wouldn't care.

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  Morgan says satire has been a vital part of what it means to be American. It can even be a matter of life or death, she says. She's the author of a book about the history of African-American satire called Laughing to Keep from Dying.

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  Satire is about subversion. It is a survival tactic that is meant to open up space for Black life. And what it does is demonstrate Black resiliency, Black selfhood, and Black intelligence.

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  Morgan cites comedians Richard Pryor and Jordan Peele. In her book, she writes about one of the earliest records of African-American satire from 1865. It's a letter from Jordan Anderson, a formerly enslaved man living in Ohio, responding to a letter he'd received from his former master in Tennessee.

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  Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt and am glad that you are still living.

• 8:35Speaker 08

  That's actor Laurence Fishburne reading Anderson's missive for the series Letters Live. Anderson's former master asked him if he and his wife would come back and work for them.

• 8:45Speaker 19

  Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will better be able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

• 9:01Speaker 18

  It vacillates so beautifully between comedy and horror.

• 9:06Speaker 19

  Our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add this, the interest for the time of our wages had been kept back.

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  It is a really precise indication of Jordan Anderson's ability to speak the truth about what happened in a way that still provides him some cover by pretending like he's just being very earnest.

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  Humor, says Morgan, can lower people's defenses and get them to listen to topics they might otherwise avoid.

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  You've created a space where people are a little bit more willing to hear it because they're laughing.

• 9:43Speaker 08

  American satire paved the way for stand-up comedy, considered by many practitioners to be a truly American art form. That is, if you can take a joke. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.

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  But where did stand-up come from? Well, we found an origin story from Cliff Nesterov, who wrote The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy. Turns out, the term "stand-up" came from the mob. To explain, Nesterov brings us back to the start of the 20th century. He chatted with NPR's Renee Montaigne in 2015.

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  The idea of what a comedian was, was very different back then. In vaudeville, comedians often wore costumes, they had partners, they would go around on roller skates delivering punchlines, the old cliche of the seltzer bottle and the baggy pants. That was all very much a reality at the turn of the century in comedy in vaudeville. There was a guy named Frank Fay who changed the whole game. It was revolutionary at the time. He decided to go up on stage without a costume. He had been doing baggy pants comedy, and he couldn't live with himself. He hated gimmicks, you know? So he'd go up on stage with a-- just wearing a tuxedo and a carnation in his lapel, the same way he would have offstage, just stood onstage and told jokes. Slowly but surely, his style gave way, as it influenced other young comedians, guys

• 11:19Speaker 20

  who were starting out, like Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Jack Benny. They were all influenced by this guy, Frank Fay. But at that time, they were just called comedians. The phrase "stand-up comedy" didn't come later, until the mafia started to control show business.

• 11:33Speaker 06

  And that goes back to speakeasies. When prohibition ended, those illegal gin joints became legitimate nightclubs, still, though, in many cases, controlled by mobsters. Just one of many examples: The Green Mill Cocktail Lounge in Chicago was co-owned by Al Capone associate, Machine Gun Jack McGurn.

• 11:52Speaker 20

  In my book, I interviewed a 90-year-old comedian, kind of an obscure guy who never made it, named Dick Curtis. And he worked all kinds of small, mob-run nightclubs. And he argues that the mafia invented the phrase "stand-up comedy." Because in those days, they managed a lot of fighters. A lot of boxers were owned by the mob. And a fighter that could stand up and take abuse and keep punching was called a stand-up fighter. And a guy that the mob could rely on was called a stand-up guy. So a stand-up comic was a guy who could go up on stage, take abuse from hecklers, joke, joke, joke, joke, very reliable performer. They called him a stand-up comic.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Back in the early 1980s, Eddie Murphy rose to national attention as a stand-up comic. At just 19 years old, he was tapped by SNL. And he went on to make dozens of movies, and millions of Americans, including me, laughed.

• 12:51Speaker 21

  America is great, indeed. Imagine a country so free, one can throw glass on the streets.

• 12:56Speaker 22

  You must be out of your mind. You crazy! You're crazy!

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Black comedians like Eddie Murphy, and before him, Richard Pryor, brought a new sense of storytelling and raw critique of America. Their humor allowed Americans to see themselves more clearly by inviting everyone in on the joke. That's what journalist Jeff Bennett argues in his book, Blackout Loud: The Revolutionary History of Black Comedy from Vaudeville to '90s Sitcoms. It's this new vein of humor, he says, that transformed American comedy as we know it. He spoke with Scott Simon this past spring.

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  Jeff, thanks so much for being with us.

• 13:37Speaker 24

  It is a joy to speak with you, Scott. Thanks for the invitation.

• 13:40Speaker 23

  Let's begin with Burt Williams, first black recording artist, highest-paid performer in an otherwise all-white Ziegfeld follies of 1911. W.C. Fields called him "the funniest man I ever saw" and "the saddest I ever knew." How do we put all that together today?

• 13:57Speaker 24

  The funniest man he ever saw and the saddest he ever knew, it really speaks to the contradiction of black performers at that time, who were so talented and had so much to offer, but were forced to perform within the narrow limits of the racist structures back then. Even Burt Williams found ways to infuse some semblance of dignity and humanity into his performance, when the only thing he was really allowed to do was to poke fun at blackness. Vaudeville and minstrelsy, that was mass entertainment at the time. And so, the DNA of black comedic performance really begins with that era.

• 14:38Speaker 23

  Do black comedians, dare I say, like Jewish comedians, carry the weight of history?

• 14:43Speaker 24

  They do. And what's so particular about the '90s, and one of the reasons I wanted to focus on this era, is that I'd always had this sort of lingering sense of curiosity about how all of these shows-- Martin, Living Single, Fresh Prince, In Living Color, Family Matters, A Different World-- how they all existed at the same time. And after doing the research, I realized that that wasn't a coincidence. And you can draw a direct line from that era to the early days, to the Burt Williams who you mentioned, to the Billy Kurssands. But beneath that, to your point, they also had to sort of carry the responsibility of being a black artist and representing the fullness of that experience.

• 15:29Speaker 23

  I have to tell you, I was surprised to see the names Amos and Andy in here.

• 15:32Speaker 24

  Well, long before sitcoms, the many of us grew up with, I think, one of the most popular comedy programs in America was Amos and Andy. And at its height, in the 1930s, nearly half of the country was listening to that program every night. And the complication of that show was that it was originally performed by two white actors, using exaggerated black dialect. And it relied on stereotypes that today are obviously deeply uncomfortable to hear.

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  Right now, Amos and the Kingfish are in the office discussing Andy's feeling for Madam Queen.

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  Oh, I tell you, Kingfish, the way Andy looks at Madam Queen, I can tell that he is in love with her again. Yeah, I still don't believe it, Amos. I always say that you can't cook an omelet but once.

• 16:18Speaker 24

  But in the early 1950s, with the advent of television, Amos and Andy moved to TV, and the roles are played by black actors. And so, for the first time, millions of Americans are seeing a black cast on television every week.

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  Greetings from the President of the United States. You have been chosen by your friends and neighbors to serve holy smoke. Andy, they're going to induction me. Induction you? I guarantee you, they don't want you. You ain't got nothing to worry about. All you gotta do is call them up and tell them that I made a mistake. Yeah, that's the thing you do.

• 16:53Speaker 24

  What fascinated me is that, realizing the story of black comedy, it has always moved through contradictions like that, moments of limitation that eventually opened the door for something bigger and something better.

• 17:06Speaker 23

  I want to get you to talk about Richard Pryor, because the word "genius" still clings to him, doesn't it?

• 17:12Speaker 24

  I mean, before Pryor, a lot of comedians performed safe material, I guess you could say, observational jokes, funny stories about everyday life. But Richard Pryor walked straight into the truth. He talked openly about race, addiction, poverty, police violence, his own mistakes.

• 17:30Speaker 28

  When I was drinking, though, it was fine. I had to stop drinking, though, because I got tired, like, waking up in my car, driving 90.

• 17:38Speaker 24

  There was this full complexity of being human. And he did it in a way that was raw, that was vulnerable, that was hilarious. And it really gave permission to comedians to tell the truth onstage. So for this book, I talked to a number of the performers and showrunners and producers who were key to the shows that we saw in the '90s, one of them being Sinbad. And he told me a story about how he grew up in a religious family, and he got his hands on a Richard Pryor album and was playing it in his room. And what he remembered, he told me, was his parents cracking up and asking, "Who is that? Who is that?" And of course, it was Richard Pryor. And he said, you know, "Richard Pryor was able to catch everybody." And that's certainly the truth.

• 18:18Speaker 23

  Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock, great talents today. Do you think black comics have a special calling in today's America?

• 18:25Speaker 24

  I would say it this way. I would-- I think that-- I'm going to think about this, because I don't want to put more responsibility on black comics than is due.

• 18:34Speaker 23

  Let me put it this way. I really like Dave Chappelle. And he's irritated some people in recent years. And I guess he even irritated me every now and then. But I find him very much worth listening to.

• 18:46Speaker 24

  I think it's true that, for a Chris Rock and a Dave Chappelle, or frankly, any comic that works at that level, black comics for sure, that the comedy has never just been about the laughter. You see comedy as a survival tactic, as a political language. In the '90s, it was an economic engine with these really popular sitcoms. Black performers have used humor to critique power. And I think, in doing so, they've shaped American identity itself.

• 19:17Speaker 23

  It's Saturday. What would you recommend people watch tonight?

• 19:22Speaker 24

  I would say, queue up Coming to America. That's a foundational text, in terms of black comedy.

• 19:29Speaker 23

  It's the first time I've heard Coming to America called a foundational text.

• 19:33Speaker 21

  All right. Yeah. "America is great, indeed. Imagine a country so free, one can throw glass on the streets."

• 19:40Speaker 22

  You must be out of your mind. You crazy! You're crazy! I am not crazy.

• 19:44Speaker 21

  Listen!

• 19:45Speaker 22

  I can't fight, he can't fight.

• 19:46Speaker 21

  Real Americans!

• 19:47Speaker 24

  And then, if you're thinking about sitcoms, the Whitley and Dwayne's Wedding on A Different World, the second season of In Living Color, I think, was unmatched. It was chaos and genius at the same time. Will's monologue about his father in Fresh Prince, this really resonant emotional moment that nobody saw coming in the middle of a sitcom. On Martin, Martin and Gina just talking, the way that they talked to each other like real people. And that's what I keep coming back to with these sitcoms in particular, is that, yes, they were funny, yes, they were hilarious, but there was a specificity and authenticity that made them universal. So it was black audiences and white audiences watching these shows side by side. And that's why they've been so culturally impactful.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  That's it for this week's America in Pursuit. And join us next week for our final installment, when we celebrate a song woven into the tapestry of the 20th century, one that's become a global anthem.

• 20:50Speaker 29

  There's a little song that we sing in our movement down in the South. I don't know if you've heard it.

• 20:55Speaker 30

  I'm usually credited with changing it to "shell." It is one of the most powerful, at the same time, sacred moment, what we were saying we shall overcome.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  That's next week. This episode was produced by Nick Neves and edited by Julia Radpath, with support from the Throughline production team. Music by Ramtin Arablouei and his band, Drop Electric. Special thanks to Irene Noguchi, Yolanda Sangweni, Leanna Simstrom, Casey Minor, and Lindsay McKenna. I'm your host, Rund Abdelfattah. Thanks for listening.

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