Whitney Cummings: “Comedians started becoming the enemy”
Written by ABC AUDIO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED on March 20, 2023
She’s not known for holding her tongue, and Whitney Cummings is speaking out on the state of stand-up comedy.
“I don’t have to tell you, over the past couple of years, comedy has taken quite a hit,” she tells Page Six. “It became super obvious that there were some issues in our society … which you know, it’s usually our job to comment on and confront, and all of a sudden, comedians started becoming like the enemy.”
In just the past two years, there was of course Will Smith‘s infamous Oscar night slap of Chris Rock, and last May, Dave Chappelle was attacked onstage in California in a frightening tussle with a knife-wielding man from the crowd.
In October, Ariel Elias ducked a beer can that was flung at her head by a New Jersey comedy show patron — and made headlines when she chugged it without skipping a beat.
2 Broke Girls co-creator Cummings lamented that it’s the job of comedians to poke fun at “sensitive subjects” to “help everyone cope and to laugh at horrible things,” but “all of a sudden for a litany of reasons, people started saying, ‘Comedians are bullies and they’re causing violence.’ She adds, ‘And we’re like, ‘Wait, what?'”
The fact that comics are being labeled bullies, yet are the ones being attacked, she said is “ironic.”
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