Free Republic

Washington journalists are rejoicing that celebrity glitz and glamour are returning with their self-celebrating soiree, the White House correspondents' dinner. They announced that longtime "Saturday Night Live" player Kenan Thompson will host the April event, and Muslim comedian Hasan Minhaj will perform the Republican-bashing "comedy" routine. "The dinner has a serious message, but we also believe it is as important as ever to be able to laugh -- at ourselves, as well as at the people we cover," said White House Correspondents' Association President Jonathan Karl. "I'd argue that humor is more important now than ever." Liberals cling desperately to...

Hollywood took more heavy fire at this year’s Golden Globes than General Soleimani catching a flight out of Bagdhad. Dave Chappelle has dropped some bunker busters recently, too. Seinfeld and Bill Maher never really retreated to their credit. Just last month, Eddie Murphy returned to the fight, armed with nothing more than his trusty, old-fashioned funny. There’s good news to report from the theater of comedy combat, America. The decorated generals of joke-telling are beginning to gain ground again in the war on comedy.The enemy is today’s political left who, for years, have been on the march to silence jokes they’ve...

<p>Joker director Todd Phillips, celebrated for his comedy classic Hangover films, says “woke culture” killed comedy and made people overly afraid of offending others, especially on social media.</p> <p>Todd Phillips made the comments in an extensive Vanity Fair cover profile of actor Joaquin Phoenix that was published Tuesday.</p>

<p>After news hit on Monday that newly-named "Saturday Night Live" cast member Shane Gillis had been fired from the show, famed "SNL" alum Norm Macdonald expressed his outrage at the decision, declaring "war" and reaching out to Gillis directly.</p> <p>"Of course you know, this means WAR," Macdonald wrote on Twitter, captioning a report on Gillis' firing. The post is now Macdonald's "pinned" tweet.</p>

“I am not a crook.” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Just joking.” That last line may be the Trump administration’s way of maintaining plausible deniability when dangling pardons. The Washington Post reported this week that Trump has told aides that he will pardon them if they have to break laws to build a border wall. Trump’s statement reportedly came as he pushes aides to build a border wall before the 2020 election to make good on his campaign promise, even if it requires seizing private land and disregarding environmental rules. When aides have protested that some...

The Jussie Smollett story has been declared not fit for jokes. “It’s a straight-up tragedy,” declares the co-creator of a Comedy Central show, South Side, set in Chicago. Bashir Salahuddin, a former Jimmy Fallon writer, says “The whole situation is unfortunate. Particularly for the city, there’s bigger problems for them to handle.” Yes, well, there are bigger problems than fake crimes, which is why causing hundreds of hours of police work to be wasted on a fictitious attack staged for the purposes of ego gratification and publicity ought to be punished both criminally and socially. Instead, Smollett was let off...

Last month, the satire site The Babylon Bee lawyered up after liberal fact-checker Snopes tried to deplatform it by calling it "fake news" and suggesting the Babylon Bee did not rise to the level of satire. The Babylon Bee's lawyer sent a demand letter, and Snopes altered the offending article. But last week, Snopes unloaded two more attacks on the Bee, and the Bee vowed to keep fighting back."Snopes is at it again. We had hoped that a demand letter from our attorneys would prompt changes. And it seemed to. Snopes did go back and edit their defamatory fact-check, revising...

Following Kevin HartÂ’s departure, many names have surfaced as possible replacements, but let me save the Academy time and show why they are disqualified as not politically correct enough. By Ellie Bufkin December 10, 2018 The Academy Awards is facing quite a predicament about selecting a host for its 2019 ceremony. After tapping, then ditching, Kevin Hart due to some jokes he made about homosexuality a decade ago, they are left carefully contemplating his replacement.It wasnÂ’t long after his announcement as host that the outrage mob was demanding an apology for those old tweets. The Academy agreed, and asked Hart...

I’ve experienced a lot of strange things while performing comedy: Rosario Dawson made fun of me while I was bombing in front of hundreds of Bernie Sanders fans. I once had to tell the crowd mid-show that the venue was closing for an impromptu health inspection. On Nov. 30, I performed stand-up as part of an annual event put on by the Asian-American Alliance at Columbia, and about 20 minutes into the show, my microphone was cut off. It wasn’t because of some fire code violation, or because some violently drunk heckler and I were about to fistfight. It was...

Kevin Hart is stepping down as Oscars host just two days after the Academy announced he would take on the high-profile gig. The move came amid a mounting controversy after old tweets surfaced in which Hart expressed anti-gay sentiments and used homophobic terminology and slurs.

Comedians are becoming increasingly reluctant to perform on college campuses due to a sensitive culture of political correctness, and college bookers don't seem to mind. According to VICE News report published last week, several successful comedians, including Judy Gold, Jerry Seinfeld, and Chris Rock, now avoid going to college campuses because their jokes can be deemed offensive. “Why is it that everyone has to adjust to everyone else? Don’t hire me if you don’t want to hear what I have to say,” Gold told the publication. When asked to explain how she would react if her jokes offended an audience...

If you've been paying attention to the latest viral controversy this week, you know that the following audio says "Yanny," not "Laurel." It says Yanny. Those who claim it says "Laurel" are spreading fake news. Regardless, the Air Force sent a Yanny vs. Laurel reference out on their Twitter feed Thursday morning about the Taliban. By the afternoon, they took it down and apologized.

"Where’s that Bill Cosby pill I brought with me?" he said in leaked audio published by 'New York' magazine. MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews has apologized for making an inappropriate joke about Bill Cosby before an interview with then-candidate Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in January 2016. "Can I have some of the queen's waters? Precious waters?" Matthews is heard and shown saying in a clip obtained and published by New York magazine's The Cut on Friday. In the clip, Matthews then asks: "Where’s that Bill Cosby pill I brought with me?" (His crew looks visibly uncomfortable, and a man...

Mel Brooks: Blazing Saddles would 'never' be made today By Rebecca Jones Arts correspondent, BBC News 14 minutes ago From the section Entertainment & Arts Mel Brooks, one of Hollywood's funniest film-makers, has told the BBC political correctness is "the death of comedy". He said Blazing Saddles, his Western spoof about a black sheriff in a racist town, could "never" be made today. "It's OK not to hurt the feelings of various tribes and groups," he said. "However it's not good for comedy. "Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks. It's the lecherous little elf whispering in the...

Video at link of two anchors about to have a heart attack.

The ONE thing @RealDonaldTrump decided to be quiet about was Nazis

Not fair! Only liberals are allowed to make fun of conservatives. That's the way it has always been so when someone like Donald Trump  jokes about liberals it is absolutely intolerable. Not only is it offensive but dangerous since jokes won the election for Trump. That pretty much sums up the attitude of New Yorker television critic, Emily Nussbaum, in her January 23 article. Somehow it is just not right that liberals are mocked. Nussbaum is so upset by this cultural turnaround that she even attributes it to making Trump's victory possible as you can see in the title of...

Poynter’s James Warren (a former Chicago Tribune managing editor) has turned to the next press horror under President Trump: “What will the White House correspondents’ dinner look like under President Trump?” Warren admitted “It seems way off — April 29, 2017 — but the election of Donald Trump is already raising questions and some fears among [White House Correspondents] association members.” "This is unchartered [sic] territory," said a former WHCA board member who's discussed the matter with board members. "We've never had a businessman-reality TV star as president, somebody who understands the importance of this particular event." That sounds a...

Newly announced Saturday Night Live cast member Melissa Villaseñor — the first Latina cast member in the show’s four-decade history — has come under fire for apparently deleting thousands of tweets from her social media account that critics have deemed racist. The tweets from the 28-year-old Mexican-American comedian — who joined the cast of NBC’s long-running sketch show earlier this month — were first noticed by Grist writer Aura Bogado, who pointed them out on Twitter.

A Michigan rodeo clown is out of a job after he joked about gender identity at the Calhoun County Fair last week. “You’re either a boy or a girl, y’all understand,” “Rockin’ Robbie Hodges told the audience Thursday. “If you’re confused, then you need help, OK?” Some audience members appeared to laugh at the joke, but an attendee who recorded the skit said many people left out of protest, a local NBC News affiliate reported. Megan Harvey, the executive director for the Calhoun County Fair, said she was disappointed by the comments. “I was very disappointed, because we do not...