A highly scientific taxonomy of haters | Negin Farsad

162,744 views ・ 2016-07-05

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I'm an Iranian-American Muslim female,
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like all of you.
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And I'm also a social justice comedian,
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something that I insist is an actual job.
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To explain what that is, let me tell you how I got here.
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I've performed all over the country.
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And let me tell you, America is majestic, right?
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It's got breathtaking nature,
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waffle houses
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and diabetes as far as the eye can see.
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It is really something.
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Now, the American population can be broken up
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into three main categories:
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there's mostly wonderful people,
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haters
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and Florida.
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(Laughter)
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Besides Florida, the most troubling category here are the Haters.
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They are a minority,
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but they overcompensate by being extra loud.
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They have the Napoleon complex of demographics,
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and yes, some of the men do wear heels.
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As a social justice comedian,
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it's my goal to convert these haters,
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because they hate a lot of things, which leads to negative outcomes,
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like racism, violence and Ted Nugent.
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This is not an exhaustive list;
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I'm probably missing 3-7 items.
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But the point is,
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we have to reckon with the haters.
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But there's variance within this group
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and it's not efficient to go after all of them, right?
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So what I've done is created a highly scientific Taxonomy of Haters.
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I basically took all of the haters,
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I put them in a petri dish, like a scientist,
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and this is what I found.
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(Laughter)
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First off, we have the trolls.
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These are your garden-variety digital haters.
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They're the people who quit their jobs
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so they can post on YouTube videos all day long.
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There's also the drive-by haters.
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Now, these people will be at a stoplight,
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they'll wait for the light to turn green
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and when it does, they yell, "Go back to your own country!"
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Now back in the day, they would've actually gotten out of their cars
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and hated you to your face.
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But they just don't make them like they used to --
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which is another sign of the decline in America.
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(Laughter)
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The next category
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is the mission-oriented-bigot- whose-group-affiliation-
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gives-them-cover-for-hating hater.
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These guys like to hate via a seemingly nice organization,
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like a church or a nonprofit,
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and they oftentimes like to speak in an old-timey voice.
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But the group I'm most interested in is the swing hater.
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The swing hater is sister to the swing voter --
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they just can't decide!
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They're like ideological sluts
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who move from hating to not hating.
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And they do it because they don't have enough information.
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This is the group I like to target with social justice comedy.
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Why comedy?
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Because on a scale of comedy to brochure,
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the average American prefers comedy, as you can see from this graph.
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(Laughter)
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Comedy is very popular.
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And by the way,
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this is a mathematically accurate graph,
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generated from fake numbers.
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(Laughter)
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Now, the question is:
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Why does social justice comedy work?
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Because, first off, it makes you laugh.
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And when you're laughing, you enter into a state of openness.
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And in that moment of openness,
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a good social justice comedian can stick in a whole bunch of information,
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and if they're really skilled,
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a rectal exam.
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(Laughter)
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Here are some ground rules for social justice comedy:
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first off, it's not partisan.
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This isn't political comedy, this is about justice,
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and no one is against justice.
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Two, it's inviting and warm,
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it makes you feel like you're sitting inside of a burrito.
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Three, it's funny but sneaky,
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like you could be hearing an interesting treatise
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on income inequality,
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that's encased in a really sophisticated poop joke.
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(Laughter)
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Here's how I see social justice comedy working.
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A few years ago, I rounded up a bunch of Muslim-American comedians --
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in a non-violent way --
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(Laughter)
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And we went around the country
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to places like Alabama, Arizona, Tennessee, Georgia --
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places where they love the Muzzies --
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and we did stand-up shows.
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We called the tour "The Muslims Are Coming!"
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(Laughter)
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We turned this into a movie,
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and then after the movie came out,
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a known hate group spent 300,000 dollars
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on an anti-Muslim poster campaign
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with the MTA -- that's the New York City subway system.
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Now, the posters were truly offensive,
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not to mentioned poorly designed --
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I mean, if you're going to be bigoted,
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you might as well use a better font.
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(Laughter)
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But we decided, why not launch our own poster campaign
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that says nice things about Muslims,
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while promoting the movie.
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So myself and fellow comedian Dean Obeidallah
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decided to launch the fighting-bigotry- with-delightful-posters campaign.
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We raised the money, worked with the MTA for over 5 months,
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got the posters approved,
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and two days after they were supposed to go up,
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the MTA decided to ban the posters,
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citing political content.
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Let's take a look at a couple of those posters.
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Here's one.
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Facts about Muslims:
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Muslims invented the concept of a hospital.
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OK.
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Fact: Grown-up Muslims can do more push-ups than baby Muslims.
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(Laughter)
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Fact: Muslims invented Justin Timberlake.
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(Laughter)
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Let's take a look at another one.
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The ugly truth about Muslims:
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they have great frittata recipes.
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Now clearly, frittatas are considered political by the MTA.
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Either that, or the mere mention of Muslims in a positive light
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was considered political -- but it isn't.
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It's about justice.
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So we decided to change
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our fighting-bigortry- with-delightful-posters campaign
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and turn it into the fighting-bigotry- with-a-delightful-lawsuit campaign.
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(Laughter)
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So basically, what I'm saying is a couple of dirt-bag comedians
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took on a major New York City agency
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and the comedians won.
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(Applause and cheers)
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Thank you.
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Victory was a very weird feeling.
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I was like, "Is this what blonde girls feel like all the time?
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'Cause this is amazing!"
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(Laughter)
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Here's another example.
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I'm asked everywhere I go: "Why don't Muslims denounce terrorism?"
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We do. But OK, I'll take the bait.
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So I decided to launch thedailydenouncer.com.
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It's a website that denounces terrorism every day of the week,
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while taking the weekends off.
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Let's take a look at an example.
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They generally appear as single-panel cartoons,
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"I denounce terrorism! I also denounce people who never fill the paper tray!"
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The point of the website is that it denounces terrorism
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while recognizing that it's ridiculous
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that we have to constantly denounce terrorism.
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But if bigotry isn't your thing,
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social justice comedy is useful for all sorts of issues.
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For example, myself and fellow comedian Lee Camp
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went to the Cayman Islands to investigate offshore banking.
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Now, the United States loses something like 300 billion dollars a year
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in these offshore tax havens.
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Not to brag,
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but at the end of every month,
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I have something like 5-15 dollars in disposable income.
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So we walked into these banks in the Cayman Islands
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and asked if we could open up a bank account
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with eight dollars and 27 cents.
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(Laughter)
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The bank managers would indulge us for 30-45 seconds before calling security.
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Security would come out, brandish their weapons,
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and then we would squeal with fear and run away,
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because -- and this is the last rule of social justice comedy --
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sometimes it makes you want to take a dump in your pants.
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Most of my work is meant to be fun.
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It's meant to generate a connection and laughter.
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But yes, sometimes I get run off the grounds by security.
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Sometimes I get mean tweets and hate mail.
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Sometimes I get voice mails saying that if I continue telling my jokes,
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they'll kill me and they'll kill my family.
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And those death threats are definitely not funny.
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But despite the occasional danger,
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I still think that social justice comedy is one of our best weapons.
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I mean, we've tried a lot of approaches to social justice,
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like war and competitive ice dancing.
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But still, a lot of things are still kind of awful.
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So I think it's time we try and tell a really good poop joke.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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