Whenever I hear a comic say something along the lines of, "You know, I have nothing, nothing at all against gay people, but..." I know I'm about to hear gays mocked, mimicked, defiled and generally put through the ringer.
It's as though saying, "I have nothing against [fill-in-the-blank]" offers a comic carte blanche to say anything, anything at all about whatever group is in the blank.
Not that one hears, "You know, I have nothing against black/Jewish/Asian/Mexican/Your Ethnicity Here people, but..." much anymore, at least not up in this supposedly liberal neck of the woods, but the fag card? It's played early and often, mostly by male comics.
Desperate ones in particular.
Like the man I heard use the "I have nothing" defense last night. The fact is, he was African American, and that made it particularly hard to take. If a guy like that doesn't grasp bigotry as a concept, who the heck does?
But perhaps it's only bigotry if it applies to him. In these "What about me?" times, that's probably it. Some days, it seems most of us only have compassion for what we see in the mirror, and then, only if we're lucky.
I'm as guilty of self-centeredness as any human, though I try each day to expand my circle of concern and compassion to include all I meet, at the very least. Not always successfully, this I know.
But you know, the comic last night was struggling, and perhaps his shtick was that of a desperate man. He did a lot of crowd work, which usually signals a comic without much material. And what he did have wasn't working. I can have some compassion for that, for I know that feeling all too well.
Still, last night I did what I haven't done to a comic since I started doing comedy myself. I walked out in the middle of his set, never to return. He was trashing what had been a nice night out for me and my gal, and we have both worked too hard to be who we are to put up with that kind of nonsense.
Kinda makes a gal wish she lived in lesbianland.
Oh, wait a minute--I do! That's what I get for venturing out of town, eh?
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