Oh Yeah, And Ellen Degeneres Eats Pussy
There were two jokes during Comedy Central’s recent roast of Justin Bieber that made reference to the fact that Ellen Degeneres eats pussy.
Pardon my phraseology, but I’m hardly editorializing. Pussy and the oral consumption of it were literally the crux of both jokes, and even if Bieber was the butt, Degeneres was, unfortunately, the subject.
Before going on it’s important that I mention that I don’t intend here to argue whether or not the jokes were appropriate. I don’t think there’s any comedy — at least, any good comedy — that isn’t offensive to someone. Sure, there’s a fine (but, I think, pretty distinct) line between jokes that “go there” and jokes that go too far, but I don’t think it’s a standard with across-the-board-application. A joke’s success as much as its taste depends on many factors: setting, audience, delivery, deliverer. More than we’d like to admit, I think, so much depends upon who is telling the joke, more than the joke itself. I hope this note is unnecessary and that the argument proves itself, but I don’t want anyone going away thinking Natasha Legaro or Ludicris “shouldn’t” have made the jokes they made.
It should also be noted that Ellen Degeneres jokes probably aren’t as out of left field at a Justin Bieber roast as might initially appear to be the case. Aside from the fact that the two celebrities bear a striking resemblance, Bieber has appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show something like fourteen times in his less than a decade old career. From the beginning, Degeneres has been one of Bieber’s most influential promoters — never mind Ludicris, who appeared on Bieber’s star-making first single, “Baby,” or even his manager, Scooter Braun. It was Ellen Degeneres blaring Bieber’s wholesome-street vibe into viewers living rooms, assuring the parents of his tween fans that, despite his “urban” musical and visual touchstones and ostensibly hood affiliations, he was safe for their daughters. So yeah, perhaps Ellen was bound to come up.
The jokes in question were as follows, in chronological order:
Ludicris: “I know you been on [The Ellen Degeneres Show] fourteen times. You act so much like a pussy on the show, Ellen tried to eat you.”
Leggero: “Justin, you’ve been on Ellen more than a pussy mustache.”
Leggero assured Ludicris, over the laughter and applause her joke excited, that her joke was better, and from a certain perspective I suppose she’s correct. Her delivery was better, the humor and wit bolstered by the single sentence injunction, where Ludicris trips on both the length of his joke and his repetition of the word “show.” And, as both jokes “are funny” primarily because Ellen Degeneres is a lesbian who probably eats pussy (a fact which apparently passes for humor in some circles), Leggero is not wrong to compare them. But it’s worth noting that Leggero’s joke pokes fun at both Bieber’s prolific appearances on the show and Degeneres’s propensity for poo-tang, whereas Ludicris mocks Degeneres’s tastes and Bieber’s manhood. For those of you who don’t know, despite the fact that it’s what they’re constantly lusting after (at least, allegedly), a pussy is a bad thing to be. It goes without saying that being a pussy is far less than being a man; is in fact the opposite.
You can read misogyny in both jokes, but this is comedy. Is there a comedic tradition that isn’t misogynistic, at least a little bit? (Can something be “a little bit” misogynistic?) Leggero thinks it’s funny that Ellen Degeneres eats pussy because lesbianism threatens (or is understood to threaten) patriarchal society. That’s why her lesbianism and all homosexuality is comedic fodder. Justin Bieber has also appeared on Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, David Letterman, and a host of other talk shows hosted by heterosexual males who, realistically speaking, probably engage in cunnilingus as well. And yes, Bieber hasn’t appeared on any of those shows with the frequency of his Ellen appearances — but it’s safe to say that if he’d been on Fallon twenty times no one would be like, “Har har, Justin’s a pussy and Fallon eats pussy, har har.”
In might be more explicit in Leggero’s version, but in either case, the fact that Ellen Degeneres is a lesbian is the joke. I purported to no judgement as to what jokes should be told and by whom, and I stand by that. I’m not “offended” by the casual “homophobia” (for lack of a better word only, I assure; what an abhorrent term!) on display in the routines of Ludicris and Leggero. There’s nothing here of great enough import to inspire outrage or ire, and nothing worthy of apology. People go to work and, hopefully, they do their best. I offend people all the time, intentionally and not, and I thank God I’m not famous and no one’s keeping score, because what shit would I be in.
Last week it was announced that Trevor Noah would replace Jon Stewart as the host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central. On the Internet, this news was met first with a somewhat positive reception: the Internet is a thing that likes to put on a certain facade of openness and acceptance, especially racial; it likes to pretend that it’s a welcoming, progressive place with the primary goal of giving platform to varied experience and broadening perception — just don’t read the comments. The Internet was just glad that a major primetime talk show was falling under the helm of someone who wasn’t a white guy, even if it’s Comedy Central and The Tonight Show. But nothing that happens on the Internet is ever forgotten and there’s no such thing as the past, and it wasn’t long before Tweets surfaced casting Noah in a bad light. Fervor ignited over jokes Noah had made which seemed to denigrate specifically Jewish people and full-figured gals of a neo-R&B inclination. Cue the cries of anti-Semitism and body shaming, and the reactionary masses deciding that perhaps Noah is not after all the man for the job.
Perhaps Noah’s jokes are in poor taste, and I’m neither Jewish (unfortunately!) nor fat (anymore), but I do think the outrage was both overblown and shortsighted. Yes, the Holocaust is an grievous blight on history and it’s nothing to be made light of, but people do. The mere employment of the term to designate anything other than mass genocide is to downplay the tragedy. Yet it is not without colloquial expression. Yes, our culture is beholden to impossible standards of beauty, and yes, those standards certainly don’t need reaffirmation, but come on, have you ever been to a Weeknd concert?
Yet we cry foul, we take offense, because the offense is obvious, and it’s easy. It’s easy to be offended by crude jokes about the Holocaust. It’s easy to rally against yet another man using comedy to enforce unrealistic body standards.
It’s somewhat more difficult, though, isn’t it, to be offended by the casual mockery made of Ellen Degeneres’s private sex life masquerading as jabs at Justin Bieber. It’s easier to miss that homosexuality, far from being the legitimate, lived experience of millions of people, is still, in 2015, something for straight people to laugh about. It’s not enough that Ellen Degeneres, who’s career seemed headed for disaster and a bittersweet E! True Hollywood Story after her 1997 coming out, has made her show one of the most popular on daytime TV, or that she’s won more than 30 Emmy awards, or even that she’s hosted the Oscars, all in a industry that consistently seeks to erase and misrepresent the communities of which she is a part. Still, her personal details — her sexuality — is the butt of jokes at an event she isn’t even attending. More than Trevor Noah’s obvious and immature comedic faux pas, doesn’t the subtle and probably unthought damage done by Ludicris and Leggero’s jokes make them — and that line of comedy — that much more insidious?
