I'm not a fan of this initiative. Trying to have a serious discussion about race in a comedy club in NYC/Greenwich Village (A capitol of woke) with comedians that have learned long ago that foul language and playing to their audience's biases assures laughs and making them uncomfortable means not being invited back.
There may be a venue where comedy can help facilitate serious discussions on race, but the Comedy Cellar is not it.
The composition of the audience is not clear from the recording. Based on the scattered laughter and the off-camera questions from audience members, we can assume that at least a decent portion of the crowd were drawn to the event to see Glenn and John, and not the professional comedians.
I agree that this session didn't go very well, but not enough to dispense with the concept entirely. In my opinion the comedians were made to look like buffoons -- maybe that was the whole point!
I assume an audience at a comedy club in Greenwich Village is going to be largely 20-50 yr old woke New Yorkers with some out of town visitors as well. In other words. John's "Elect". I know NYC and the Village, I grew up there.
I agree the approach to finding an intersection between comedy and a race discussion is worthwhile. I just don't think this is the best venue.
Just to clarify, the event sold out well in advance, which means that anyone with a ticket knew they were coming to see Glenn and John specifically. I was there, and the vibe in the room was very enthusiastic. The audio mix on the video and podcast might not reflect that, as our editor tamped down the audience volume.
Thanks for the clarification Mark. I would have been there myself but travel from NM to NY during the summer is well out of my comfort zone. And then there is dealing with the nightmare that NY has become. How would you describe the demographics of the audience?
The first part of the video was pretty standard back and forth by Glenn and John on the usual topics, which I guess was designed to provoke a back and forth with the comedians and the audience. The comedians' contribution was inconsequential and what little audience interaction was between the comedians and the audience. Frankly the comedians could have been left out and Glenn and John should have gone directly to a Q&A/discussion with the audience. Or maybe one comedian can do a 10 minute provocative routine on race up front which could have become the subject of discussion between G&J and the audience.
It was a little hard to see who was there—dark club. But I think it skewed a little younger than I expected. The table next to me looked like they were in they were in their mid-20s at most and very enthusiastic. I saw a number of other similar tables. It also seemed fairly racially / ethnically diverse. Again, hard to tell, but it definitely wasn't a room full of white people. I chatted with a few people and eavesdropped a bit. A woman sitting at my table was a self-described superfan and a liberal professor in her mid-50s at a very liberal college in the city in the city, the guy sitting behind me was a FedSoc-affiliated lawyer. Hopefully that gives you some sense of things.
I grew up mostly in the Southwest (Phoenix and Tucson). There's no place like the desert. Santa Fe is especially gorgeous. Enjoy those monsoons!
This seems a natural place to renew my suggestion for a survey of Glenn Show subscribers to get a feel for the demographic mix therein, as well as the distribution of subscribers' opinions on a variety of political issues. I suggested this in the last Q&A thread, and the idea seemed to have been well received by others.
I suspect that such a survey would show a much greater variety of thought than one would guess from many TGS comments sections. I hope so!
Why am I so curious about this? I think in part it's because in the past few years I've watched so many intelligent, charismatic, heterodox people develop a paying internet audience... only to then end up utterly captured by that same audience - or at least what they took to be their paying audience, based on a nonrepresentative sample. (It's good to know the *actual* composition of one's audience.) Mercifully, I see no evidence of that happening to Glenn, but at times when I read through the comments here, they remind me of the sorts of things written by the internet crazies who probably helped drive some of these other once sensible people over the edge.
Agreed on Santa Fe. I lived there for a couple of years, and it's a remarkable place - summer monsoons and all.
I'm not a fan of this initiative. Trying to have a serious discussion about race in a comedy club in NYC/Greenwich Village (A capitol of woke) with comedians that have learned long ago that foul language and playing to their audience's biases assures laughs and making them uncomfortable means not being invited back.
There may be a venue where comedy can help facilitate serious discussions on race, but the Comedy Cellar is not it.
The composition of the audience is not clear from the recording. Based on the scattered laughter and the off-camera questions from audience members, we can assume that at least a decent portion of the crowd were drawn to the event to see Glenn and John, and not the professional comedians.
I agree that this session didn't go very well, but not enough to dispense with the concept entirely. In my opinion the comedians were made to look like buffoons -- maybe that was the whole point!
I assume an audience at a comedy club in Greenwich Village is going to be largely 20-50 yr old woke New Yorkers with some out of town visitors as well. In other words. John's "Elect". I know NYC and the Village, I grew up there.
I agree the approach to finding an intersection between comedy and a race discussion is worthwhile. I just don't think this is the best venue.
Just to clarify, the event sold out well in advance, which means that anyone with a ticket knew they were coming to see Glenn and John specifically. I was there, and the vibe in the room was very enthusiastic. The audio mix on the video and podcast might not reflect that, as our editor tamped down the audience volume.
Thanks for the clarification Mark. I would have been there myself but travel from NM to NY during the summer is well out of my comfort zone. And then there is dealing with the nightmare that NY has become. How would you describe the demographics of the audience?
The first part of the video was pretty standard back and forth by Glenn and John on the usual topics, which I guess was designed to provoke a back and forth with the comedians and the audience. The comedians' contribution was inconsequential and what little audience interaction was between the comedians and the audience. Frankly the comedians could have been left out and Glenn and John should have gone directly to a Q&A/discussion with the audience. Or maybe one comedian can do a 10 minute provocative routine on race up front which could have become the subject of discussion between G&J and the audience.
It was a little hard to see who was there—dark club. But I think it skewed a little younger than I expected. The table next to me looked like they were in they were in their mid-20s at most and very enthusiastic. I saw a number of other similar tables. It also seemed fairly racially / ethnically diverse. Again, hard to tell, but it definitely wasn't a room full of white people. I chatted with a few people and eavesdropped a bit. A woman sitting at my table was a self-described superfan and a liberal professor in her mid-50s at a very liberal college in the city in the city, the guy sitting behind me was a FedSoc-affiliated lawyer. Hopefully that gives you some sense of things.
I grew up mostly in the Southwest (Phoenix and Tucson). There's no place like the desert. Santa Fe is especially gorgeous. Enjoy those monsoons!
This seems a natural place to renew my suggestion for a survey of Glenn Show subscribers to get a feel for the demographic mix therein, as well as the distribution of subscribers' opinions on a variety of political issues. I suggested this in the last Q&A thread, and the idea seemed to have been well received by others.
I suspect that such a survey would show a much greater variety of thought than one would guess from many TGS comments sections. I hope so!
Why am I so curious about this? I think in part it's because in the past few years I've watched so many intelligent, charismatic, heterodox people develop a paying internet audience... only to then end up utterly captured by that same audience - or at least what they took to be their paying audience, based on a nonrepresentative sample. (It's good to know the *actual* composition of one's audience.) Mercifully, I see no evidence of that happening to Glenn, but at times when I read through the comments here, they remind me of the sorts of things written by the internet crazies who probably helped drive some of these other once sensible people over the edge.
Agreed on Santa Fe. I lived there for a couple of years, and it's a remarkable place - summer monsoons and all.
They could definitely use more contemplative comics who have actually done their homework.