Can We Laugh At Anti-Semites? Jimmy Failla Says Yes- The Joke's On Them

Is it possible to find any humor in the rise of anti-Semitism that seems to be engulfing America right now? According to cab driver-turned-comedian Jimmy Failla, the answer is yes. He sees it as a teachable moment, as the intolerant are shown as the buffoons they are and why their rationale does not work. Even so, Failla says it does get a bit discouraging to see how comedy has had to adapt to the world of cancel culture. Failla appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to explain the lunacy of anti-Semitism, as seen through the eyes of a comedian.

“It’s just embarrassing that anybody would be so openly anti-Semitic and think it okay,” Failla told Berman and Riedel, “because it speaks to just a general lack of, you know, obviously, education, but just self-awareness, like the fact you wouldn’t think that’s a bad look. You think about this as a comedian, okay. Colleges stopped booking comedy because they told us that speech was violence. They’re like, ‘Jokes are violence. If you make fun of something, it denigrates it in a way that people will be more likely to attack it. Anyway, mister comedian, we’ve gotta run because we’re having a ‘Kill The Jews’ rally on the quad.’ And I’m like, wait, what?! What just happened?!

When the politically incorrect humor of Don Rickles came up, Failla said Rickles would have survived if he did his act today.  “Jokes are like a buffet- if you see an item you like, you throw it on your tray. If you don’t like the item, you don’t hold up the buffet line and yell at the chef for serving mac and cheese. But we’re doing that today because social media kind of incentivized outrage. You see, back then, the people who got outraged at comedians, it was consider embarrassing. You wouldn’t take that person serious, because we knew it was a joke. So, I do think Rickles was so good he would get by today, but he would be the guy who led us out of this cultural malaise, where we’re giving the wrong people power.”

Jimmy Failla will be appearing at the Red Bank Theater in Red Bank New Jersey on Saturday, June 22nd at 7:30. If you want to get tickets for yourself or for your dad for Father’s Day, they are available at foxacrossamerica.com or thebasie.org. You can also catch his latest routines on Fox Across America, heard on the iHeart radio app.

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