There’s a thrill you get when you hear someone say things we all think but hesitate to share because, you know, we might lose our job or find a hostile crowd at our door.
But in a recent show, in San Francisco of all places, comedian JP Sears did just that.
Sears’ casual jokes about forbidden topics evoked a real sense of freedom.
“Who here feels that there was some fraud in the 2020 election?” he asked during the Aug. 18 appearance. The crowd answered with a thunderous applause that has my ears still ringing. “I don’t know a thing about all the facts or the data, but the rule that we aren’t allowed to discuss it has me convinced that the last election was fraudulent.”
It’s a fair question: if there was no fraud in the vote-counting, then what’s with the censorship whenever the subject comes up?
“Picture a marriage where the husband forbids any discussion of infidelity – you can’t talk about the subject at all!” Sears said. “Wouldn’t the wife suspect she had been cheated on? And can you blame her?”
Then Sears dove into another hot-button issue: “who here wants to get rid of Governor Newsom?” Another thunderous applause.
Until that audience reaction, I suspected the governor would easily survive next month’s recall election.
After comparing Newsom’s hair to that of a James Bond villain, Sears dug into the woke Olympics’ dismal ratings. American athletes routinely took a knee during the playing of the national anthem, among other acts of protest.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates also got skewered. “Can you believe that guy had a plan to limit the sun’s rays from reaching the earth? Hey Bill, control much?”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has held several positions on wearing masks among his inconsistencies, also came up for criticism.
“You gotta give the guy credit: his e-mails showed that his office funded the point of use development of COVID-19, making the virus more dangerous, then he got paid to help us control the virus,” Sears said.
It all evoked comedians of the past, like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, who joked about controversial topics and caused discomfort in viewers who accepted the universally-approved explanations of the day.
Lenny Bruce’s life story serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when we censor artistic expression.
Today FIRE asks: Is @BrandeisU continuing a legacy of censorship against Lenny Bruce?https://t.co/ZEsSySjydF pic.twitter.com/1tqAzH7IPH
— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) November 13, 2017
Not that there were people in the crowd who felt any discomfort by what Sears said. They were clearly of the same mind on all the issues he explored.
Which brings up a related topic: where did all these conservatives in Sab Francisco come from? Could they have been shipped in from west Texas or something?
Doubtful, but it makes you wonder.
Maybe there are patriotic, pro-second amendment, common-sense conservatives everywhere. You’d never get that impression by watching the news, movies or sports events, though.
And that’s part of the fun of attending a JP Sears show: looking around and realizing that there are many conservatives in the audience who have the same values and priorities that you do … even in San Francisco!
About the only imperfection I found in Sears’ show is that he didn’t do what he does so well in his YouTube videos: becoming a spokesman for the other side, making their case with all sorts of faulty logic.
For example, Sears has “defended” California’s crises (“homelessness here is growing exponentially, and it’s basically people enjoying the wilderness”) and portrayed a professor at Antifa Academy.
“If you don’t crack the window at the small business just right, you run the risk of that business opening up the next day. None of us want that.”
It would be great if he could incorporate that quality into his stand-up shows.
Sears set aside politics toward the end of the show and displayed a likeable, story-telling persona. He brought up his wife’s ability to accurately decide when their newborn son needs to be fed or put to bed.
“A mother’s intuition is amazing,” he marveled.
After San Francisco, Sears will perform in Ohio, San Antonio, Bremerton, Everett, Tempe, and Naples. Visit AwakenWithJP.com for more details.
Tom Thurlow is an attorney in Napa, California.
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