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[Gilbert] I'd like to apologize

if I hurt anyone

with anything I'm going to say

or if it's an opposing viewpoint

to one you might have.

And if I look like I'm thinking

about something that might be offensive,

please, I apologize for hurting you.

[music]

And I'm very sorry

that I bothered you or upset any of you.

[music]

I genuinely...

am deeply sorry to anyone

who's ever been affected by that term.

I'm sorry I did that.

I want to apologize

for a comment that I made on last night's Fashion Police

about Zendaya's hair.

I'm embarrassed that I did that.

I've learned it is not my intent that matters,

it's the result.

And the result is that people

are offended.

I did a bad thing.

I cannot spend every night apologizing.

I'm here to apologize.

I'm sorry.

I hope you'll accept my apology.

-Are you ready? -[all] Yeah.

Then light your torches and go.

[narrator] It doesn't take much to rile up

the outrage mob these days.

If you're a comedian, there might be calls

for your show to be cancelled

if someone takes offense at your joke.

You might have to kiss your big,

new gig good-bye.

You could get fired or get death threats.

You might even get attacked on stage.

Most people just give into the mob's demands,

but some comics are brave

or stupid enough to fight back.

I think people like to be offended because there's like

a really weird sense of empowerment

with being offended.

I think it's an attention-seeking device.

If you think you have the right

not to be offended,

either change your parameters

of what offends you

or just realize you're wrong.

Those are your two choices.

[narrator] Jim Norton devotes a lot of his act

to raging against outrage.

Why is comedy the only form of the arts

where people think that they have to agree with

or approve the content?

Why is that?

You don't walk through a museum with a towel

and throw it over paintings

that you don't like.

[audience laughing]

I don't want anybody else seeing this

because I didn't quite enjoy it.

[laughing continues]

Someone will find something about every jokes

down to the most benign subject

till we're all like five year olds

and can't say anything.

If comedians avoided every topic

that might offend someone, there's nothing to talk about.

Pressuring the person to make a fake apology

over whatever it is that he's said

that got your panties in a bunch.

I don't know why we look at this as progress.

If you're easily offended, please don't come

to a comedy show.

When people are outraged by something,

they're also patting themselves

on the back,

like, "Hey,

I'm a good person, I was outraged."

People just love

to be offended and they love to talk about it.

[narrator] More and more comedians are getting fed up

with outrage.

They say it's time for the mob

to learn how to take a joke.

[Penn] We don't have a legal right

to not be offended,

but you have a social right to avoid things

that offend you.

So, your feelings got hurt,

it's not the end of the world.

I've always refused to apologize for a joke.

There's a lot of people out there whose job is to be

offended for other people.

It's almost like people have gotten soft.

The Marx brothers

were rebellious.

Nowadays, you'd watch them and you go,

"Oh, he's advocating smoking

and the other guy is anti-Italian

and that guy is making fun of people

-who can't speak." -I get offended.

And we're getting to the point where

outrage is a powerful political tool.

There's plenty of things that have offended me,

but that's where it begins and ends.

I'm offended, who gives a fuck?

But people, like, wanna take it

a step further and go,

"I want you to know I'm offended

and I'd like something done."

[woman] Comedy's lovable queen of mean,

Lisa Lampanelli.

[cheers and applause]

[Lisa] Context in comedy is the be all and end all.

If I'm making fun of every single nationality,

race, height, weight, et cetera during my show,

the context is that

we're all the same,

we're all gonna get made fun of.

Thank you homos for skipping a night

of watching Bravo TV.

[audience laughing]

Oh, my God, that one who jumped up,

this big queen right here.

Oh!

He is so gay, he jerks off to Antique Roadshow.

By the end of the show the white guy

who got made fun of for being gay

or being, you know, blind,

or--I had a deaf guy a couple of weeks ago

who was amazing.

He suddenly goes,

"Oh, that's what black people feel like.

That's what the Asian people feel like."

So, I think that's what brings people together going,

"We all the same in this bitch."

My only line has ever been, if I can't make it funny

I'm not gonna do it.

Rape can't be taken off the table, AIDS, everything.

Every time I do an AIDS and a rape joke,

it kills and you know what,

it's because we're scared of it.

And if you're running away from it

and you're not confronting it,

you're a pussy and you're not standing up

to it.

So, I think that's why

you have to make fun of those subjects.

I think it's very hot that we have such sexy blacks

and spics at this show. [imitates cat's meow]

If I can't get raped by the end of this night,

I want my money back.

No, I mean, come on, man,

if this guy jumps me after the show,

that ain't a felony, that is lawful entry.

[audience laughing]

[narrator] Lisa Lampanelli markets herself

as an insult comic, but even she can't escape

the outrage mob.

[Lisa] If we as comics steered clear of every topic

that might offend someone, we would never open our mouth,

I mean, literally, because I have made a joke

about the band Journey once

and a guy almost stormed the stage.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

[crowd cheering]

Look up the funny and sue, you ugly fuck.

[cheers and applause]

[Lisa] I'm like, "Really?

You didn't mind spic, chink, kike,

Jew bastard, cocksucker, but Journey?"

That's Steve Perry, motherfucker.

[narrator] So, what's a comedian supposed to do these days,

play it safe?

[Gilbert] George Carlin once said

it's the duty of a comedian

to find out where the line is drawn

and deliberately cross over it.

I, of course, always like that line

because he says duty.

There so many times that, you know,

we get the wool pulled over our eyes

in society by, you know, certain powers

that be who wanna get away with stuff.

And I see the role of comedians

as the torch bearer.

You know, we shine the light

on what's really going on.

It's an amazing lineage of people

who've taken on that responsibility.

[narrator] Richard Pryor took on that responsibility.

And before him, George Carlin.

But today's stand-up comedians

trace their lineage back to Lenny Bruce.

[Steve Allen] Now, ladies and gentlemen

here is a very shocking comedian,

the most shocking comedian of our time,

a young man who is skyrocketing to fame,

Lenny Bruce.

Here he is.

[cheers and applause]

There are words that offend me.

Let's see.

Governor Faubus, segregation offend me,

nighttime television offends me,

some nighttime television.

He's honest, he's--he's smart,

he's funny,

and he's a hero.

[narrator] Penn Jillette is the taller,

louder half of the comedy and magic duo Penn & Teller.

He says Lenny Bruce was an early

showbiz inspiration.

[Penn] It was like nothing I'd ever seen

on TV or in situation comedies.

[narrator] The Beverly Hillbillies was America's

favorite sitcom when Lenny was trying

to make a name for himself.

It was the early '60s,

and ba-da-boomp jokes were all the rage.

Anyway, I'm back in television again,

I was on television about four weeks ago.

I received two offers for plastic surgery.

[audience laughing]

[narrator] Lenny turned comedy

in a different direction.

The personal quality of Lenny

talking about

his real life

was just mind-blowing.

That changed comedy forever.

[laughing]

You listen to Lenny Bruce and nothing is surprising

and that's because everyone ripped him off.

The whole world changed to come around to him.

[Ron] When I think of Lenny Bruce, one of the words

that comes to mind is risk.

He never saw a taboo he wasn't willing to bust.

He never saw a line he wasn't willing to cross.

[audience laughing]

[Ron] And where did he bust out? Did he bust out on television?

No. Did he bust out on radio?

No, not really.

He busted out in comedy clubs.

[audience laughing]

[Ron] Nobody ever complained to the authorities

about Lenny Bruce's act.

I mean, if you're worried about that,

you don't go to a venue after midnight,

you know, with a bunch of, you know,

bearded, beaded,

drunk, inebriated stoned people.

So, nobody ever complained, but the cops were there.

[narrator] It got to the point where Lenny expected cops

to attend his shows.

And Lenny Bruce would do things like,

you know, he'd go through a whole show

and no dirty words, and then come on,

let's, you know, do an encore

and the police are right there and said,

"You know, I'm sorry I disappointed you,

men in blue, by not saying cocksucker."

-Boom. -[narrator] And that's what

Lenny got arrested for in San Francisco.

He would later talk about the bust

during his act, tap dancing around

the forbidden word.

[Ron] Jokes about controversial issues.

Jokes about race, jokes about religion.

The Jews killed Christ.

I can't tell you how long I've had to listen

to this stuff.

Okay, let's set the record straight. It's true.

We killed him and if he comes back,

we'll kill him again.

Well, funny to the people, you know,

in the audience,

not so funny to the Irish cops there.

[narrator] Police arrested Lenny in Chicago,

in Los Angeles, in San Francisco.

Lenny had to worry about cops at his shows,

but nobody else complained.

Today, it's the reverse.

Cops no longer arrest comedians

at clubs, but the people are complaining.

It's almost as if we've been taught

to love censorship.

[music]

[narrator] Oh, college.

It's where you can finally live on your own.

Be free.

-Be yourself. -♪ And we're banned

♪ From Argo, everyone

♪ Banned from Argo just for having a little fun ♪

-♪ We spend... -[narrator] Just be careful

if you're trying to be funny.

We were accused of sexual harassment

for an April Fool's article.

[narrator] She's the editor of a student newspaper

at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

And her offense was running an article

about a vagina-shaped building.

[woman] Because it was a joke.

I was poking fun at the culture that we live in.

[narrator] And what about the good things Hitler did?

Rutgers University thought this

April fool's article was anti-Semitic.

So, what if the author is Jewish.

This Syracuse University law student

almost got kicked out of school

because some people said his satirical blog

was offensive.

Members of the Tufts University

rowing team were suspended for wearing this shirt

as in coxswain, as in this guy.

These days most colleges enforce strict speech codes

that punish students for everything

from telling jokes to committing the crime

of inappropriately directed laughter.

[Norton] Yeah, they're very uptight.

You know, we interviewed Carlin in 2007

and he said that, "I've been bashing colleges

for years for that."

And Carlin goes, "Man, I hate to say it,

but all the censorship is coming from the left

and it's coming from the college campuses."

We all got to understand that we could expect

censorship from the right wing,

but to expect it from the left wing,

from the politically correct people

in the campuses, that caught me by surprise.

[Noam] Good evening everybody,

welcome to the Comedy Cellar Show

here on Channel 99, SiriusXM world of comedy hits.

We have a very special guest here.

So, this man has devoted his life,

I'd say to free speech and he's quite an intersection

with comedian.

[narrator] Greg Lukianoff is the president of FIRE,

the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education,

a national nonprofit that fights

for free speech on college campuses.

I interned at the ACLU of Northern California.

I studied the history of censorship,

you know, going back to, like, the 16th century,

and nothing prepared me for how easy it is

to get in trouble on the modern college campus.

I think there is a direct line

between the stuff that's going on in campuses

and the idiots who I get angry emails from.

[narrator] New York City's legendary Comedy Cellar

has long been at the center of the stand-up world.

Before performances, owner Noam Dworman

hosts his SiriusXM Comedy Cellar Show.

Everybody feels they have a right

to be insulated from whatever it is

they decide offends them,

and we're getting emails all the time

from customers and it-- and it boggles my mind.

[man] But those customers have the right.

If you--yeah, those customers have the right to send you emails

-and they have the right to be offended. -They should also fucking

stay home if they don't wanna hear

this kind of humor.

[Chris] I've gone on the Klu Klux Klan site

to see some of their greatest jokes

and I'd say about 10% of them are winners.

Absolutely have me rolling.

90%, a little harsh.

My name is Christopher Lee.

I'm from Washington State University.

I wrote a play called Passion of the Musical,

which was about satire

about the last two days of Jesus.

[narrator] Lee cast himself in the role

of a cross-dressing Satan.

[Chris] This play was specifically designed

to offend everyone.

I went for the gold from whatever religion

you were to whatever you believed in,

to this country I love so dearly.

I wanna write something that makes people go,

"Yeah, that was hilarious,"

or they're so mad that they go,

"I'll tell you why my religion is important,

why women's rights is important."

[Greg] Nobody could've done a better job of saying,

"Hey, guys, if you don't wanna see

an offensive comedy,

don't come to this comedy musical

because I wrote it with the intention

of actually offending people."

Everyone had to sign a contract

coming into the show, knowing it would be offensive.

On the door, there was all the words

that I said including a giant banner that said,

"A song contains the word cunt 24 times."

[man] I'm offended.

[audience laughing]

[Chris] I had people who enjoyed certain parts.

They liked the Latino sweeping

the floor across the stage and taking a siesta.

But when I have giant letters that spell out AIDS

or cunt come across stage, you know,

and then people going, "Well, that's not funny."

And I was like, "I see so.

As long as it doesn't touch home base on you,

it's funny, but then as soon as it does,

that's the most offensive outrageous things

I've ever heard and you have no right

-to ever say it." -He was a sociology student

so he was kind of saying, "I'm gonna do this experiment.

It's gonna show, like, we're all way too uptight.

Everyone's gonna be getting along, it's gonna be fun,

and it didn't quite work out that way."

[all chattering]

[Chris] The university has contacted me and said,

"We have 40 people who'd like to see the show."

As soon as the show started off, they started--

they handed out little fliers saying,

"If they say something you don't like,

stand up and say 'I'm offended'."

And so, once the first song starts happening,

people started saying, "I'm offended.

I'm offended. I'm offended."

And then the "I'm offended"

changed into "You're gonna die.

We're gonna get you."

[Chris] The crowd had weapons.

I actually lost two cast members.

They ran outside.

We had to call the police halfway through the show,

and when we called the police

they're offended by the topics.

So, the cops stopped my show

and let me know that if I proceeded

and the crowd got up and attacked,

they would not help because they said

I would be kind of riling them up.

If I get attacked, the police would sit there,

and I was like, I guess watch me get assaulted

or whatever.

[Karith] College is supposed to be this place

where you go to grow, to explore,

to learn, to express yourself.

[narrator] Karith Foster performs at many top clubs,

like The Laugh Factory in Hollywood

and the Gotham Comedy Club in New York.

I used to be able

to describe myself in one word,

I could tell you, people, I was a Huxtable, right?

And people got it.

Like, a year ago, people were like, "Oh, yeah. Sure.

She comes from--in a fluent African-American family.

Her parents are professionals."

Now, I say that and people think my dad

was feeding my Girl Scout troop.

[audience laughing]

[narrator] She's also on a mission to get colleges

to loosen up.

[cheers and applause]

[Karith] I started a humorous diversity program

that I take to colleges with a fellow comedian,

a friend of mine, Adam Lehman,

he's a gay comic.

It's called Stereotype 101.

The idea is to use humor

to broach the sensitive topics.

There were 1,200 people in my graduating class

from high school, 12 of us were black.

That's 1%.

I had to import my prom date because I wanted a brown one.

[narrator] Now, of course, it takes many years

to learn how to make audiences laugh,

and that's why Foster says schools

should cut student comedians

lots of slack.

[Karith] Now, college is where you go to find out who you are.

It's also where you find your voice.

And, you know, that's a term we use in comedy as well,

"Finding your voice," when you figure out, you know,

your style.

[narrator] Salvador Rodriguez is a student comedian

at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

From the lush campus

to the mostly white student body,

the environment is quite a change for Rodriguez.

[Salvador] My father came to the United States

illegally from Mexico.

I went to high school in South Los Angeles

at a high school that was 70% black.

Reed isn't very easy to make jokes about it

because the people here, they have a lot of hang-ups

about a lot of words.

[Sean] Sal's style of humor

is fairly confrontational.

He likes to push buttons.

[audience laughing]

[narrator] The campus comedians enjoy performing

risque routines, and they warn people

who are easily offended to stay far away

-from their shows. -[Sean] Please welcome

Sal Rodriguez.

[cheers and applause]

[audience laughing]

[narrator] This show included some things

you probably won't see at your local comedy club.

[Salvador] The performer before me

got naked

and performed his entire act completely nude.

[narrator] The show chugged along through the nudity

and Rodriguez's blue material,

but when he started talking about

the majors women choose,

an audience member began heckling him.

[narrator] The heckling continued

and Rodriguez kind of lost his patience.

[Salvador] You fucking loudmouthed cunt.

Keep your mouth shut.

And it was at that point that she stormed the stage

and she grabbed the mic away.

[narrator] The following week,

the school paper ran a piece

that Rodriguez says got his act all wrong.

Whether they had seen it or not,

lots of students were offended.

Well, he got a lot of lash back.

The outcry at Reed was very much

against the speech that happened.

He's definitely gained a reputation

as an asshole on campus.

And I think that there should be

some sort of check on whether that sort of thing

should be allowed to happen again.

[Salvador] I yelled back at a--at a heckler.

In comedy clubs

it's well established that if you're a heckler

you can be yelled at.

[narrator] But the administration

launched an investigation, accusing him of offenses

like directing a hostile comment

at a female student,

and the Feminist Student Union

held a support group for those traumatized

by his act.

There's a support group.

Well, I hope that whoever ran the support group

for those students told them to get over it,

told them that this guy, whatever he said,

if it upset them, then he was being a jackass

and don't go to any more of his shows.

I actually went to the second oldest women's college

in the country, Stephens.

And one of the things

that I appreciated about that school

is that it was so not about being a victim,

it was so about being powerful.

As a mother of two daughters,

I don't want anyone's words

to affect who they become as adults.

I want them to be confident and strong

in who they are,

and not be deterred

by other people's stereotypes,

other people's ignorance.

[narrator] Back at Washington State University,

Chris Lee discovered a little something new

about the audience members who shouted down his musical.

[Chris] I didn't know it at the time,

but later we figured out

that the university paid these people

to come into my show and shout it down.

They came in there to shut down my show.

[narrator] It's actually pretty common

to see students shouting down speakers.

[woman] Shut your mouth!

[cheers and applause]

[Noam] Shouting someone down--

Shouting someone down. Yeah--

-...is not freedom of speech. -No, it's mob censorship.

And it's kind of like students going,

"Hey, there's two sides to each story?

I don't want to hear the other side."

[Lisa] When I hear a story

about this Chris Lee,

it's just clear bullying and threats to a comic.

[narrator] Today, many students hold their tongues

because they don't want to anger the outrage mob.

[Greg] In a 2010 study,

they asked 25,000 students, "Is it safe to merely hold

unpopular points of view on campus?"

This is the kind of question you ask

when you want a hundred percent

of people saying, "Well, yeah, sure,

it's safe to hold them."

Only 40% of students

strongly agreed with the statement

that it's safe to merely hold

unpopular points of view on campus.

But guess what?

Every single year, that number went down.

By senior year, only 30% strongly agreed

with the statement that it's safe to hold

unpopular points of view on campus.

[Chris] They were calling me Black Hitler

because the Jews weren't safe,

the blacks weren't safe, no one--no women weren't safe.

They said I was so outrageous that they were willing

to compare me to someone who did such atrocities.

[Chris] I'd let them know when I arrived on campus.

They'd come.

They'd make sure I got to class,

but they were like, "People are just expressing themselves.

They were kind of outraged with you.

They're not going to do anything."

I was like, "Well, why do I have security?"

It's like they literally endangered the kids' life, you know?

And it's just evil, and it's manipulative,

and awful, and I hope they get AIDS.

No, I do.

If you're listening, hi, AIDS.

Go attack those people.

[narrator] Lenny had become so consumed

with his legal troubles

that he began to read court transcripts

from his cases during performances.

And it--here it is. Oh, yeah.

[narrator] He figured the court system

wouldn't grant him a fair hearing,

so he pled his case to audiences instead.

[Ron] He'd been busted

in San Francisco.

He's busted in Los Angeles.

He's busted in Chicago.

So, by the time he gets to New York,

you know, his reputation has spread

and the police are there

that night at the Cafe au Go-Go.

[narrator] New York prosecutor, Richard Kuh,

had been expecting Lenny.

[Ron] He was absolutely determined

to send Lenny Bruce to jail.

[narrator] Bob Dylan, Woody Allen,

James Baldwin, and other famous artists

testified on his behalf,

during a trial that would last

for six months.

It's amazing.

I mean, for a few dirty words,

I mean, you know, all sorts of expert witnesses,

three judges, three.

[narrator] The long trial

had taken a mental toll on Lenny.

He became increasingly obsessed

with vindicating himself and his comedy.

He grew desperate, fired his lawyers,

and delivered

the closing arguments himself.

[Ron] The trial was both comic and tragic.

[narrator] On November 4th, 1964,

Lenny Bruce was found guilty of obscenity.

He was sentenced to four months behind bars.

But before being taken into custody,

he fled to Los Angeles

in an attempt to preserve his freedom.

[Ron] He was convicted

for using four letter words in a comedy club

in Greenwich Village after midnight.

A, B, and C, and we're gonna enforce a rule because...

[Ron] Lenny Bruce

is at the end of his rope.

They're about to foreclose on his home.

He doesn't have any money.

He can't get a job anywhere

because of all these obscenity prosecutions.

[Ron] He's got a pretty serious drug problem

and a pretty serious depression problem.

You mix them all together,

you know what happens.

[narrator] Lenny Bruce died of a drug overdose

on August 3rd, 1966.

He was 40 years old.

♪ All alone

♪ All alone

♪ I'll be rich

♪ But so

♪ All alone

[Ron] But within a year after his death,

this great Phoenix rises.

There was a movie about Lenny Bruce

with Dustin Hoffman.

[man] He was a comic.

A cynic. A satirist.

A criminal. A genius.

[Dustin] Have you ever seen so much blue

in all your life?

[man] Newsweek described his cause of death

as an overdose of police.

[Ron] And he becomes this great American icon.

♪ Lenny Bruce was trying to tell you ♪

♪ Many things before he died ♪

♪ All that was covered by Lenny Bruce ♪

♪ Back in the day

♪ Lenny Bruce declares a truce ♪

♪ Lenny Bruce is gone

♪ But his spirit's living on ♪

♪ And on

Your heroes can only be as good

as your villains, right?

So, Lenny Bruce

had the United States government to go up against.

To keep going with a bit

knowing where you're about to go.

He didn't care.

He did--he still did his bit,

like, that's outrageously awesome to me.

I'm ashamed of my country

for doing that.

I am--

I am disgusted

that that happened.

My sympathy and my empathy and my heart is with Lenny

that he had to go through that,

but motherfucker is that cool.

Doing your show

with cops on the side of the stage?

Fucking beat that anybody ever!

[man] It is now my pleasure

to introduce to you Mr. Lenny Bruce.

[applause]

[Ron] The last routine Lenny did,

it was at UCLA.

I will tell you this, there was any number

of Lenny Bruce's routines

though totally protected by the First Amendment

that if he did them on a number campuses today,

they would shut it down.

I don't think any college

would allow Lenny Bruce to come

-and perform there. -They would hate him.

Lenny Bruce would not last a minute

on the modern college campus.

[Norton] Because they had become what they hated.

You know, they had become the speech repressors.

They had become the free thought policers.

[Greg] And he also ended up being a great figure

in the fight against obscenity laws,

against the idea that we--

that the government should be policing speech.

So, he really ended up being a very influential figure,

not just for every comedian that's come after him,

but for a generation

of First Amendment lawyers too.

[narrator] Lukianoff says Lenny wasn't just fighting

for the First Amendment,

he was fighting for something more.

He was fighting for free speech.

Free speech and the First Amendment

are not the same thing.

And actually, the bigger, more beautiful, bolder,

braver concept is free speech.

And it requires a certain amount

of tolerance and a recognition

that you almost certainly don't know everything

and that you can still learn from hearing people out.

The problem is that as a society,

we haven't really learned deeply

that the solution to bad speech

is more speech.

You know, you have to go to Jonathan Rauch.

[Jonathan] The First Amendment,

although it's necessary, it's not sufficient.

It has to rest on a social foundation

of First Amendment values.

That is people who understand, who get the idea,

the critical exchange of speech,

often hurtful speech,

wrongheaded speech, even hateful speech.

Airing those ideas strengthen society

in the long run.

If people don't have that idea

in their hearts, then having it in the law

is not enough.

I'm the author of a book called

Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought.

And I'm a senior fellow at a think tank called

the Brookings Institution.

[man] Because the Americans

-love democracy and... -[man] Oh, I see.

That's one reason.

-Also... -[Jonathan] In any society

that is free enough to produce open debate,

it's also going to be free enough

so that some of us at any given time

are going to feel really upset.

[bleep] this [bleep] and their [bleep] yachts.

They aren't in here and they are not in our country!

[Jonathan] And no, that's not a great thing.

-It's a necessary thing. -Get the [bleep] out of here.

Get the [bleep] out of here. This is ours.

[Jonathan] Being hurt by words

is part of how we build knowledge

and it's our duty to, I think, accept that

in a free society.

You parasite socialists!

[narrator] Free speech isn't always pretty,

but it makes life better.

Ideas clash and the worst ones

get tossed aside.

Many advancements are the result

of heated debates, debates that offended

-lots of people. -[Jonathan] I grew up

as a gay American in the '60s and '70s

at a time where just saying

you were gay or being for gay rights

could cost you your job.

We were actually considered mentally disordered

and thrown into asylums.

[man] One never knows

when the homosexual is about.

He may appear normal and it may be too late

when you discover he is mentally ill.

[Jonathan] We dealt with terrorism

and violence on the streets.

If you called the police,

they wouldn't help you because, you know,

you were a queer, you were a faggot.

We didn't have votes. We didn't have support.

We were hiding in the closet.

The one thing we had,

the only thing we had

was our voices.

[narrator] Activists spoke up.

They persuaded more and more people

that laws should protect everyone equally.

The gay rights movement has come a long way

since the '60s,

but gays still face hostility.

Do I like that the Westboro Baptist Church

is allowed to say, "God hates fags,"

and "God hates the military," and blah, blah, blah?

The Episcopal church is a fag church.

[narrator] Members of the tiny

Westboro Baptist Church get lots of publicity

for their outlandish protests.

This kind of hate speech is legal and Rauch says

-that's actually good for gays. -[man] And there it says,

-"Fags are the--are beasts." -[man] Okay.

[Jonathan] There is only one way

to counter bad ideas and it is with good ideas

and you cannot do that

unless you're able to confront

the bad ideas.

And it kind of makes me mad.

We have free speech and I go,

"But wait a minute, we have to have it."

[Jonathan] The society that tries

to bury under the rug bad ideas is condemning itself

to live in a future with these bad ideas.

[crowd] We're here,

we're queer,

-we take it in the rear! -[Lisa] Hey!

[narrator] When the church threatened

to protest one of Lisa's shows,

she said, "Bring it on."

Promising to donate a thousand bucks

to a pro-gay charity

for each protester who showed up.

[Lisa] These assholes

have contributed

to the Gay Men's Health Crisis.

[narrator] Turns out 50 protesters showed,

so Lisa cut a check for 50 grand.

[crowd cheering]

[Lisa] They have their own special sign

for me by the way, "God hates Lisa."

And has a picture of a gorilla in a dress

with a wig which is fantastic.

I always-- I think you made it

when the WBC makes you a hate-filled sign.

Hi, fag haters!

Everybody wave bye the fag haters!

[cheering]

[Jonathan] I am actually grateful

that the Westboro Baptist Church exists

to be complete idiots

because every day they do that,

they use their voices

to demonstrate how pitiable they are

and why gay people

are making the better argument.

[Penn] The most important thing to a society,

what makes a society, is the--

is the exchange of ideas.

Free speech is important, I think, because,

like, that's the thing that makes us who we are.

I think free speech is important for society

because that's the only way change happens.

Free speech is extremely important

because me being a Jew,

I don't want to have to pay for speech.

I want free speech.

I want the kind of speech

where not only do you get free speech,

but they throw in a limerick

and a witty remark with it.

I want a whole bargain package.

[laughs]

[Heather] You know, the whole point is

if you're easily offended, please don't come

to a comedy show.

Like, this is not the thing for you.

When the other moms invite you, please pass.

[applause]

I also have a beautiful stepdaughter

and she's beautiful,

she's actually half Vietnamese,

so yes, I do enjoy the free foot massages

every other weekend.

-Thank you. -[audience laughing]

Now I get them all the time

because she lives with us full-time and.

Um...

and, you know, even though she lives with us,

her mom will still call

and leave me a million messages

about how to feed her and I'll have--in, like,

two days, I'll get six messages

that goes something like this,

"Hi, I'm McKinsey mom,

I'm just calling to make sure

that you give McKinsey broccoli.

She like a healthy food. She like a healthy broccoli.

Don't you just give a hotdog and popcorn

like you give to your boy.

And you can afford it. You can afford it.

You tell Peter he can afford it."

[audience laughing]

[narrator] Heather McDonald did that bit

at a different performance and learned

she had offended an audience member.

[Heather] And this woman came up to me after

and she goes, "I think you're so funny.

I just really find the accent really offensive."

And she was white.

I said, "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way.

It's based on a real person. That's exactly how she sounds.

I'm imitating a person to tell a true story better."

[narrator] Sometimes, nervous show producers

sanitize performances before audiences see them.

McDonald remembers one time

when she was performing with an improv group.

[Heather] I wanted to do this girl

that I had seen on a talk show

who was clearly white,

but spoke like she was a Latina gang member

and I just thought it was a funny character,

like a Jerry Springer type character.

[narrator] But that character made

the producer uncomfortable.

[Heather] And she said, "Well,

if you're going to do an accent or ethnicity,

make it be somebody that's not finan--

economically beneath a white person."

So, make fun of the French.

I'm like, "I don't find the French funny."

[narrator] And as Noam Dworman's co-host,

Dan Naturman knows

changing your act is no guarantee

that you'll avoid offending someone.

Dan was on America's Got Talent

and he told a joke

that had the word German in it.

It was not a joke at anybody German's expense.

He had to pick a country.

Actually, at the club, he doesn't even use German,

he uses Mexican, but they told him

don't say Mexican on TV, so they made him use German

because it was considered more innocuous.

[Dan] In America, we don't speak

different languages in America.

We speak English. Other countries, they speak different languages.

I got a friend in Oregon, he's from--

he's a countryman of Heidi's actually.

He lives in Berlin. He's speak-- do you know him?

He speaks four languages.

He said to me, "Dan, how come you Americans

don't learn other languages?"

I'm like, "I don't know.

Probably the same reason

people that can see don't learn Braille.

-That's probably why." -[audience laughing]

[Noam] Heidi Klum is a judge

-and she gets offended at his joke. -[Greg] Nice.

And I got news for you,

Braille would be more practical, right?

Because you might go blind one day,

that could happen.

But you ain't gonna go German, chances are.

[audience laughing]

Thank you, America, vote Naturman!

How'd he do? Did you laugh?

Well, not really.

It is impressive, though, that you managed to offend

almost every type of person on the planet

including the Germans.

[Noam] And she attacks him

and may very well have led to ending his run

at the championship of America's Got Talent.

[Dan] Oh, but I think it was going to go down anyway,

-but maybe. -So this exact phenomenon

that we're talking about, he had a bitter

firsthand experience with it.

[Gilbert] Nowadays, there's people

who might want to play it safe.

Me being an idiot, I don't.

[narrator] Comedy can help us get through tough times,

but doing comedy after a tragedy

is one of the biggest taboos.

Then again, Gilbert Gottfried

loves sinking his cold fangs into taboos.

It's kind of his thing.

I used to do a voice

for a certain insurance company

-[duck] Aflac! -[Gilbert] The tsunami

was hitting then.

So, I had handled that the way

I handle every big news item.

I was doing jokes about it on the Internet.

Mostly, if you're going to get offended,

you could get offended by how dumb

most of them were.

Like, I asked my Japanese real estate agent,

"Is there a school in the neighborhood?"

And she said, "No, but there will be one in five minutes."

-[man] A horrible thing to say in the midst of this tragedy. -[woman] Disgusting.

I couldn't believe he said that.

A well-known comedian is no longer

the voice of Aflac's duck today

because of a not-so-funny joke about Japan's tragedy.

They basically dropped me like

shit out of a duck's ass.

[woman] Aflac says, "There's no place

for anything but compassion and concern."

[narrator] But how surprised could Aflac have been?

After all, the famously raunchy Comedy Central roasts

often showcase Gilbert Gottfried

and his jackhammer tongue.

Donald always says money can't buy happiness,

but it can buy the best

Eastern European whores New York City has to offer.

[crowd cheering]

[narrator] And the tsunami

wasn't the first time Gottfried made jokes

in the wake of a tragedy.

He did something similar

right after the September 11th attacks.

[Gilbert] I was at the Hugh Hefner's fryer's roast.

And I said, "Well I have to leave early tonight.

I couldn't get a direct flight,

we have to make a stop at the Empire State Building."

And the crowd was booing and hissing.

One guy yelled, "Too soon."

Which I thought meant I didn't take

a long enough pause between the set up and the punch line.

[narrator] But his 9/11 joke didn't leave

the world throbbing with outrage

like his tsunami jokes did.

Maybe it's because in 2001,

there was no Facebook, no Twitter,

no YouTube, no iPhone.

But today's supercharged Internet

blasts outrage all over the world

as fast as you can type 140 characters.

[Gilbert] The Internet makes me feel sentimental

about old-time lynch mobs.

Back then, you actually had to put your jacket on,

go outside, get your hands dirty,

and deal with other people.

You know, not everything is funny.

-Right. -And there's not a time to joke about everything,

but apparently, Gilbert Gottfried

-is learning that the hard way. -Didn't get the memo.

[Gilbert] And then when I go outside my house,

news cameras would appear out of nowhere,

like they were cornering someone

who was sending poisoned baby food.

[narrator] How did Gottfried eventually escape

the outrage mob?

A far more important story took his place.

[Gilbert] Chris Brown was backstage

and he got mad and threw a chair.

[man] There he is shirtless storming out of the studio.

[woman] Brown reportedly used a chair

to smash a window in his dressing room.

And that became the big news item.

See, I think nowadays,

there's the villain of the week.

And, like, at any given time,

there's the one guy we all hate

and then quickly,

it turns around to something else.

[Jon] People are getting destroyed, like, every day.

Sometimes, a number of times a day all over the world.

[narrator] In his book,

So You've Been Publicly Shamed,

author Jon Ronson tells the tale of Justine Sacco,

a young woman living in New York.

And with only 170 Twitter followers,

she's pretty much unknown.

[Jon] So, she's on vacation Christmas 2013,

heading from New York

to Heathrow to Cape Town.

And when she gets to Heathrow, she tweets

what she sees as a kind of funny acerbic joke

to her 170 Twitter followers that said...

She tweeted that joke

from Heathrow Airport,

wandered around the terminal,

sporadically checking Twitter,

got no replies, and found that sad too.

That sad feeling we all feel

when the Internet doesn't tell us,

"Well done. That was funny."

And then she got on the plane,

turned off her phone,

flew for 11 hours,

slept, woke up, turned on her phone,

and there was a text

from somebody she hadn't spoken to since high school

that said, "I am so sorry

to see what's happening to you."

The woman at the center of a digital uproar.

[man] At the center of a digital firestorm.

The woman who sparked a Twitter backlash

over an offensive tweet

that joked about AIDS in South Africa.

BuzzFeed tweeted it

as the worst tweet of all time.

[man] An incredibly offensive tweet

about AIDS and race.

[Jon] And the shaming came in waves.

First, there were the philanthropists

saying, "I am donating to aid to Africa."

But then it got darker, then it was like,

"Everybody go report this cunt."

There were people all over the world,

thousands, hundreds of thousands

of people who decided we must get this woman fired.

Most people didn't realize at this point

that she was on a plane

and oblivious to all of this.

But then her employers got involved.

[man] Quickly issued a statement

calling the comment outrageous and offensive.

And said, "This is an outrageous comment.

Employee currently unreachable

on an international flight."

And that's when the anger turned to excitement,

that we knew something that Justine didn't.

We knew that she was oblivious to her destruction.

[man] Sacco posted the tweet Friday,

just before a nearly 12-hour flight

from London to Cape Town, South Africa.

While she was apparently offline in midair,

millions were online,

anxiously waiting for her to land

and see the uproar her tweet caused.

The...

became an instant trend.

First, you have children dying,

you have children being born with AIDS.

It's really nothing to joke about.

[Jon] I was on Twitter that night

and I thought what everyone else thought,

"Wow! Somebody's fucked!"

And I kind of, you know, sat up in bed

and propped the pillow up behind my,

you know, and then I thought, "Well maybe the--

maybe it wasn't intended to be racist."

[narrator] Too late!

The outrage mob had already made up its mind.

I think she's basically got a race problem

and she deserved to be fired.

[narrator] Sacco was fired in midair.

[narrator] Meanwhile, the social media response

was getting violent.

[Jon] "Somebody HIV positive

should rape this bitch so then we'll find out

if her skin color protects her from AIDS."

The anger, the vitriol directed at her

such that even the company that fired her

had to ask people to go easy on her, what about that part?

[narrator] Eventually the backlash became so deranged

that the media grew horrified what they had helped create.

Even some death threats seen on Tweeter toward her

and she hadn't had a chance

to tell her side of the story yet.

Somebody went and live tweeted

her arrival and "photographed" her.

[narrator] When Sacco landed she was unemployed

and Twitter's number one worldwide trending topic.

The satisfied outrage mob

looked for a new target to destroy,

but Ronson was determined

to find out what became of Justine Sacco.

[Jon] So, I met her in a bar in downtown New York

and, you know, she was just broken

and she just kept crying

and it was like the Night of the Living Dead,

because she was this kind of spectral figure.

I asked her to explain the joke

and she said "Living in America puts us in a bubble

when it comes to what is going on in the Third World,

I was making fun of that bubble."

[narrator] Sacco's family is from South Africa

and she was born there.

Her father took the family to the United States,

because he didn't want his children to be raised

in such a racist culture.

Justine thought that she was

being a social justice person like the rest of us.

She thought she was making fun

of the bubble of privilege.

You know, there's a-- there's a comedic tradition

of mocking privilege by doing an extreme

exaggerated version of it.

Niggers, Jews, homosexuals, Mexicans, Arabs,

and all kinds of different Chinks stink!

[narrator] Dave Chappelle does a sketch

about a blind black man

who happens to be a white supremacist.

Chappelle uses racist language to make fun of racists.

[Dave] Let's talk about Chinese people.

What they're Kung Fu

and all that silly ching ching, chong, chong.

Oh, you come here,

you kiss my tea make her sweet.

I no need no sugar when you around.

[narrator] Stephen Colbert was doing the same thing

and the outraged mob called him a racist

and demanded his show be canceled.

Naturally, there was an official hashtag.

The hashtag, "CANCELCOLBERT" is trending.

-[woman] Cancel Colbert. -[man] Cancel Colbert.

-[woman] Cancel Colbert. -[narrator] Colbert weathered

the storm, but humor can be more dangerous for amateurs.

[Jon] She lost her job, she couldn't get another job.

Newspapers were following her to the gym,

she couldn't sleep, she couldn't date

because you Google everybody you date

and she was just the racist AIDS tweet woman.

[narrator] We're all just one clumsy joke away

from sharing Justine Sacco's fate.

[Jon] We're all a mix of clever and stupid,

you know, we're not these one dimensional things.

We fuck up.

And we don't fuck up.

We're wise and we're idiots.

So, many watching her demise online

while she was offline on a plane.

[Jon] Don't leap in on somebody

and destroy somebody for this drama.

For this fake social justice.

Let's not frighten people into being voiceless.

[narrator] The Adam Carolla show

is one of the world's most popular comedy podcasts,

and its host is known for his no-holds-barred

political and cultural rants.

[narrator] At this live taping,

Carolla was fuming about a recent exchange

with California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom,

who brought up economic challenges

facing black and Latino families.

[Gavin] Half of African Americans in the state of California

and roughly half of Latino families

have no access to a checking account

or an ATM, things we take for granted.

-They don't have a checking account. -What's wrong with them?

-Do Asians have this problem? -I mean, a lot of communities have this problem.

A lot of whites have these problems, but I just...

-Oh, so it's not just black and Hispanic. -No, but it--

-but I'm giving you-- -Then why did you bring up

-black and Hispanic? -Because the magnitude

-is ominous. -[narrator] Agree with him

or not, but Carolla prides himself

on speaking the unspeakable

and he often raises issues

that politicians are too afraid to touch.

Here he asks Newsom why Asians

-perform so well in school. -[Gavin] I'm not a sociologist,

-perhaps you could explain why. -[Adam] Okay.

-Well, I told you why. -Why?

[Adam] They have a family that puts an emphasis on education.

[Gavin] Which is a noble thing.

And a lot of Latinos have families have put

-emphasis on education. -A lot, but not enough.

-African Americans have emphasis on education. -A lot, but not enough.

[Adam] Their families are broken up.

Okay, Gavin. I get it.

When a white straight guy seems to...

White? What's white have to do with it?

What's white have to do with it?

Well, you've been accused of being racist.

[Adam] You have the racist finger out all the time.

But the finger you use for personal responsibility,

that stays up your ass!

And they misquote you

or they quote you out of context.

There's a weird, sort of mob,

witch hunt mentality.

[narrator] Carolla says some reporters

recently confronted him with audio proof

of his supposed racism.

♪ I got a little penis, I don't care ♪

♪ It can work if it has no hair ♪

[woman laughs]

♪ You see it right there

♪ It's in your face...

They think it's me doing a Jackie Chan voice.

They're doing the gotcha moment,

except for they're not smart enough

to do their research and realize that's Jo Koy

who's an Asian American comedian,

he's doing all the talking and making fun

of the Asian American stereotype.

[Jo] You can just be quiet for a second,

-you're interrupting. -[Adam] I can't, sir, I'm telling you.

[Jo] You know why? You're pissing me off.

-You know why? - I told them,

the guy who was doing the voice was Asian

and they were like...

"Well, that helps."

[Karith] You can say whatever you want to say,

but the rule in comedy is that it just has to be funny.

[narrator] But these days there's a pretty big list

of topics that are off limits,

topics that comedians are avoiding.

Topics comedians are avoiding, it seems like

you don't know what to avoid.

Racial ones are a big one for people to avoid,

sexual orientation jokes,

people have always avoided religion jokes,

Islam especially.

Christianity is kind of safe now.

A big taboo in the comic world

would be like, gun topics

because so, you know, so many school shootings

and this and that, but school shootings

have been happening forever,

it's just they've been happening

in bad neighborhoods first and no one cared

and now that it happens in good neighborhoods,

everyone is like, "Oh, you can't joke about that."

[narrator] And it's not just jokes.

The outrage mob

is also scaring people away from serious debate

about taboo topics.

We cannot discuss legislation on rape in this country.

We cannot discuss

sex crimes on college campuses.

You can't discuss that.

[protestors shouting]

[narrator] Here protesters shout down a panel discussion

-that addresses sex crimes. -[woman] Get the fuck out of here.

[narrator] Be careful discussing suicide.

After showbiz legend Robin Williams

committed suicide,

punk rocker Henry Rollins wrote

that parents shouldn't kill themselves

because it traumatizes their children.

Henry Rollins said that Robin

was selfish for doing it and blah, blah, blah,

and people went after him and he had to apologize.

[Norton] We have punk rockers now fucking apologizing.

And it's like you don't owe an apology, Henry.

Even if what you said was wrong.

Even if Robin was suffering and it wasn't selfish.

I don't think you're out of line to say,

"Is this a selfish fucking thing?"

[narrator] If you challenge society's taboos,

you might be looking to start a discussion,

but don't be surprised if you get called names instead.

[Carolla] All they're gonna do

is try to make you look like a bigoted,

sexist, xenophobic whatever...

You're just a privileged, white feminist bitch--

[narrator] That's how Twitter responded

to a British writer,

one of the few people who questioned

whether Justine Sacco's tweet

was really meant to be racist.

And she said to her shame she shut up

and watched Justine's life get ripped apart.

We have to learn

you can't have the exchange of ideas

if there's a chilling effect.

[narrator] A chilling effect.

It's when you see others getting shouted down

for voicing controversial opinions

and you decide to just shut up yourself.

Because, why bother?

It's like, "Hey these are opinions

that people disagree with."

Like, "Hey, United States there, buddy.

We're just one big pile

historically of opinions

that people disagreed with and that's fine."

[Jon] If this climate of fear continues,

what it will create

is a cold conservative conformist world.

Where what we're doing is tearing apart

the people who step out of line.

[narrator] MSNBC's Martin Bashir made pointed comments

about former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Harvard President Lawrence Summers speculated

about why there aren't more female science professors.

NPR's Juan Williams admitted to feeling nervous

when he saw people dressed in Muslim garb on airplanes.

They all stepped out of line and it cost them their jobs.

All we're doing is training each other to lie.

Training each other to toe the company line

and then sitting around

like a bunch of fucking dummies

going, "How come no one is honest anymore?"

I don't know, stupid, because the last time

someone told the truth, you jumped on them

and tried to get them fired.

That's not more debate, more speech, more thought.

That's a form of private censorship.

And it may be legal, but it's still usually

-a dangerous bad idea. -Here.

[narrator] The thing is taboos are always changing.

Talking race can be dicey today,

years ago it was sex that put everyone on edge.

In 1851, Gynecologist James Platt

got kicked out of the American Medical Association

after allowing students to watch

a consenting woman give birth.

In the 1970s, researcher Vern Bullough

landed on the FBI's list of dangerous Americans

because he supported things like legalizing oral sex.

Today, childbirth has become a lot safer

because we've opened up about it

and adults are no longer arrested

for oral sex.

In other words, the censors got it wrong.

If you're on the side of censorship,

you're on the side of an arrogant idea

that essentially you know where wisdom will come from

and you don't know where wisdom will come from.

Gavin Newsom can come back on my show

tomorrow if he likes.

The only way that we find truth

in any society is through public debate.

He will never show up again

because he does not wanna fucking lock antlers

with someone in a long-form discussion

on his policies.

Once you get into the business

of saying you're going to prohibit

things that people find offensive

or wrongheaded,

that's where the most sensitive person in society

gets to determine what all the rest of us can hear.

Cars, technology,

cellphones, like everything's this.

And then free speech,

we're pulling it back to the '40s.

[Ron] After Lenny Bruce died

something remarkable happened.

Was it a landmark Supreme Court opinion?

No.

Was it a major act passed by the Congress?

No.

The American culture

basically came to the conclusion

that never again will this or should this happen.

After Lenny Bruce died,

no comedian,

not a single comedian in any of the states

was ever again prosecuted

for obscenity

in a comedy club.

That's a remarkable feat.

And I think that's why

so many comedians today

revere Lenny Bruce.

Guys like Pryor and Carlin acknowledged,

Lenny is the guy that kicked the fucking door open

for everybody.

So, we all owe him a tremendous debt.

He was arrested for what he said.

I can't imagine that.

I can't imagine that.

But we fixed a lot of that.

Oh, my God, yeah. We don't get arrested anymore.

Our punishment is now corporate

and you lose your gig on Comedy Central

or you have to apologize

because you lose a movie opportunity.

When Lenny did it, it was a real penalty.

It was fucking-- it was going to jail.

Lenny Bruce was sentenced to prison

'cause people didn't like his jokes.

I should be hung.

[narrator] The culture changed so much

that eventually even the state of New York

admitted how stupid it had been

to bust Lenny Bruce.

Ron Collins partnered with fellow

First Amendment Attorney Bob Corn-Revere

to petition Governor George Pataki

to clear Lenny's name.

[Ron] I never thought there was...

any chance at all

that the governor would pardon Lenny.

[narrator] It seemed impossible.

But then it happened.

[Bob] This is a copy

of the pardon itself.

"Therefore, know ye

that I have pardoned,

remised, and released

and by these presents do pardon,

remise and release

the said Leonard Alfred Schneider

aka Lenny Bruce."

Archaic legal language that basically says

Lenny Bruce has been pardoned.

[Ron] It was just a wonderful feeling.

I really felt

that for just a pinpoint in time,

the Earth shook, just a little bit.

[narrator] The pardon came 37 years

after Lenny's death.

Makes you wonder what Lenny would think of today's world.

[Bob] I think he would hear people using language

that he was afraid

he was going to go to jail over

and he would think, "My gosh, things are freer

than they've ever been,"

but at the same time

he would probably be confronted

with attitudes that...

he wouldn't be able

to get his mind around the idea

that if he said something offensive

that people would turn him in.

[narrator] It's a weird, terrifying,

and exhilarating time to be a comedian.

You don't have to worry about cops

arresting you at clubs,

and new technology like podcasts

lets you avoid corporate and government authorities.

Smartphones and social media

allow you to connect with fans

and build a following.

But it's that same liberating technology

that's fueling the outrage mob.

[Noam] We had thousands of people

tweeting against us.

[narrator] They demanded Noam Dworman

stop giving stage time to Artie Lange

because they were offended by one of his jokes.

"New York Comedy Cellar if you don't stop

using Artie Lange we're gonna bring

-the protest to you." -[Greg] Wow.

And this began to bubble up

to the point where I got scared

and actually pulled down all our podcasts off the--

off the air because I didn't want anybody

to start researching what other kinds of jokes

we might have made.

[gunshots]

[narrator] Times are especially tough

for comedy outside the U.S.

On January 7th, 2015

terrorists offended by cartoons

depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad

shot and killed 11 staff members

of the satirical magazine

Charlie Hebdo at their office in Paris.

[Greg] The Charlie Hebdo massacre

should've been a wakeup call to everyone

who believes in free speech all over the world.

That you can't have a right

not to be offended without it backfiring,

without it being a terrible disaster.

And there was a moment

when it looked like France and the European Union

have learned this lesson.

[Jonathan] Hundreds of thousands

of citizens of France

in the streets for free speech.

You know, it's like

we all take a bullet.

They killed people,

but all French people take a bullet.

[Greg] But within a week

of the massacre they were arresting

people for cracking jokes.

They go after a comedian

who kind of condones the terrorism

or makes fun of it.

Now, I think that comedian's opinion stinks,

but you--hey, dummies,

do you want free speech or don't you?

[narrator] A comedian called Dieudonné

was found guilty of condoning terrorism

and received a suspended two-month jail term

for a Facebook post.

He wrote that he felt "like Charlie Coulibaly,"

a play on the popular "I am Charlie Hebdo" slogan

that incorporated the name

of one of the Paris attackers.

[speaking French]

[narrator] He has been repeatedly fined

for anti-Semitic speech and local authorities

have banned his shows in several towns

because they see his act as a threat to public order.

I mean, yeah, you're not shooting people

like the Islamic militants did,

but you are arresting people.

You are penalizing people

for saying shit you don't like.

France, like...

all developed countries in the world

except the United States has hate speech laws.

France's free speech stinks.

Canada is not great with free speech.

They have a whole human rights commission

that penalizes people.

Britain kind of stinks for certain reasons.

You can get in big trouble for saying things.

[narrator] Britain jails people

who make comments

officials deem to be offensive,

and an accountant named Paul Chambers

was arrested for a Twitter joke

authorities misconstrued as a terrorist threat.

In France, Dieudonné's clashes

with authorities have fueled his popularity

and turned him into a martyr.

But today, more Americans support hate speech laws

than oppose them.

Yes, the same nation that thinks

it was ridiculous for cops

to arrest Lenny Bruce for words,

supports laws that would allow cops

to arrest people for words.

[Ron] We must not be afraid

to be free.

It's scary.

It really is.

And I think Lenny Bruce

brought that point home in spades.

[Bob] The pardon obviously

wasn't for Lenny Bruce

even though it was done in his name.

The pardon was really for the rest of us

to stand as sort of a public monument

to the values that we protect.

We do protect the outcasts.

We do protect the people who are there

and who will offend us.

If we can protect those people,

then all of us can sleep a little safer at night

because we know that we will be able

to express our ideas, too.

At the end of the day it's not like we have

all of the high cards when it comes to truth,

morality,

patriotism, what have you.

We need a few wild cards,

we need a few code breakers,

we need a few people

that are willing if you will to jerk our chains,

all right?

In other words,

we need more Lenny Bruces.

[Mel] You fucking offend me.

And you don't care about anyone but yourself.

[Gilbert] I remember when all the news stories

came out about Mel Gibson

being arrested for drunk driving.

The police woman was Jewish

and he started saying stuff about the Jews.

Then he started to say stuff

calling her sugar tits.

Then he started saying like,

that a group of African Americans,

only he didn't use the term African Americans,

should rape and kill his wife

or he was going to kill her, hitting her with a shovel

and burying her in the rose garden.

And after all that came out, all I could think is,

"Wait a minute,

what did he say about the Jews?"

So, I think people like to pick and choose

what to get offended by.

I think being offended is a smorgasbord

and you go, "Okay, I like this and this.

Oh, that I'm offended by, oh, this is good,

no, that one I'm offended."

Well, liberals are offended by certain things.

Blacks are offended by certain things.

Women are offended by certain things.

White Christian males are offended

by certain things.

We're all offended by whatever

violates our comfort zone.

[narrator] If comedians steered clear

of anything that violates someone's comfort zone,

imagine what the comedy shows of the future would be like.

[Jonathan] One of the first things you know

when a society is turning authoritarian

is the comedians start to worry.

When they start going for the comedians

everyone else needs to sweat.

Do you really want to live in a world

where people have to think twice

before they tell any kind of joke,

or question someone else's religion,

or question anybody at any level?

Because if you're going to say one person,

you know, who said something that you don't like,

doesn't have the right to do that,

then what about you?

What if you say something that someone doesn't like?

Along with the right to speak freely

comes a responsibility to have a thick skin.

Words can be hurtful

but they're not the same as violence

and they can be countered with other words.

And that's our responsibility.

It's the responsibility to put up

with being offended.

[narrator] So, where are we headed?

Will we embrace free speech

or will we turn toward America's past

and Europe's present

and arrest people for word crimes?

[Greg] The idea of a future in which we're all

always walking on eggshells does not appeal to me.

When I look ahead I see America

increasingly standing alone

as committed to the First Amendment in law.

And I don't think we're ever gonna get better with it.

This whole thing, like, every time

something big happens we're like,

"Oh, tide's about to turn."

It's never going to change.

It's gonna keep going downhill.

[Greg] There was this huge study that's done every year

and they ask citizens whether or not they think

the First Amendment went too far.

47% of people between the ages of 18 and 30

said the First Amendment goes too far.

This is terrifying to those of us

who care about free speech

and the future of free speech.

Everybody says, "I love free speech.

I love free thought, I love free expression,"

but deep down they're all going,

"Except for when, except for when."

There's always that little asterisk,

as to--it doesn't-- that doesn't apply here.

But you might be interested in how I became offensive.

[narrator] You know, a comedian changed

the culture once,

maybe comedians will do it again.

[Lisa] We're not backing down.

I mean, we're not gonna quit anytime soon.

And I think-- I think people are a little,

like...

sick of these politically correct folks.

I like to think

that really

the majority of people

do have a brain in their heads

and aren't getting offended if they hear a joke.

I used to not invite my friends

that had herpes

to this all girl stand-up show that I did

because this one girl that I performed with

had a really, really funny herpes joke.

I'm, like, so codependent that I thought,

"God, I'm just gonna see my friend in the audience

and she's gonna talk about herpes

and I know she has herpes.

And that'll really hurt her feelings."

So, I didn't invite her to several shows.

And then all of a sudden she was at the show

and here is the girl I'm performing with

does the herpes stuff and I was like, "Oh, no!"

And I look out and she's laughing

harder than anyone.

-My double D sister over there! -[narrator] Karith Foster

is still using comedy to start

honest conversations on campus

and students geek out on free speech

at conferences organized

by Greg Lukianoff's organization.

Chris Lee has graduated from college

and now AIDS and cancer charities hire him

to tell filthy jokes at their events.

[Chris] They don't go, "Ugh, that joke

ruined my night."

Because it can't. They beat cancer.

[narrator] The world of comedy

is one of the few places

where playing the outrage card

doesn't work too well.

Thank goodness, plenty of us

can still get offended without having a meltdown.

And thank goodness, so many of us

can still take a joke.

To get all these emails saying,

"Oh, my God, we'll be the four gay guys in the front.

Please call us this or call us that."

I have guys come up to me on the street and say,

"Hey, call my friend and call them this"

or "Call my wife and call her the 'C' word.

She'll--she loves you."

'Cause I've had handicapped people

come up to me or write me letters saying,

"I think it's bullshit that you don't make fun of us.

Like, we can't take a joke?"

The race to be the most outraged

is really, really awful stuff,

but you're not gonna be talking about this

in 20 years.

Yeah, this will be completely fixed.

We have to scream at it and stand on the mountaintops

and have no fear and yell,

"You cannot put a chilling effect

on our freedom of speech.

But, oh, by the way,

keep in mind while we're doing this

that we're gonna win."

[music]