It has been and always will be the audience that makes a comedian (or any entertainer) who they are, not the other way around.
About Steve Roye
Leading stand-up comedy educator and trainer, providing proven 21st century strategies and techniques for individuals who wish to become comedians on a professional level. For a detailed stand-up comedy resume go to: Steve Roye's Stand-up Resume.
You want to entertain, not offend your audience. Which means you need to know your audience. Doing stand-up for a church group or a corporate event should steer your material away from certain topics or should at least highly influence the way you approach the topic. Try as hard as you like and you will still most likely offend a few. But that shouldn’t be our goal. The goal is laughs; not gasps!
I agree with you to some level steve- like if someone has a Michael Richards moment, but a majority of these people who get offended are either hypocritical, part of some stupid special interest group, or never even saw the act. These people will watch the comedians and laugh at 99% of their jokes- handicap jokes, racial jokes, abortion jokes- but the minute it comes around to their issue(lets just use gay jokes as an example- like the tracy morgan thing) then they go home and post their out of context ‘interperation’ of the joke on their ‘blog’ and whine, or go complain to the club owner. then some rediculous special interest group gets wind of it and starts protesting it, and writing angry letters, or some other garbage- even though THEY have never even seen the comedians act and everybody in the audience liked it except that one guy. or like Jimmy Carr where they just pick a random joke to get offended by- he’s had a couple picked up by the media, like a amputee joke or more recently a down syndrome joke. he has WAAAAAAY more offensive jokes in his act about rape, paedophilia, abortion, homosexuality, sexism, incest, religion- but they picked that ONE joke to be offended by because it affected them personally. out of his entire 2 hour show they pick that one 20 second joke to be offended by even though they laughed at MUCH worse jokes before that. its rediculous. its like some people WANT to be offended. he is a dark comedian, if you dont like it dont go to the show- dont just complain to the media, and demand his firing or an apology or other bullcrap. you have a right to say what you want, but there is no right not to be offended. people need to realize this.
If you want to stick with that “you have a right say to what you want” crap, without considering your audience — which is who actually makes you or breaks you in this business — that is an unwise personal choice if you want to get anywhere as comedian.
Audiences are what they are. A comedian either has the talent, skill, and appeal needed to get big laughs consistently from audiences or they don’t.
Comedians who use stand-up comedy as some sort of personal therapeutic “sounding board” have lost sight of the “entertainment” part of being a comedian, which is making audience howl with laughter.
Whether you like it or not, audiences make the comedian — not the other way around.
Too bad, everyone who agrees with you on this, is already shouting this at the people ruining the show. Meanwhile the people who need to understand this, are too busy shouting “Free Speach,” as if they are the Founding Fathers having a critical conversation in our nation’s history with Paul Revere, instead of trying to make a group of strangers laugh out loud.