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Leslie Jones, MLK, and The Embrace
Comedy is the most precarious of arts. One person’s joke is another’s insult. And yet, comedians enjoy wide latitude in our culture because, let’s face it, we’re a screwed-up society, and gifted comedians tap into the humor of our dissonant truths. The best of them reveal actual truth through humor.
A friend sent me the link to The Daily Show with Leslie Jones’ take on the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Boston Common. I clicked play. I listened. I even laughed, uncomfortably, at the disgust Ms. Jones’ displays. Yet before the segment played out, my levity turned sour. I wondered why a comedian granted the huge platform of The Daily Show chose to use it so disparagingly.
Ms. Jones starts with a warning: “Even though I am about to go straight on this statue, I got to talk to the white people for a second. White people. You don’t need to be saying shit about this statue, you understand? Black hands only. You need to sit your ass in the back of the bus for this one, okay? You need to honor this statue. This is our civil rights icon.”
Sometimes I chose to sit in the back of the bus. But the point of the civil rights movement — refusing to sit in the back of the bus — was not to transfer second-class status from Black people to others. The point was to allow each individual to sit on any available seat, wherever they like. And so…
