Comedy as a Blessing of Liberty

Whenever I’m invited onto a program to talk about politics and comedy—I’m an opinionated comedian after all—my host is bound to bring up court jesters. We’re never talking about a court jester’s new Netflix special. I’ve never seen a court jester in real life. I doubt you have either. The only time I went to a Renaissance Faire I expected to catch one in the act, but even there they hadn’t booked any. No one cares about jesters, other than to bring them up during conversations about the importance of comedy. To remind people of the days when the court jester was “the only one who was allowed to mock the king.”

I never bought that history. I figured there were boundaries jesters were not allowed to cross—some truths even they were not allowed to tell without fear of punishment. I’m sure Roulandus le Fartere (AKA Roland the Farter) was safe though. Who doesn’t love a good fart joke?

But if kings back in the day were anything like today’s royals, I bet jesters would keep their most barbed one-liners under their fool’s cap. There are still countries around the world that criminalize insulting their monarchs. (In Thailand, you can’t even make fun of the King’s dog.) That number grows when you count nations that legally protect their heads of state from being roasted. While prosecutions and punishments vary, one would have to be a brave twenty-first century jester to insult the King of Bahrain . . . in Bahrain. Or insult the the head of Turkey . . . in Germany. That’s right, when it comes to censorship, Germany says, “Halt mal dein Bier!” and prosecutes comedians for making fun of other countries’ rulers!

But I’m not in Bahrain. And I’m not in Germany. I’m in New Jersey. A jester with Wi-Fi, I have neither fear nor bravery when it comes to mocking the king of a country I just found out existed. I’m not afraid to mock Erdoğan or my president either. Hell, I’ll even commit “hate speech,” which is punishable (yet always undefinable) in countless countries around the world! 

In Brazil, comedian Léo Lins was sentenced to more than eight years in prison on charges of defamation and hate speech. According to Brazil Reports, Lins made jokes about “elderly people, Black and Indigenous Brazilians, people with HIV, the LGBTQ+ community, evangelical Christians, Jews, people with disabilities” and pedophilia.

You know, the kind of material you’ll hear in the States at an open mic or best-man speech. Were Lins’s jokes funny? I don’t know. Maybe they sounded better in Portuguese. But as a comedian, I’m imagining the nightmare of having to serve time for my weakest bits.

Lins’s case (which is under appeal) is yet another example of countries where comedy can be a criminal offense. In Afghanistan, the Taliban murdered TikTok comedian Nazar Mohammad (stage name: Khasha Zwan). Now I was no fan of Zwan. The guy was a hack—but that was no justification for his murder. In India, Munawar Faruqui was arrested before a performance, based on a complaint from the son of a local politician claiming to have overheard him rehearsing material insulting Hindu deities. Police later admitted they had no evidence he’d made the jokes. The local superintendent told a reporter Faruqui simply “was ‘going to.’” So Faruqui spent almost a month in jail, and three separate courts denied him bail, before the Supreme Court finally intervened—all for material he never got to say in front of an audience. (You’d think Ganesh and the other deities would have a better sense of humor!)

The United States has spoiled me with free-speech protections. As my friend Noam Dworman, the owner of the Comedy Cellar, posted on X, “Our stubborn insistence on free speech makes even minor acts of censorship elsewhere conspicuous. Without our laboratories of democracy and that bulwark against censorship [the First Amendment], the Western world would eventually [seize] up.”

In Canada, Mike Ward has to take his comedy case all the way to the Supreme Court, where “free speech” ekes out a 5–4 victory in the comic’s favor. In the United Kingdom, when they’re not prosecuting a YouTuber in Scotland for teaching his girlfriend’s pug to raise its paw in the Nazi salute—by the way, Nazi pug is much cuter than King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s mutt—police monitor social media for thought crime. Be careful—that bawdy limerick you share on Facebook could get you a visit from James Bond.

But, remarkably, all of the above is legal in the United States. And what has that legality done for us? It’s given us stand-up, improv, and the sitcom—three genuinely American art forms—and let genres that weren’t invented here evolve into something quintessentially American: sketch, film, television, even the meme.

With such powerful art forms and free-speech protections it’s easy to forget that it took us a long time to get here—even with a First Amendment. The United States was barely out of diapers when Matthew Lyon was jailed under the 1798 Sedition Act after circulating a letter that called President John Adams fit for “a madhouse.” (Not the funniest joke, but, c’mon, Founding Fathers, you just beat the British—Lighten thee up!) And it was only 22 years ago that Lenny Bruce received a posthumous pardon over his obscenity conviction by New York Governor George Pataki, who, I have no doubt, Bruce would have mocked without fear of state censorship had he lived through the Pataki years. Roulandus le Fartere would have had a good time too. Farts were back in style in the new millennium.

All this is to say, the United States is a special venue, where jesters are truly free to “kill” and not be killed.

About the Author

LOU PEREZ is a comedian, producer, and the author of That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy. He co-hosts the Happy Hour Econ podcast for the Free to Choose Network.