That's Entertainment?

I hate comedy clubs. The overpriced drinks, the spectacle of comics dying, the Darwinian feeding frenzy which rewards the loudest and crassest voice in the room—what one comic once described to me as a competitive situation in which someone would gladly set themselves, or a colleague, on fire if it would get a laugh.

As part of the race to the bottom, which dictates that the darker and more misanthropic and outrageous you can be the better you'll fare, a particular and ancient form of ugliness is bound to surface. Michael Richards' "n"-word outburst wasn't, as far as I know, part of his prepared set. But the following was a well-honed bit by a Brooklyn comic named Freddie Rubino, whom I had the distinct displeasure of seeing last night at Gotham Comedy Club (I was there to support another friend). He started with some very old-school Jew jokes, then unleashed this tirade, to the delight of much of the crowd:

Jews are stereotyped as cheap, but that’s not really fair. Who here hasn’t hated Arabs for overcharging us for oil? It’s the 21st century, we should all be driving electric cars. Let's get all the gas out of this country. That way we can go back to hating Arabs because they smell bad.

I got in a cab the other day, and I thought the guy had a monkey in there, it smelled so bad. Seriously, I was looking for a tail and a banana peel. I said, “Where’s the monkey? You have a monkey in here!” Later I found out that Ahmed had had a monkey sandwich for lunch that day. That’s what I was smelling.

Thanks for the stench, asshole.

UPDATE: By the way, Happy Thanksgiving!