Séamas O'Reilly: You can’t tell jokes like you used to — and thank God for that

I understand that it might not be pleasant for a comedian to be told that the joke they said is offensive, or sexist, or racist, but I suppose that is the problem with telling jokes for a living

Séamas O'Reilly. Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan

“You can’t say anything these days’ is something I hear quite often, mostly in the context of comedy, and the exhausting pressures comedians must be under to pander to the woke scolds of modern culture. ‘That wouldn’t get made today’ is another, usually when someone shares a creaky old comedy routine which reflects, perhaps, some backward social attitudes of a bygone age. 

The most direct answer to these kinds of exclamations is that, yes, you’re right — you couldn’t make those jokes any more because they have already been made, and you would be guilty of plagiarism. A longer effort would be that, no, you can’t make those jokes any more because comedy is subjective to its time and place, and making jokes that reflect the mores of the ’70s and ’80s today would be as logically absurd and commercially perilous as passing off 1920s material would have been back then. I could go on, but first I’ll go back.