Misogynist comedians can stay out of Roslindale

Good for Courtney! Well done. If you can’t be funny without using garbage material, then you’re not funny and shouldn’t be in comedy.

Good. Assault and battery and kidnapping a person by forcing them into the trunk of a car are violent crimes and not comical.

Sounds like she is going to have an extremely successful club. Following everyone she chased out of her club to the bar across the street to lecture them more is legendary.

Pong is not being truthful. There were female comedians in the show. There were minorities on the show. She was annoyed with the poor turnout and after one single comedian made a joke about being fired from Uber for making women ride in the trunk she saw an opportunity to try and get some attention for herself and the theater much like the comic who recently called out Harvey Weinstein at a show. She is not being truthful about the other comics or anything really. Not one other comic said anything about women. Show me one person who was there who backs her version of events up at all. Even worse is Pong’s version posted on FB makes no mention of racism but the author of this post adds that in to make it even more inflammatory.

Now THAT was a comic. Today's snowflakes wouldn't get him, though. He (jokingly) encouraged suicide. He talked about "pussy". He made fun of "guys named Todd". He "fat shamed". He absolutely spoke truth to power, but I don't think today's lightweights would be able to see through the gruffness to the truth of what he was saying. Not that it seems the dufus comics in Rozzie have the finesse of a George Carlin, mind you.

There must be a word that describes this kind of thing, but I can't think of it.

A word which describes how people accept "joking" or "just playing around" and so it steadily, subtly escalates until it becomes actually bullying or discrimination.

Like kids make fun of one particular kid and the adults just say "oh they're just playing around". Since the kids got away with it, they start constantly picking on the one kid. Then flat out bullying that kid, leading to consequences ranging from sad to tragic

In the adult world, it's "just a joke" in a comedy club which puts down a particular race or gender. then the audience starts repeating that joke out in the world, like to their friends when they walk by someone of that gender or race. Then it escalates into discrimination or harassment at work or even physical attacks on members of that gender or race.

Any ideas on a word for this?

One has to wonder if the type of comedy that Don Rickles was known for still has a place? Rickles was a well-established insult comedian and would often engage the audience in participation in his act. At the end of his spot he would then speak on how his act was meant to bring people's attention to these terms and that we should know them and never give them power. He was also a generous man often giving to some well-deserving charities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Rickles

Prior to Rickles and somewhat in parallel in his later life, Jack E. Leonard did something similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_E._Leonard

And should we even approach Rodney Dangerfield?

Some humor just doesn't start, "Knock, Knock... Who's there..."

The bottom line in comedy clubs is whether the audience is laughing or not. The fact that someone asked "Is this a joke or is this part of the act?" when she shut it down, makes me imagine they were entertained.

Not that it isn't good to shut down racism and sexism, but why were those comics booked in the first place? Unless they were all first-timers or had all very recently changed their material, wouldn't it already be established what kind of jokes they told? I'm not in theater so I don't know how possible this is.

She owns the club. She does what she likes. She refunded the money of four paying customers. Snowflakes have nothing to whine about - they can open their own clubs if they don't like the management of this one.

Courtney doesn't owe anyone an explanation.

I see this all the time, across many art-forms. Artists who try to imitate the legends in their field, but who lack the understanding and finesse of the original.

This applies a lot to male comedians especially. There are lots of great counter-culture comedians mentioned in the comments here, including the likes of George Carlin.

Carlin, in my opinion, was a comedy genius. He pushed the boundaries like few others of his era. His material was well thought out and carefully developed to carry the message he wanted to get across. In pushing boundaries to serve his message, he sometimes offended people, but that "offensiveness" was a by-product of his process - not the intention.

A lot of bad modern comedians, in attempting to emulate their heroes, only see the offensiveness, and mistake this for the goal. They aim to be offensive. They start with an offensive idea, and then try and construct a joke around it. The result is often punching down, belittling others, and offensive for offensive's sake. There's no deeper message, no subtlety, and they're just not that funny.

They still find an audience. They find people that are titillated by offense. They find people with their own offensive opinions, misogyny, racism, etc, that enjoy seeing their horrible world view publicly expressed, but they are not funny, they are not clever, and they are certainly not geniuses like Carlin.

If all you see when you watch Carlin and his like, is someone not afraid to offend, you may have completely missed the point.

She didn't talk to them afterwards, like a professional? She just walked on the stage in the middle of the act?

Were drinks sold? Did she refund that money, too? Were the performers getting paid? Because if they aren't and she sold drinks, he made money from their act.

Sounds to me like she ruined the audience's evening, and damaged the professional reputation of performers who had promoted her club and gotten an audience to it. Because she, personally, didn't like it.

What performer would perform in a club where the owner might do this? Now matter WHAT the act is? It's not like you can predict what crosses any individual's line.

As a disclaimer, I’ve heard of this all the way in SoCal because of the power of the internet. I wasn’t there and have not visited this venue - yet. My only issue with this article is the addition of “[comedian]” to the quote "No woman in the world would have wanted to stand in that room last night."
I wouldn’t have wanted to be there as an audience member, and probably would have vocally expressed my lack of appreciation for “jokes” at the expense of women as second class citizens. I am also disinterested in racism, ableism, classism, and basically any other form of using another human being as a punchline. It’s hard to find a genuine space for entertainment that consistently aligns with your values. Trusting a venue with a good reputation presenting an outside group and having that venue’s management take charge of a situation like this would cement my opinion that this would be a good place to continue to support.
Good for Courtney. I plan to make this place my first stop the next time I visit Boston.

Why has no one NAMED the comics?

Courtney has been attacked personally and through her business and yet not one comic (and this open mic) will say "I was there, this is what I said and I stand by it"

If you're so proud of your "comedy" then show your face.