Offensive Comedy for the Mainstream

http://tosh.comedycentral.com/blog/2011/02/16/fan-favorites-elevator-wheelchair-breakdown/

For the past two years Daniel Tosh has had control over a specific brand of comedy on television. His television show Tosh.0 is a popular segmented based show that digs through YouTube clips in a “The Soup”-like manner. For the most part Daniel Tosh, and the show for that matter, uses brash and obnoxious comedy, which is mainly based on the embarrassment of others. I recently watched “Happy Thoughts”, Tosh’s most recent standup which follows a similar pattern. The core of his material covers his sexual exploits and down talks his girlfriend, whom I hope isn’t a real person or else she probably immediately ended their relationship. Although it is impossible to deny that some of his one-liners are humorous, it seems that it lacks the flair of the classics of the comedic-genres. Tosh is not attention grabbing, but instead a sort of ADD comedy that relies upon someone else’s misery. It’s at many moments highly questionable whether his type of humor should be commended with a weekly show, yet the viewers and the advertisers hold the control over that issue. It’s racist, homophobic, and crosses many boundaries of what is funny. But Tosh himself admits this in “Happy Thoughts” and states that he aims to cross even more lines. I miss the days of the Chappelle Show, and Dave Chappelle’s reign over the comedy world. Tosh.0 and the internet generation’s form of comedy is in many ways concurrent with our taste in music, television, and other forms of media that have begun to lose true meaning overall. With Tosh.0 being one of the most well known non-“reality” comedy shows currently on the air, maybe we have fully accepted this brand as the comedic zeitgeist, and if we have, I am disappointed. - CS Craig Shepherd