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  • 2021-10-26 (xsd:date)
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  • ‘June 1954 – Jack Albertson Lamented the Loss of Blackface and... (en)
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  • ‘June 1954 – Jack Albertson Lamented the Loss of Blackface and Felt Minority Groups Were Making Life Rough for the Comedian’ Claim Image of a comedian's complaint about cancel culture, Comic's life rough, is an authentic newspaper clipping from 1954. Rating True Like this fact check? Reporting On October 23 2021, Twitter user @ClassicShowbiz shared a purported archival clipping, which showed a newspaper excerpt dated 1954 newspaper excerpt quoting ex-burlesque comic Jack Albertson on Americans having lost their collective sense of humor: June 1954 – Jack Albertson lamented the loss of blackface and felt minority groups were making life rough for the comedian. pic.twitter.com/nPgm7DLivd — Kliph Nesteroff (@ClassicShowbiz) October 24, 2021 An image on the right side of the tweet read: BILL LADD’S Almanac An Ex-Burlesque Comic Believes Americans Have Lost Sense of Humor Florida is where wokes go to die... Please enable JavaScript Florida is where wokes go to die By itself, the purported 1954 headline effectively complaining about cancel culture in 1954 would have likely been sufficiently interesting. But text on an image to the left expounded on Albertson’s point, specifically bemoaning the fact that the traditional American form of humor known as blackface comedy was waning in popularity: Comic’s life rough But, Jack says, Americans are losing their sense of humor. No longer will anyone laugh at himself. Minority groups carry chips on their shoulders, and since the majority is nothing but a collection of minorities, this makes life rough for the comedian. Blackface comedy, a traditional American form of humor, is unfashionable now, and there is not a single top blackface comic left in a business ... That excerpt neither appeared nor circulated in a vacuum; it emerged during ongoing controversy around comedian Dave Chappelle, his new Netflix special, Netflix’s handling of the special, and myriad related issues. Vox was predictably ready with an explainer on the controversy: Many trans viewers feel Chappelle’s comedy has escalated into overt hate — and they’ve been voicing their complaints directly to Netflix. Moreover, Netflix recently suspended a trans employee who tweeted about the special’s transphobia. Netflix has said the employee was suspended not for her viral tweets, but for attending a director-level business meeting without an invitation. (The company has since lifted the suspension; another trans employee was fired after allegedly leaking budget information about Chapelle’s special.) Despite the uproar, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos defended Chappelle and his comedy. We don’t allow titles on Netflix that are designed to incite hate or violence, and we don’t believe The Closer crosses that line, he wrote in an internal email on October 8 [2021]. But with Chappelle platforming a position of gender essentialism onstage, and declaring that he’s team TERF — thereby aligning himself with trans-exclusionary radical feminists who argue that trans women aren’t women — many Netflix viewers and employees disagree. Netflix’s approach to the whole situation has triggered employee resignations, backlash, and now, a walkout of the company’s trans employee resource group and allies, held October 20 [2021]. Participating staff presented Netflix with a list of demands for boosting trans and nonbinary content on the platform and decreasing harm prior to the walkout— and while Netflix issued a statement of support, it’s unclear if any of them will be met. On October 25 2021, NPR’s Chappelle is unapologetic in his first public statement on ‘The Closer’ controversy covered Chappelle’s reaction to the ongoing discussion, referencing a video statement shared by Chappelle to Instagram on October 25 2021: Dave Chappelle is speaking out about the controversy surrounding his recent Netflix comedy special The Closer — saying he is open to meeting with LGBTQ employees of the company who are critical of the special, but says he will not be bending to anyone’s demands. In a video clip posted to Instagram Monday, Chappelle remains unapologetic about the special, which includes transphobic material that has angered many in the LGBTQ community, at Netflix and beyond. I said what I said, and boy, I heard what you said. My God, how could I not? You said you want a safe working environment at Netflix. It seems like I’m the only one that can’t go to the office anymore, he said in the five-minute video. In short, Chappelle’s then-recent stand-up and its material reignited cyclical complaints that comedians in 2021 were increasingly unable to be funny due to oversensitive crowds and woke mobs attempting to cancel them. Consequently, claims that a 1954 article involved the exact same tenor of whining (on the subject of blackface, no less) seemed to undermine the entire assertion that Americans had become too sensitive. However, a search to determine whether the Jack Albertson blackface commentary from 1954 was legitimate was initially unproductive. We did locate a September 19 2019 Tumblr post by u/oldshowbiz, featuring an identical partial quote : https://oldshowbiz.tumblr.com/post/187744958509/jack-albertson-was-a-young-burlesque-comedian We encountered several dead ends in attempts to locate any verifiable iteration of the material. But in the comments , we noticed a reply: In case anyone wants to do further research, Bill Ladd's Almanac was a column in the Louisville Courier-Journal out of Kentucky. The Courier-Journal has a website but its archive is behind a paywall so I can't get the exact date of this article. — Ivan T. W. (@wisdominwoe) October 24, 2021 As indicated, the content was obscured and difficult to locate behind a hard paywall on Newspapers.com. But with a year and some unique search terms, we managed to locate the source: July 27, 1954 A Publisher Extra Newspaper The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky · Page 6 Publication: The Courier-Journal Location: Louisville, Kentucky Issue Date: Tuesday, July 27, 1954 Page:Page 6 What appeared to be a microfiche archive of page six of the Louisville Courier-Journal from July 27 1954 appeared to the left of the text reproduced above. It was too blurry to read, but a very rough transcription appeared at the bottom of the page: BILL LADD’S Almanac An Ex-Burlesque Comic Believes Americans Have Lost Sense of Humor ... We were, of course, talking about the oft-repeated statement that Louisville audiences are tough for comedians. Jack says a Louisville audience is different. They go for a more obvious gag, they don’t go for the subtle line. Comic’s Life Rough But, Jack says, Americans are losing their sense of humor. No longer will anyone laugh at himself. Minority groups carry chips on their shoulders, and since the majority is nothing but a collection of minorities, this makes life rough for the comedian. Blackface comedy, a traditional American form of humor, is unfashionable now, and there is not a single top blackface comic left in a business which used to number Al Jolson, Lasses White, Bert Swor and Billy Beard. Dialect comedy has gone out. Characterizations must now he so exaggerated that no person can identify himself in them. These changes in comedy fashion affect the man with his individual style. He is the great name who heads the show, or top banana, to quote a show Jack has played many times. The second banana, or supporting comic, just changes his style too and goes on eating regularly, which is success no matter how you dish it up ... A viral October 23 2021 tweet featuring a purported [July] 1954 newspaper excerpt in which comedian Jack Albertson complained Americans lost their sense of humor and that Blackface comedy, a traditional American form of humor, [was] unfashionable spread virally due to the October 2021 series of nearly identical complaints following Chappelle’s The Closer on Netflix. Initial attempts to validate the authenticity and date of the excerpt were confounded by a paywall, but we located the text in a generated transcription on the paywalled scan. The item appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal on July 27 1954, and was fully accessible on Newspapers.com. Posted in Fact Checks , Viral Content Tagged 1954 , blackface , comics life rough , dave chappelle , jack albertson 1954 , paywall , viral facebook posts , viral tweets (en)
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