Tim Heidecker and Kumail Nanjiani Break Down How Anti-Woke Comedians Are All Exactly The Same

Comedy is legal now, but only if everyone tells the exact same jokes about transgender baristas.

In this past election cycle, comedians played an unprecedented role in the political process as the Trump/Vance ticket targeted popular podcasts for their outreach to America’s comedy-lovers and drywall-punchers. Comics who had built veritable media empires by branding themselves as anti-woke, anti-cancel-culture and pro-free-speech suddenly found themselves sitting across from the most powerful people in the world talking about coffee and family, and it became clear to more skeptical comedy fans that the role of the comedian in modern society had become something much more sinister than the simple responsibility of “person who makes people laugh.”

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“When I started doing comedy, the whole thing was — in Chicago, doing open mics — was like, I have to talk about stuff that nobody else is talking about,” Nanjiani recalled of his early ascension to comedy stardom. “But now, so many guys are talking about the exact same thing! Cancel culture, anti-trans stuff, whatever the fuck it is, it’s exactly the same!”

Not only that, Nanjiani continued, but the anti-woke comedians have made it harder for non-culture-warriors to perform their original material. “It’s really weird to go up after someone who did a bit about how interracial dating is wrong, and did pretty well with the crowd!” commented Nanjiani, who is, himself, in an interracial marriage.

“None of it seems particularly funny,” Heidecker concurred of the confluence of conservative talking points and stand-up comedy. “They’re treated like political philosophers, or something.”

However, anti-woke comedians aren’t even committed to their own political agenda. “They use two things simultaneously: ‘We’re like street-level philosophers,' and, ‘It’s just a joke,’” Nanjiani commented. “And depending on what the attack is, that’s the defense. ‘Oh, I was just joking! But also, what we do is important, and we’re speaking truth to power!'”

“Both those things can’t exist at the same time,” Nanjiani said of the conservative comics who want to have it both ways.

In recent months, comedians who hosted President Trump and J.D. Vance on the campaign trail have widely attempted to downplay their importance in the re-election effort. Andrew Schulz and Tim Dillon, for instance, have both insisted that their cozying up to the conservative leaders didn’t have any impact in the polls, despite their constant participation in political discourse on their ostensibly comedic podcasts.

As Nanjiani pointed out, anti-woke comedians clearly want to have their cake and eat it, too, but more than anything, they just don’t want to write new material.