When did it become "not okay" to bomb? | Opinion

Stop me if you've heard this one: a popular comedian who has been popular for some time (say, twenty years plus) does a public appearance and says some version of "I won't do shows at colleges anymore. They're too sensitive. Nothing is funny to them."

It seems like every few months there's a news story about this, adorned with whatever culture-war word-of-the-day is in vogue. "John Cleese won't do Universities anymore, says there are too many snowflakes." "Jerry Seinfeld won't do Universities anymore, says there are too many SJW's." "Bill Maher won't do post-secondary institutions anymore, says they're too woke."

Sometimes, like in the case of Cleese and Maher, these are unforced errors. I have literally watched interviews with them where they brought this up unprompted, as though it was stuck in their craw agitating them and they needed to get it out. Other times, I feel as though this is a cheap trick on the part of journalists hoping to get a story: you have an interview with Seinfeld, you ask him a barrage of questions and one of them is 'do you play Universities' or 'have you had a bad experience with Universities' or 'John Cleese says he won't play Universities, do you?' and you let them ramble for a bit in the answer and you get a ten-second clip you can use to justify a clickbait story titled "Seinfeld won't do Universities anymore, says there are too woke."

But in any case, there's a truly weird question at the heart of all of these statements: when did it not become okay to have a bad night? When did these comedians become immune to the simple reality of 'you're not going to hit the mark every time?'

Because every comedian bombs. Let me posit to you, a different series of stories.

Story One: a young comedian with just a few shows under their belt steps out onto the stage at a local venue. None of the jokes they planned land, the room is deathly silent at moments they held for laughter. The crowd murmurs. Attempts at crowd-work fall flat. The Comedian leaves the stage, wipes the sweat from their brow and says "woof, that was a bad night." It becomes a story they tell, the worst night they ever bombed. They retire some of those jokes.

Perfectly normal, right? Seems like the type of story that's a part of the origin story of every comedian you've ever heard of. For some thing would be the norm and you might never hear of them, some never tried again, some went on to success and this became something you heard about after the fact.

Story Two: Same setup. Comedian, show, no jokes land. But this time, at the end, the young comedian on only their third or fourth show blames the audience, lashes out at them. Calls them stupid, yells. They call into local radio stations and news outlets trying to get on the air complaining about the venue and the people who occupied it.

Sounds unhinged, right? Sounds like a young comedian who probably won't go far. Sounds like an egotist that isn't well suited for comedy, because a integral part of being a comedian is self-awareness. It's the ability to understand how you're perceived and how your joke is going to land in any given moment.

So let me ask: why is it so different for a seasoned comedian? When does one's career reach a point that it becomes okay to blame the audience for your bad night, and not yourself? When does it become impossible to consider that you just didn't 'read the room?'

"I don't need to read the room, I'm John Cleese. My stuff works no matter where I am!" Maybe. Or, maybe you're used to an obsequies audience who had bought tickets specifically to see "John Cleese" and not stepped into a random comedy club and trusting that the entertainer will know how to read the room and entertain.

This is at the heart of what I'm asking here. When does a celebrity get so big that it's impossible that they just bombed? When is it impossible that they just didn't bother to get a read-of-the-room before they stepped out?

Because spoilers, there is no point in your career when that's not the case. Celebrated authors can write a novel that sucks. Great actors can star in a box-office bomb. And long-venerated comedians can fail to read the room and tank a night, and that's all that happened.

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I'm going to save this post and post it into the comments whenever I see one of those "X comedian won't do college campuses anymore" stories. I'd love if you did the same.