How to Make White People Laugh

by Negin Farsad

  We got questions like “If Muslims aren’t terrorists, why don’t we ever hear them denouncing terrorism?” Sometimes the question was posed as, “We see all these terrorist attacks happening, and I just don’t see any Muslims expressing any dissatisfaction, it’s almost like they’re okay with it or like they kinda want it to happen.” Which is a particularly illogical formulation, because if a Middle Eastern immigrant left the Middle East, it’s because they wanted to have a more “American” life, right? It’s not like you would leave the Middle East if what you want to do is live in a place that will be invaded by “the Middle East.”

  Illogical or not, it’s a legitimate question. And we heard it over and over, which means that people have really not heard Muslims denounce terrorism. But that’s really strange because the only Muslims I know do denounce terrorism. I think the biggest problem is that our mainstream news outlets just aren’t going to cover a bunch of reasonable people denouncing violence. Beyoncé’s skirt could fly up, or Oprah Winfrey could endorse another book, or Hillary Clinton could say something about hating Spanx when she thought her microphone was off—any of that would be covered before nice people saying violence is bad.

  Nevertheless, the question is frustrating. It’s as if Catholics had to denounce pedophilia every time there was a news story on an abusive priest. They just don’t do that, because it’s obvious that rank-and-file Catholics are disgusted with these priests. Seventy-one percent of mass shootings in the last thirty years were perpetrated by white males, but we don’t have white males denouncing mass murder every time it happens.

  We also got questions like “Why aren’t you wearing a burka?” Another great question. In the United States, whenever we talk about Muslim ladies, we imagine them as shrouded beings. In some countries in the Middle East, covering is the law, not because of the Koran but because of governmental laws (known as the Hadith) that came after the Koran. In the United States, some ladies want to cover, so they do. Other ladies don’t. It’s really up to them.

  The booth we set up, that type of social justice comedy action, was inviting and warranted. But there were times that my tactics veered away from love and into an area of uncomfortable goading. I didn’t want to make a movie that provoked people into looking stupid or forced them into screaming matches. But in one instance, I messed up.

  THE DAILY DENOUNCER

  Because the “Why don’t you denounce terrorism?” question has been so rampant, I launched TheDailyDenouncer.com, a comic strip devoted to denouncing terrorism, every day of the workweek (well, the workweek—denouncing takes weekends off).*

  We were on our way to Nashville for a show and en route we saw a state fair in full swing. We stopped for some cotton candy and to take a ride that made me want to throw up. After feeling the earth beneath my feet for twenty minutes, we were roaming the grounds when we happened upon a bare-knuckle boxing ring that was nestled in the woods behind the fair. I assumed that bare-knuckle boxing matches attract the kind of people who have very little regard for the skin on their hands. The anti-manicure set, if you will. I had never been to any kind of boxing match (let alone amateur bare-knuckle boxing) and we had the grand idea to offer our comedy services in between matches.

  I approached the ticket seller and said, “Hello, we are a kindly band of Muslim comedians who would like to offer our comedy services to your fine affair. No recompense required, of course.” I then bowed, holding my gloves in hand like a true gentlewoman.

  The ticket seller looked at me quizzically. “Muslim comedians?” he said.

  “Yes, we would do stand-up, in between matches, you know, to keep the audience entertained while the boxers grease their hands.”

  He asked me to wait while he asked his boss. We waited for a few minutes and while I stood there I noticed a set of snarling dogs in the corner. “Hmmph, I did not notice those dogs before,” I said to myself. I then took a real good look around and fully came to terms with the type of fan who enjoys—I mean really enjoys—the art of bare-knuckle boxing. It means that you have a particular comfort level with blood, gashes, and other forms of bodily pain. I noticed men walking around who themselves looked like they had been beaten up—probably because they had been beaten up. “Hmmph, this whole room is into violence in a way that I didn’t quite notice before,” I said to myself.

  And just as I was noticing the number of empty Pabst cans on the floor, the boss man ran out from the back. He was not wearing a shirt, but to honor the event, he was wearing a bow tie. He seemed to find a large stick that had been conveniently set against an adjacent wall, you know, the way big sticks often are. He grabbed that stick, charged toward us, and in his finest and most threatening twang, he screamed, “Y’all Muslims better get outta here.”

  I believe he said other things afterward but we were running and dumping in our pants at such a fast rate that I couldn’t quite hear him.

  This was not the right approach. You don’t goad people who are ripe for the goading into a moment of cultural understanding. Wrong setting. A general rule of thumb: If you see snarling dogs, it’s the wrong setting.

  CHAPTER 11

  White People Love Conferences

  First Rule of White People: Never talk about White People. I’ve broken that rule all over this book, so let’s go to the Second Rule of White People: White people love conferences. And not just conferences, but “cons”: exhibitions, expos, salons, circles, clubs, and basically anything where they can exercise their right to public assembly. The right to public assembly is like the slut amendment of the Constitution—it gets done everywhere! Amiright?

  If you really want to make white people laugh, to effect change, to really get the power shifters where the shiftin’ is good, you should go to the conferences where our pale-skinned compatriots hang. There are a few notable ones, like PopTech for the tech tastemakers, the Clinton Global Initiative for the international development nerds, Bonaroo for the fucking music hipster fucks. But at the top of the con hill sits TED—the pièce de résistance of elite conferencing.

  TED—which stands for Technology Entertainment Design—was born out of a need for extremely well-connected folk in Monterey, California, to access really innovative technology… oh, and entertainment… oh wait, there was a third thing, oh right, and design. For far too long, well-connected rich citizens had been denied direct access to really cool stuff. They had to research it on their own or call up several different people and have conversations about what was new and interesting. Frankly, it was labor intensive, involved too many phone calls, and the results were mixed. Sometimes what they thought was cool wasn’t actually cool, or what they thought was an innovation was kinda hack, and what they thought was entertainment was just a free foot rub.

  So, the WCs (Well Connecteds) outsourced their problems to a conference. Curators took the lead and began whittling down everything into bite-sized talks. These talks often came with elaborate PowerPoint presentations, an ah ha moment, an unbelievable demonstration of technology, an admission of something really sad, an admission of something really uplifting, and a standing ovation.

  They started outfitting these speakers with those face-microphone thingies, filming their presentations, and putting them online. Henceforth, the TEDTalk phenomenon was born. TEDTalks often go viral so that regular people who can’t go to the conference can see the Talk. A lot of these talks are truly awesome. Some of these talks will leave audiences driveling in tears, and others of these talks present metaphorical measurements of dick size.1

  I love TED. And here’s the absolutely crazy thing: I’m actually a TEDFellow. That’s right, I am one of those twenty people selected yearly for their upstart genius in various exciting fields like neuroscience, big data, and mine—social justice comedy (an as yet unverifiable “job”). It was a huge honor to be selected, and yet I also found it truly surprising. I spend a fair amount of time finely crafting dick and fart jokes. Sure, the dick and fart repertoire is encased in a larger social justice mi
ssion, but still! The other Fellows in my class were like inventing shit that’s going to save the planet and whatever.

  I shouldn’t make assumptions, because it is possible I was selected for my arsenal of material on international toilets (that’s like six minutes of material that will blow your mind… and your bowels). Or maybe it was my boob-based oeuvre? Perhaps it was my pitch-perfect imitation of the little known British woman with two vaginas? That was kind of a game changer. I guess I’ll never know.

  If you’ve never been to TED—because like me and/or most people, you can’t afford it—it’s a whirlwind! As a TED first-timer, I’m in the best position to tell you all about it because, as my new neuroscientist friend explained to me, my brain is more receptive to the chemical triggers on blah blah blah. They’re such fucking nerds.

  So You End Up Going to TED

  You start off by marveling: marveling at the attendee list, marveling at the free granola bars that came in your gift bag, and marveling at your own capacity for marveling. When you’re done marveling, you switch gears into being “inspired.” Because guess what? PowerPoint presentations are apparently the building blocks of inspiration. I had no idea, but it’s true. And if you haven’t felt inspired four times by 3 P.M. on the first day, you’re totally doing it wrong. Because TED is about being around inspiring people that have the inspiring ideas worth spreading, in the most inspired-idea-spready, air-conditioned environment.

  My first duty as a TED Fellow was to give one of these inspiring talks. The talk before mine happened to be about dead babies. First the audience was crying because babies were dying, then they were crying because this Fellow used some kind of science to save the babies from dying, then people were crying because they got to see pictures of how cute and chubby the once-dying babies had become.2 Then it was my turn. As a comedian, it was my dream to follow a moving presentation on dead babies with a talk called “How to Make White People Laugh”3 that has the emotional depth of a radish. That said, I did my best to kill it—the audience, not the babies; the babies are doing great.

  I was extremely nervous, but thankfully I got some big laughs out of the gate. I think the audience needed to experience the opposite of crying. At the very least I did a good job of de-elevating the TED stage from “remarkably insightful and uplifting” to “I think all of her statistics were fake.” When I was done, I felt triumphant for five solid minutes and then went back to vaguely self-hating, my natural state.

  Once you’re done giving your talk you get to meet all the impressive people at TED, people like millionaires! Millionaires are cool because they always smell good and never have dribble stains on their artfully casual but probably expensive T-shirts. TED millionaires are extra great, because they totally hate famines and they super-detest malaria. Don’t get Bill Gates started on it, he’ll go on for hours.

  When you’re at TED you run into people like Ben Affleck. He’s got a hard-on for some part of the Congo that’s currently totally fucked, I might be paraphrasing. Or Bono, who has a similar hard-on for extreme poverty, but he talks about it with an Irish accent. Or Goldie Hawn, who walks around in flowy dresses with wonderment on her face and Salma Hayek pretty much looks like a more gorgeous version of Salma Hayek.

  By day three you no longer notice celebrities, you’re so hepped up on knowledge that everything is a blur and its just weird experience after weird talk after weird run-in. For example, you’re walking toward some really exciting free snacks when you bump into one of the guys who invented Skype. He tells you about artificial intelligence he’s developing that will outlast the apocalypse. You wonder if he’s as excited by the prospect of complimentary Popchips as you are. Then, you cry at a talk by a North Korean refugee while simultaneously wanting to know where she got her cute dress. You decide to take a piss when you run into a war correspondent in the bathroom. You tell her that you would have been a war correspondent if it wasn’t for the “war” part. You run into the lobby and stuff more free snacks into your purse.

  Free Snacks and Income Regression Analysis

  You walk by a group of astrobiologists and neuroscientists and you hear them say something something “genome mapping” something “extremophile” something “cyborg cockroach.” You remember a spit wad you made in your seventh-grade Earth Sciences class. You see Sergey Brin (a Google founder) and you want to ask him if he secretly thinks his own glasses are really annoying, but you think better of it. You see the fifteen-year old “scientist” who developed a nuclear fusion thing, and you want to ask him if he learned nuclear fusion before or after his testes dropped, but you think better of it (also, you might get arrested). You see more teenaged scientists milling about; one of them invented or maybe destroyed pancreatic cancer. You’re mad that these teenagers probably don’t care about boy bands, and you decide that they’re all old people in young-people masks.

  By this point, it’s nighttime, and TED has arranged for you to party like a nerd star. Even though you’re really tired you go, you drink, you pretend to understand casual conversations about coding. And of course, after the TED Party is the after party (which was in the hotel lobby—Jay Z was not consulted). You’re desperate for sleep, but you’re convinced that Al Gore might show up and do a karaoke version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” so you go, you stay, you notice a bunch of married dudes hitting on girls with PhDs.

  The morning of day 4, you’re a mess, but you can’t sleep in! You can’t miss any sessions, because what if Peter Gabriel does a duet with an orangutan or something batshit crazy like that. And then it actually happens: Peter Gabriel does a duet with a fucking orangutan.4 And then he and Vint Cerf—who invented the Internet—and a team of kooks reveal that they’re inventing the “interspecies Internet” and your brain starts to melt. But then there’s a break and… oh thank God, there’s free pinkberry!

  And finally, it’s the last day. You’re ready to weep and feel things at an inspired level for what might be the last time in your life. You try to take it all in while simultaneously calculating how many free protein bars you can stuff in your carry-on bag. There are choirs onstage and images and more talking and more weeping and more inspiration and poof, it’s over. And if, by Friday afternoon on the last glorious day of the last glorious TED in Long Beach you haven’t set up a 501(c)(3) whose mission is to end world hunger through an interspecies app robot, you obviously missed a session, the one session that would have really fucking inspired you. So fuck you for being so careless, fuck you for missing that session, because now there isn’t an interspecies app robot genomic data set to end world hunger! Now who’s gonna do it? We can’t ask Vint Cerf—he already invented the Internet, can’t he take a break? You selfish asshole.

  And that is TED.

  Hot for Conference: What’s the Appeal?

  That TEDsperience is basic to every convention only with different details, outfits, and buzzwords. At Burning Man, someone might make a bold and sweeping public statement about EDM and everyone will go apeshit! You’re around people who care about the same things that you do. You all get to care about these things in a very loud way. Being around those people adds a layer of encouragement to your convictions, it gives you a boost, the enthusiasm is contagious. It’s like the emotional equivalent of someone cupping your balls.

  Like my white compatriots, I’m a huge sucker for conferences. One of my favorites is Netroots Nation, where bloggers, journalists, and social justice advocates of every stripe convene to talk smack about the state of the world. Going to that conference makes me feel like I’m an engaged citizen. I learn about how people are fighting the good fight, I learn about congressional races, union fights, environmental challenges, you name it. I’m more engaged in those three days than I am the entire month before it. By my math, those three days make up for like a bunch of months of mild engagement.

  Conferences also play into liberal guilt. They’re like a check mark. I paid my dues, I went to this conference, I have the tote bag—now I
can go back to thinking about whether the morning barista is hitting on me for the rest of the year! Conferences are great, but they can also be an excuse that keeps people from doing more. I know I’ve been guilty of that: “Oh, I would march against union busting but… um, I was at Netroots and we talked about it in at least two sessions, so I feel like I’ve done a lot.”

  I was at a conference at Sundance, where we watched a Native American ceremony giving thanks to the land. This was definitely our kumbaya moment, and it had all the trappings of a Portlandia sketch, but it was genuinely beautiful. For twenty minutes I thought about how the United States government fucked the Native Americans. How they got the worst end of the bargain because so few of them survived the making of this empire. But then… my elbow started to itch. And that was it. But twenty minutes of thoughtfulness is better than no minutes at all.

  Conferences let you live out your ideology, but just for a week. They let you care in specified weekend jaunts, interrupted only by exchanging business cards and flirting.

  This isn’t to say that only the lefty feel-good conferences are like that—you could go to PAX (the Penny Arcade gaming expo for people who love video games) and it’s the same thing: you might share a kumbaya moment over a really old and ironically placed PacMan. Everyone says to themselves, “Look at us all laughing at blotchy pixels and limited design! I should meet people in person more! I like seeing humans IRL instead of avatars in MMORPGs.”

  And then three days later you’re back in your hometown with headphones on so no one can try to talk to you.

  But even events like Burning Man—known for its bohemianism, hedonism, and sunburns—gives people an opportunity for controlled chaos. Your coworker Joe wears a tie all year long, but at Burning Man he wears assless leather chaps. He don’t give a shit! He’s open and free and ain’t no one gonna hold him down. But only for one week. After that week, the assless chaps go back into storage.