I think it was some joke about how some girl told him he "fucked like a black man." And then he said it was OK because the girl was black.

I think people didn't laugh because... it wasn't very funny? I wasn't blown away by the joke, personally. No one booed him off stage though.

White people are racist.

Thanks for checking my blog out and for saying there was a "money quote." And on the subject of Louis Katz, I think the only thing he would be insulted by here is that you called him white and not Jewish. :-)

As portlanders, what are we supposed to do about our whiteness

@Truthypup I would start with not being so defensive about it. Maybe you're not, but many of you compatriots are. Me and several other comedians would attest to that. Although then we would have less to make fun of... so nevermind. Stay the same. Otherwise we will actually have to write --- horror or horror --- JOKES!

Portland jokes about vegans, white people and hipsters are lazy and obvious.

Agreed re: hipsters & vegans, but Portland can be pretty uncomfortable around race. I, for example, am very uncomfortable right now because I was maybe just anti-Semitic AGAIN. Seems like a pretty obvious soft spot for comedians to poke.

I'm guessing the crowds were overwhelmingly white at bridgetown because minorities have good taste in standup comedy.

That's what comedians do. We poke soft spots. It's HOW we poke them that separates the hacks from the geniuses. Lazy and obviousness is in the attack on the subject, not the subject itself. Shakespeare covered everything already. And then The British Office wrapped up what was left. If you need more info on this subject just watch all of Louis C.K.'s material about raising kids. Certainly he is not the first to cover that subject but he did so brilliantly.

I clearly have too much free time.

@Chuck: ZING!

@Kamau Bell: What the hell does the W stand for? Also, making jokes about Portland being white is trite. Unless someone is really bringing some outstanding delivery or something actually new to the table, people in Portland have already heard it. Fuck, they made a TV about how white we are.

@Graham The W. stands for Whitey. And I stand by what I said in my comment. Topics aren't trite. The execution of topics is where triteness lives.

Soooo, if you perform somewhere where, say, the audience and city is overwhelmingly black - does that mean you are going to comment on that too?

Maybe "grotesquely dark"????

@Rich Bachelor This article wasn't about my funniness on the topic of whiteness in Portland. The comic in question as far as people who "weren't laughing" was Louis Katz. Not me. Please read and take notes on what happened before if you're gonna enter into a comment thread.

@frankieb I knew this would inevitably take a turn down weird baiting alley. Again this is not about what I would do. The article was commenting on the number of comedians who commented on Portland's homogeneity. I didn't call anyone "grotesquely" anything. If you truly want to know the answer to that question then ask Alison Hallett, the writer of this blog, to tell you the name of that comic.

This is why I usually don't comment on posts.

P.S. Louis Katz is hilarious.

P.P.S. I hope Andy Dick is okay.

@Whitey (are we on a first name basis now? I sure hope so): I feel like we're saying the same thing; the topic of racism in America is not a trite topic. Fuck, it's probably one of the three most important topics in America (along with sexism and class-politics). Portland, as a general rule, is a giant echo chamber for feeling fabulous and entitled and not having to ever address the verboten topics of race, class or gender. So when you bring these topics up people get very serious and grave, so adding the "angry black" man into the discussion just makes all the whites defensive. That's just what's going to happen, and I willing to bet that you already know all this stuff.

So when it comes down to comedy, if the room isn't laughing or enjoying the jokes; it's not the room's fault. The comic is the one not doing their job.

wkamaubell....
Hey, I didn't see your show. And I think it is pretty cool of you to subject yourself to critisism in a forum like this. That takes balls.
My hope is to see that either sexuality or race - whatever - is not even needed to be a topic of conversation in most respects.

Not to defend her, but the yellow star envelopes (with sparkles!) Frau Hallett always uses to pass along my theater tickets actually makes me feel kind of special.

Hasn't Andy Dick been pulling this shit for YEARS now? Don't give him attention! Don't blog or comment about him! (Oops.)

Hallett, you're occasionally anti-semantic, but I don't think you're anti-semitic. W. was joking anyway. So don't sweat it.

If a comic really wants to be out there and confrontational about race in Portland they should get up onstage and tell a Mulugeta Seraw joke. Not only would that would be a real knee slapper, it may actually get some people to actually think about the history of race relations here without getting mired in the tired and generic PC white Portland jokes.
But, really, I'm with the folks that say maybe the old "Portland is so white. How white is it? It is soooo white that blah, blah,blah" material just ain't that funny. Sorry.

I was at the Laughter Against the Machine show with W. Kamau Bell and he was quite funny. I'm pretty sure the other people around me also found him funny. If you're still bothering to read this thread, you were very funny! Come back and make fun of us again! Don't worry about all the people on this thread who were not actually there!

I was also at the show with Louis Katz and he seemed off. I think bothering to justify his "fucking like a black man" undercut the humor of the whole joke -- maybe messed up the rhythm of it?

As for the white-ness of Portland: Yup, it's true. And yup, I find jokes about it funny (although I didn't care for the didgeridoo wordplay).

What's the big deal, anyway? Back in the '90s several of my girlfriends told me I fucked like a black man. Urkel.

I'm with @fruitcup and @stukasoverpdx.

I wouldn't argue with someone ranting how bad of a president GW Bush was, but I also would be completely bored to shits if I had to endure listening to such a thing for the 1000th time.

It has been done to death, we know, we agree, move on.

This thread seems to be inadvertently proving exactly the point Bell/Hallett was making, especially considering most of the people proving that point are commenting without having any real knowledge of Bell's act and how he delivered it outside of "It was a black dude joking about how white Portland is."

I mean, the contents of most of this thread are requests to essentially sweep the topic out of view because all potential humor in the subject has been dried up. Which is bullshit. There's no WAY that subject is dry. Not with the history the Northwest has regarding race-relations, and not with the way most "hipsters" treat the existence of black people in Portland like a fuckin abstract. Yeah, someone going onstage and doing a variation of "white folks do THIS - Black folks do THIS - but you wouldn't know because YOU DON'T HAVE ANY OF THEM HERE" would be tired. Granted. But that's not what Bell does or did.

This thread ends up reading like a bunch of mildly-insulted, uptight white kids upset that they got called on the fact that between the lot of them they have maybe one shared black friend, and they're ALL using tried-n-true hipster logic to deflect the jokes, i.e. "Oh, jokes about how white we are. Huh. I was telling those jokes before BLACK PEOPLE WERE INVENTED. Try harder next time, silly black man. We're BEYOND that now." Well, obviously, we're not.

Which is, in fact, funny as hell.

@Bobby: The thing is, if you go to Bell's professional webpage the videos he put up include such original bits as: "Barack Obama's name is TOO black to be elected president", "White People Want to Touch Black People's Hair", "Condoleeza Rice is Ugly and Gap-Toothed", and "White People Stole Black People's Culture"; he IS essentially doing variations on old tired themes.

Oh jeez. I saw Bell at Curious Comedy last year. (same show as catbot, I think.) He was funny.

This thread is making the Baby Jesus cry. I didn't write a blog with the main point being that white people in Portland don't like my jokes. I wrote a blog with the main point being that I had a lot of fun at this years Bridgetown thanks to Andy Wood's heroic efforts. Many of you are ruining that --- or trying to ruin that --- through this thread the way people on comment boards love to try to ruin things. I believe that Alison Hallett just wanted her readers to know that outsiders had a good time at your festival too. I honestly don't care about who on this thread thinks I'm not funny. (I just scanned and got the drift.) Because I'm a comedian, I understand that comedy is subjective. I don't need everybody. I wrote an act that I know asks people to make choices. If you opt out, I'm grateful. In this blog I was just trying to say thank you to Portland and Andy Wood and the organizers of Bridgetown and do so in a humorous way. If you don't get the jokes then again, it is a big world and you are an important person, so there are many other ways for you to fill your time.

I'm still worried about Andy Dick.

Let's move on to something else. I have a topic... I can't believe Obama expects us to believe that piece of paper is actually his birth certificate!!! Yeah, right!

Jesus. You'd think a comedian could handle things being taken out of context.

I'm worried about Andy's dick, too. Who knows where the fuck it's been this weekend?

W. Kamau Bell can't even touch Cornel West's loving humor on the topic of race.