When Gilbert Gottfried Saved America

One of the podcasts that I listen to is Good One. In it, a comedy journalist (is that even a thing?) brings on as a guest a comedian. They play one of the comedian’s bits and then spend close to an hour dissecting it. It seems kind of boring, but I find it quite interesting. I hear comedians that I don’t know. The comedians have dramatically different approaches to joke writing. Some of them spend years meticulously crafting a joke, writing it down and even figuring out where to place the beats for maximum laughs. Other comedians walk up on stage with only the barest of notions of what they want to talk about and it’s largely an improv exercise.

One of my favorite episodes featured Gilbert Gottfried. The joke that they discussed was the infamous Aristocrats joke.

A lot of people already know about this. There was even a documentary about it. It has a legend (perhaps slightly fabricated) of being the joke that comedians would tell each other but never (as you will see why in a minute) perform on stage.

The setup and the punchline is actually quite simple. An all American family, father and mother, son and daughter, enter a talent agent’s office. They are beautifully innocent with sparking blue eyes and blond air. They have an act that they like to show to the agent. The agent, dazzled by their sweet appearance, encourages them to go ahead.

They then proceed to absolutely brutalize each other. The father rapes the daughter. The mother rapes the son. Live, rabid animals are inserted into bodily orifices. By the end, there is blood, vomit, saliva, and semen wallpapering the walls of the agent’s office. This is where the comedians’ creativity come into play. They go hard and as disgusting as possible. Maximum shock value is the point.

At the end, the agent, aghast at the horrifying spectacle, ask what they are called. All four stand up, spread their arms in a salute, and say, “The Aristocrats!”.

What made this episode bizarrely hilarious is how seriously the journalist probed Gottfried to understand what he was trying to achieve with each part of the joke. Example: “When the mother inserted the bloody, rabid rat into her son’s anus, what was the point?”. Gottfried couldn’t stop laughing at the absurd questions for the entire length of the interview.

Gottfried has had a long career at many famous roasts. Of all of his jokes, why did he want to talk about that one?

Therein lies a tale.

Picture New York City immediately in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. We’re talking a number of days or a few short weeks after. There is still a smoky pall over the city. Bodies are still being retrieved from Ground Zero. There was some question whether or not the attacks killed modern ironic comedy. The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart openly sobbing, had just gingerly started up again.

In the midst of this sorrow and despair, in New York City, the Friar’s Club decided to have a roast. It was their attempt to try to bring some normalcy back to the city.

Gilbert Gottfried took the stage. Again, just days after the 9/11 attack, he did a 9/11 joke. The crowd rioted. People were yelling and screaming at him. People were furiously standing and shaking with rage. One person near the front kept yelling “Too soon! Too soon!”. This is believed to be the first occurrence of this phrase in the context of a too topical joke.

Gottfried was done. He’d completely lost the audience. There was absolutely no way to win them back. Perhaps his career was ruined.

In the true spirit of a hard edged comic with absolutely zero fucks to give, he decided to go out hard. He dropped all of his planned roast material. He no longer cared who was on the dais with him. Instead, he did the longest and raunchiest version of The Aristocrats of his career. He put everything he had into it.

After a shocked interval, the crowd got into it. By the end, he had a standing ovation. People in the crowd were openly sobbing.

In that moment, telling that horrific joke, Gottfried proved that humor in America was not dead. He proved that we will rise up again. Despite all of the horror of the attack, we will persevere.

Gilbert Gottfried saved America.