Sarah Silverman has a new HBO special debuting tonight. I haven't seen it but Variety scribe Brian Lowry, who has, laments that she appears "…determined to prove she can be as dirty and distasteful as the boys." Shannon Kelley thinks there's something very wrong with Lowry holding women to a different set of rules than men. I usually like Lowry but I think Kelley's right.
Ms. Silverman is very clever and very funny. If she's not funny in this particular special, then that's the problem; not the topics she addresses or the words she uses. But I gather she is funny, at least to Lowry, or he'd be writing about that. I guess I'm just amazed in this day and age that anyone is still writing that a comedian is "too dirty." "Too dirty for a specific audience" might be a valid criticism. The venue and the audience more or less defines what's appropriate and if a comic misreads that (or doesn't care), okay, fine. They're inappropriate. But I don't know how any comedian, male or female, could be too dirty, at least verbally, for their own HBO stand-up special. Much of America has outgrown being horrified by the "f" word or any kind of speech. How long before we all recognize that?