Andrew Schulz Says Censorship Is Good for Comedy

According to conservative comedy podcaster Andrew Schulz, the recently ended “censorship era” was good for comedy because it gave comics lines to cross and boundaries to push, which Schulz needs. Recently, he was so desperate to hear someone say “stop” that he threatened to rape Kendrick Lamar.

The rule of thumb for transgressive comedy has always been, “If you’re pissing people off, you’re doing something right,” which is true up until a point. While toothless humor that seeks to offend nobody and make no waves will always be inferior to challenging material from a confident, intelligent and, most importantly, hilarious artist, in recent years, roughly half of the comedy community has taken the provocative nature of the medium to mean that being deliberately insulting and insensitive is the ultimate goal of stand-up. 

Enter Schulz, one of the many Joe Rogan-inspired podcasters and occasional stand-up comics who has built a veritable media empire off of mocking “cancel culture” and calling comedians, rappers and critics who differ from his political leanings “woke” in viral YouTube clips, occasionally threatening to sexually assault them for such snowflakery. 

In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Schulz made a surprising admission that the American public’s brief obsession with political correctness in comedy was actually great for podcasters like him and Rogan because it gave them something to complain about in American culture, and nothing attracts clicks, views and Patreon subscribers quite like a rich white guy getting triggered.

Despite the fact that Schulz interviewed now-President Trump on his podcast Flagrant just weeks before the 2024 general election, the comic bristled at his interviewer’s suggestion that he and his fellow anti-woke podcasters played a role in Trump’s re-election, incredulously claiming to be nonpartisan and incapable of influencing the votes of his followers. “I don’t really care about politics,” said Schulz. “I just care about culture, but sometimes politics is the reflection of culture. That’s when I start to kind of key in on it.”

“Now the pendulum is swung the other way, so we’re out of like the censorship era,” Schulz said of the election’s impact on humor, saying of the “censorship” and “cancel culture” that he and his colleagues turned into tiered podcast subscriptions. “Comedians are usually the first ones to complain about it because it kind of affects the way that we do our thing and that’s happened throughout history and usually you get like really prolific comedians that come out of these times. Carlin being one of them. I mean, even Eddie (Murphy), you know, like people and (Richard) Pryor, the way that they would talk about them, like ‘I can’t believe they're saying these things,’ like, ‘This is so, this is crazy.’”

“So I think the censorship in a way is kind of good for comedy,” Schulz posited, saying that “censorship” enabled certain comics to become louder voices in cultural conversations and amass social power. “Comedians speak about (censorship) and then comedy is having a boom and that’s a reflection of, you know, the most influential person on the planet, Joe Rogan being a comedian and loving comedians and putting comedy at the forefront of his interests.”

Despite the many contradictions in Schulz’ statements — not the least of which is that right-wing comedy podcasters had no effect on the election, but Rogan is the “most influential person” alive — he’s dead-on that what he perceives to be “censorship” was a boon to comics who complain about cancel culture, political correctness or whatever they decided “woke” meant that week. The increased scrutiny of white guy comedians like Schulz who routinely target women, racial minorities and non-traditional sexualities and gender expressions in their acts made Schulz and Rogan the voice of resistance in the eyes and ears of many comedy fans, and these podcasters’ ability to claim oppression directly translated to the massive media deals they secured during the “censorship era.”

Schulz basically just admitted that the panic over cancel culture in comedy was a profitable grift, and he and his contemporaries absolutely capitalized on the pendulum swing that immediately followed the American public’s brief experiment with criticizing comedians for punching down on marginalized communities in the late 2010s. Now, as Schulz and his buddies wield unprecedented political and cultural influence while printing money on Patreon, Schulz’ success proves that the war against cancel culture was as profitable for conservatives as any of the actual wars they’ve started this century.