5 Comedy Figures Who Cannot Be Co-Opted By Any Political Ideology

In an age when so many comedians make their livelihood off of unfunny political pandering on Patreon podcasts, it’s deeply ironic that the only comic whose show I’d pay to follow is the characteristically uncontroversial Brian Regan.

Comedians taking strong political stances is a practice as old as the open mic. However, within the last couple election cycles, humor has been a battleground where conflicting schools of thought fight for territory in the impressionable minds of young, terminally online comedy fans whose path to political extremism starts when they stumble upon a provocative stand-up clip or a politically bent meme. As social media continues its insidious expansion across our collective brain space, everything on the internet is increasingly separated into categories like “woke” and “redpilled” — especially comedy, where jokes now carry multiple meanings and hidden dog whistles only for the ears of true believers. 

As such, professional comedians are similarly placed on differing ends of the political spectrum, either by their own hand or by the categorization of those who co-opt their work into a larger movement. The stylings of Dave Chappelle have, stunningly, been adopted by social conservatives. Patton Oswalt is a proudly prolific poster on Leftist Twitter. No comedian is safe from the culture wars — save a select few whose work vehemently avoids categorization based on ideology. Here are our favorites of those unaffiliated funny people, starting with…