It’s the only thing that anybody was talking about after the Oscars! Congratulations to Billie Eilish for her amazing success, but we just can’t seem to get over the drama that overshadowed everything else. We’re not here to judge who is right or wrong. Whether you’re Team Smith or Team Rock you might want to read more about other stand-up comedians that got into trouble because of their jokes.
1. Let’s start with the classics — George Carlin was arrested for obscenity in July 1972 for performing his famous “Seven Dirty Words” joke at Milwaukee’s Summerfest, one of several times that a joke would get him cuffed. The charges were dropped, but the story made front-page news and garnered Carlin a great deal of publicity.
2. In 2007, Jim Jefferis was attacked on stage during his performance at the Comedy Store in Manchester, England. A man in the audience attacked him and started punching him and stopped only when security intervened. Jefferis said that the reason behind the attack was that man had a putdown with someone in the audience. There are also videos available of the incident where you can see that this attack was no joke. Pun intended.
3. Vir Das got into serious trouble after posting a video called “I come from two Indias” which was part of his performance at the John F Kennedy Center in Washington DC. A police complaint was lodged against the stand-up comedian claiming that he “defamed” India and made derogatory statements. Das released a statement saying: “Like any nation has light and dark, good and evil within it. None of this is a secret…”
4. If a person can be described only by his name, that would be Andy Dick. He is known to have caused a lot of controversies and has crossed the limit of comedy way too often. Well, this was probably the reason why he got brutally attacked on a casual night out. There is a video of the incident where you can see the man casually approaching and punching Andy. He was later found and arrested.
5. It’s hard to imagine that somebody would make a death threat to Hannibal Buress. Several years ago when he made several jokes about Bill Cosby before allegations about his sexual relationships arose. One individual contacted Buress through Facebook, informing him that he was planning to kill Buress. While the threats that he received were not very widespread, they were enough to involve the police.