Extra Credit Post

                  A campus event that I recently attended was the Tosh.Show College Campus Tour at the Pinnacle Bank Arena on Friday, April 14^th. This tour was a stand up comedy show hosted by Daniel Tosh, who hosts a popular Comedy Central program called Tosh.0. The show lasted about two and a half hours, and consisted of stand up comedy performed not only by Daniel Tosh, but also by his various writers, co-workers, co-founder of the show, etc. This show was not one for the faint of heart, and highlighted multiple current issues, which is why I wanted to talk about it in this blog post. I am not one to be easily offended, nor was I by this show, but I was definitely shocked by some of the things that were said about serious issues happening not only our country but our world. For instance, Tosh’s opening “joke” was a five-minute rant about abortion. I will not state my own personal stance on the topic, but the “jokes” that were told about abortion were very obviously insults towards people who stand with ending abortion and Planned Parenthood. I noticed that once performers changed to the co-founder of Tosh.0, almost half of the audience in the Pinnacle Bank Arena left. Over the weekend after this event, I read multiple angry blog and Facebook posts about how offensive viewers thought the show was, and how they were furious that they “wasted their money” on a ticket. Although I do agree that his and all of the rest of the performer’s content was very vulgar and offensive, I am confused as to why these offended people got so offensive? If they know anything about Daniel Tosh, they know that he is famous for his highly offensive comedy show, so why would they purchase tickets? What I took away from this experience is that a lot of people in today’s world are extremely offensive, and once someone does not agree with their same values and beliefs, they are all of a sudden too good for them to even “waste their money” on a ticket to a comedy show. I personally enjoy watching Daniel Tosh’s stand up comedy as well as his program on Comedy Central, not purely because of his viewpoints and concepts, but more because he openly laughs about issues in the world and relieves some of the tension that everyone associates with them. I think it was nice to watch a show that makes fun of how serious our world is, because I believe that it relieved a lot of stress that people in the audience might have had about the social and cultural issues that were discussed.