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Do the targets of their material have less power than they do, or more?
Its an axis often used to measure something like morality.
It is Bad to punch down.
Meanness aside, though, the punch-up-punch-down axisis also a measurement of degree of difficulty.
When I was a kid, they told me California was gonna be gone by now.
Be glad that shits still here!
The joke only mostly works.
But the precision of the joke isnt even fully the point.
Its the gutsiness of it.
As Jay would put it, its theballsof it.
Joking that Greta Thunberg is annoying?
My texting finger itches for the wide-eyes emoji.
At an earlier moment in the special, Jay talks about the audacity of white people.
Theyre ambitious, she says, and audacious in their presumptions of power, imperviousness, and entitlement.
Its one of the many fantastic sequences throughout the hour.
Everybody steals, she says.
But when Black people steal, they spread shit out.
Cause [theyre] afraid.
Not the white man, she says.
Put it all in one building.
Erect a fortress for it.
And yes, charge em $20 to see it.
And if one of em touches it, shoot em.
Its not racist, Jay says.
Shes absolutely on the money there.
That stretch of material hits in a way the Thunberg joke doesnt quite manage.
But both sequences are united by the same underlying approach.
(Primarily his own.)
Jay has as much fascination with biology as Chappelle.
She jokes about peeing and how women arent taught how to pee well.
She jabs at her own dislike of male bodies and about the undeniable appeal of physical power.
Its about sheer physicality.
Its about simplistic readings of outward appearances and about gendered assumptions.
Its Get [my luggage] too!
You gettin bags, getallthe bitches bags!
Like Elon Musk going to space, Jays audacity is what pulls it off.
Do not mistake my praise for Jays boldness as a disregard for her craft.
But none of the special would work if it hadnt been so painstakingly built this way, either.
Theyre tiny, though, in the larger scheme of things.
