This year’s Emmy for Writing in a Variety Special went to Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special “Nanette.” If you haven’t seen “Nanette,” critics will tell you to drop everything and go view it immediately. It is a rare feat to reach a critic score of “100% Certified Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, and “Nanette” holds that honor as well.

Curiously, over a thousand people who saw Nanette took the time to leave a review on Rotten Tomatoes. While forty six critics gave “Nanette” a “100% Certified Fresh” rating, the 1,290 audience reviewers panned it with a 27% rating overall.

Let’s compare this year’s crowned comedic champion with a recently released special by veteran funnyman Dave Chappelle. Seventeen critics panned “Sticks & Stones” with a total rating of 35%, while 37,739 audience reviewers currently have it sitting at an overall 99% positive score.

Where’s the disconnect? Critics think “Nanette” is “nakedly honest new territory” for comedy. It’s “dry humor” and “raw, powerful storytelling.” “Sticks & Stones,” on the other hand, is “edgy but empty,” and “won’t elicit many laughs.”

Sixty three people opined these words about Chapelle and Gadsby’s latest offerings. Almost forty thousand people beg to differ. Something’s missing here, and it’s an important point: if you laugh at Chappelle, you’re doing so because you think it’s funny. Wokescolds everywhere find that problematic. In their ever increasing attempts to control what we say and do, the terminally progressive now find your sense of humor the area in which they gained the moral high ground.

Truly unconstrained laughter is a threat to authoritarians of any kind, because it can’t be controlled. The wokescolds and terminally progressive of our world can’t handle that. So they write about how Chappelle hates trans people, or how the sacred cow they worship should be spared his toxic male gaze. They won’t actually show video of “Sticks & Stones,” nor will they attempt to watch it, because there’s a chance they might find something Chappelle says funny.

I haven’t seen “Nanette,” but I won’t knock it. Comedy is subjective, and people find different things funny. That aside, I found myself cringing at different parts when I watched “Sticks & Stones,” but I laughed as Dave pulled no punches, sparing no one from his wrath.

And yes, Chappelle can get away with most of what he says because of his celebrity status. Even he points out celebrity isn’t a pass for people in today’s society. In the first ten minutes of his special, he points out the problem of cancel culture, and does so by laying the blame squarely on his live audience.

You won’t hear any of the wokescolds mention that, because it doesn’t fit their preferred narrative of how Chappelle’s a transphobic bully who punches down.

There’s hope in all this madness, though. A fairly progressive editor at a SJW leaning entertainment site actually had a fun time at the Comedy Central Roast of Alec Baldwin. In his recap of the event, he managed to actually learn something important.

If we weren’t defending Chappelle and Bill Burr from the wokescolds, we were buying tickets to Booksmart or the new Ghostbusters or Hannah Gadsby so that the misogynists don’t win. Isn’t it all a bit exhausting? Maybe there’s no perfect world where the act of laughing is perfectly apolitical, but could it at least not be so performative? Laughing because you think you should is by far the least satisfying kind of laugh. (emphasis mine)

This is absolutely correct, because it not only robs you of the chance to laugh, it robs you from enjoying the moment of laughter. Let’s settle this right now with a truce, if the wokescolds are ready to do so.

Let’s declare, once and for all, comedy to be the area where people get a hard pass for toeing the line of what’s politically correct and what will send you to the bread lines. If you’re a comedian, I will agree to a working argument that I might not like what you say, or even find it funny. I will acknowledge what you’re doing is comedy, and move from that point. Is this too much to ask for in finding common ground?

If we can’t even come to that, then I fear even humor may be lost for us all.

“Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, “Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.” Man bursts into tears. Says, “But doctor…I am Pagliacci.”—Alan Moore, “Watchmen.”