The News

GG

By Ray Pride

April 12, 2022

“It was a couple of weeks after 9/11. There was a weird feeling in New York. People were walking around in a daze. I was at the roast of Hugh Hefner, and I just wanted to be the first person to make a really-poor-taste joke about September 11. It was impromptu; I don’t remember thinking about it beforehand. I said, “I have to leave early tonight, I have a flight to California. I can’t get a direct flight — they said I have to stop at the Empire State Building first.” I don’t think anyone’s lost an audience bigger than I did at that point. They were booing and hissing. One guy said, “Too soon!” He was just a face in the crowd, but now I wish I knew who it was, because his comment became part of the language. “Too soon.” I had never heard that before. I knew there were times where people wait to make jokes about something, but I always thought that concept was ridiculous. Is there an office with a guy behind a desk who decides when it’s not too soon anymore? You can do jokes about the Lincoln assassination and the Titanic, and no one says anything because everyone involved is dead, and their grandchildren are dead. I actually think that’s in worse taste. You’re saying, “Screw all those people who died, I waited for it to become unimportant to us.” When I do a joke about September 11, or the Japanese tsunami, what’s funny is that it shocks the audience. They are responding to the fact that it’s tragic, and you’re acknowledging it. With the Challenger explosion, or any other tragic event pre-internet, there were always a bunch of jokes that would come out immediately. Everyone was in a rush to tell their friends, everyone was laughing about it, and it was okay. Now, with the internet, it makes me feel sentimental about old-time angry mobs. In a mob you actually had to throw on your jacket, go outside, use your hands. Now you can join a mob sitting on your couch in your underwear. I feel like people who get outraged like that are patting themselves on the back. ‘You see, I was offended.'”

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