HOW POLITICS KILLED COMEDY, from Andrew Stiles at Acculturated:

One of the most frustrating aspects of our increasingly politicized culture is the demise of comedy. Not that there isn’t a ton of hilarious material to enjoy these days—there is—but it’s impossible to ignore the extent to which lame activism is tarnishing the “comedy” brand. As is often the case, millennials are probably to blame.

As I wrote nearly a decade ago, Orrin Judd, the early blogger and conservative book reviewer has a theory that “’all comedy is conservative.’ I agree with that to a certain extent, but it’s definitely true that at some point on the leftward curve, humor seems to be anathema–there’s just too many shibboleths that risk offending.”

UPDATE: An Insta-reader emails, “Another factor is that you are no longer allowed to enjoy the writing, performing, etc., of anyone who has outed themselves or been outed as a conservative.  I work at a library and a patron told me that is why he no longer reads Orson Scott Card (albeit that he is a fiction writer, not a comedian).”

Yes — getting Ender’s Game to the big screen while keeping Card in the background was like something out of the ’50s blacklist. But then, somebody should write a book about how the blacklist really never went away — it was merely updated from blocking reds to blocking red staters.