Clean comedy is a comedy genre that is generally free of ribaldry: racism, rape jokes, pejoratives, profanity, obscenity, incest, illicit drugs, off-color humor, toilet humor, explicitly sexual content, and similarly objectionable material.[1][2][3][4] Comedians may try to circumvent clean-comedy restrictions by using innuendos, euphemisms, doublespeak, double entendres, and gender-neutral language. Clean comedy is not necessarily unprovocative.[5]
Clean comedy is considered by some to be a higher form of comedy than bits that rely on the shock of profanity or sexual content to elicit laughs.[1][6] Bob Newhart said in a The Wall Street Journal interview that getting laughs from clean material "is harder. It's just harder...I got a certain satisfaction out of getting a response from the audience and knowing I'd done something that may be harder."[7] David Brenner said "Many who rely on dirty humor do so because vulgar language helps sell weak jokes."[5]
Thus, college comedians can mock those groups "liberal" students deride—Evangelical Christians, Scientologists, working-class rural males—yet they dare not even flirt with jokes about race, gender, and sexuality.
[A college circuit comedian] can talk about [their] experience, but [they] can't make fun of someone else's identity.
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