Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer’s Impassioned Defense of Slurs

In an episode of their podcast 2 Bears, 1 Cave released yesterday, Bert Kreischer and Tom Segura celebrate the resurgence of the slurs “gay” and “retarded.” The segment won’t shock anyone who reads this newsletter, but I find it illuminating for a few reasons. Most notable is Segura’s naked declaration that he doesn’t care if it hurts people when he uses “gay” as a pejorative—it’s fun, and he’s going to keep doing it. Later, the duo concedes that it would be cruel to use the words cruelly, but that’s simply not what they do, and anyone who might object to their usage simply needs to accept that a majority of people disagree with them. 

A transcript of the conversation follows below, with some commentary throughout and after. 

Kreischer: It's crazy how "gay" almost disappeared and then it came back strong. I hear so many people calling shit "gay" that I'm like, I remember when I stopped saying it for a while.

Segura: So the only critique that was valid that I heard—that you have to listen to when you go, "that's gay" and you mean, "that's lame"—was that people were saying, what if a young kid that's gay, actually homosexual, hears you saying that something that is shitty is gay and they kind of associate that with themselves? And I go, oh, that's a valid critique. And then I was like, yeah, deal with it. That's gay. It's fucking—it's fun. It's a fun—

This is pretty much the whole ball game here: “It’s a valid critique, but I don’t care.” Got it, thanks! Let’s keep going anyway:

Kreischer: You got in trouble for saying "retarded."

Segura: I got in trouble for saying "retarded."

Kreischer: Isn't that crazy? That's so wild that—go ahead.

Segura: Not only that. Hold on. Also—

Kreischer: Do you remember they wanted you to do the Retard Challenge?

Segura: Dude, please. It's unbelievable. I went to the Special Olympics, dude. Not to the event. To the headquarters.

Kreischer: [Cracking up] Wait, what did you compete in?

Segura: I probably actually wouldn't win. First of all, let me just say this. The most comforting thing, the thing that I enjoy the most is when I'm around somebody who is gay and they use "That's gay" the same way that we do. Then I go, "ah." Because they're like, "No, no. Yeah, of course. That shit's so gay." I think that's the best. The retarded people—

Kreischer: You got in, I think this is glossed over. You got in a lot of trouble. I'm going to say it. You don't have to say it. So if everyone knows, according to my dad, I don't know what the truth means, but I'll tell you my truth. I always tell you my truth. You made a joke about the word, the word and the usage of the word and how—you didn't just call something “retarded,” you made a joke about the word and it got so out of control. They wanted you to take your special down and you don't have to answer any of this. I'm just going to tell you my side of the story.

They were legit thinking about it. And you commented with, "Hey Netflix, if you took my special down, that would be retarded." And then Netflix is like, "That's not the buzz we were looking for, Tom."

Segura: Yeah, that wasn't helpful.

Let’s pause here to revisit the joke they’re talking about, from Segura’s 2018 special Disgraceful: 

You can’t say “retarded” anymore. It was just here. Don’t you remember? “Retarded.” That’s how I—People get very upset. I don’t really support the arguments against it. When people are like, “You shouldn’t say it.” “Why?” “What if there’s one over there?” And you’re like—we never said it like that. We were never like, “Look at that guy!” You didn’t say it like that. You said it to describe an idea, or a situation, you know? If your friend was like, “I’ll pick you up at your house, and then we’ll come back to my place, and later we can go back to your house. And we can get your bags. And then, we’ll come back over here after that.” And your like, “That’s retarded. Why the fuck would we do that?” But now you can’t say that. Now you’ve gotta be like, “That’s not… smart. Your idea has an extra 21st chromosome, if you ask me.” It’s not the same.

You can’t say, “That’s gay.” Damn. I used to abuse that expression, I’m not gonna lie. And never for anything remotely sexual. I just would say it all the time. If you were like, “I’ll have a water, no ice.” I’d be like, “That’s gay.” You know? “Why do you have so many balloons? That’s gay.” Shit like that. Can’t say it anymore. Now, to be clear, you can say “that’s gay.” But it has to be for something overtly gay. Like it has to be ten guys standing in a line, each of them has their dick in the ass of the guy in front of them. And they’re marching and going, “I want the come. Give me the come. I want the come.” And then you can go, “That’s gay.” And even then they’re like, “Take it easy.” And you’re like, “All right, jeez.”

Here I’ll note the trick Segura plays in this bit, which is a common move by comics defending their use of slurs: a sort of feigned ignorance about the fact that their usage is necessarily demeaning. A slur deployed in the fashion he’s describing is a comparison, specifically a negative comparison. The game these guys play is to pretend it can’t possibly be demeaning toward the targeted group unless they are explicitly, consciously targeting the group. This is very obviously not how language works, and they all know it. Words have associations, and those associations take root in the minds of people who hear them. 

Back to the podcast segment:

Kreischer: And then you had to go meet with people. And now it's almost like watching what's happening today makes me outraged that we could have just done that then.

Segura: Well, I'll tell you this, man. It was a very shit—I don't think a lot of people realize how shitty of an experience it was.

Kreischer: I told you that. I said when I went through something, I forget what my thing was, but I said I feel bad that I'd never reached out and said, "Hey man, I hope you're going through," you know?

Segura: It was bad. It was really bad. I actually thought that my career was kind of going to end. When you're in it, you really feel like you're in a little bubble. And all I got every day was just people threatening to kill me, send me messages, "I'll beat your fucking head in with a hammer." Crazy shit.

And then I keep getting these calls. They're like, "Hey, they want you to go meet with the Special Olympics". I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And I'm like, "Who's asking?" And then finally they're like, "It's Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix wants you to go do it." I'm like, "What? He wants me to go do it?" And they're like, "Yeah." I go, "I guess I'm going to go do it." I went down there-

Kreischer: When they go, Hey, I'm not going to say it. I know what you're saying. There's a couple guys at Netflix you don't say no to.

Segura: Well, yeah, the guy that started it.

Kreischer: There's a couple guys at Netflix. I remember—Netflix is an interesting family to be a part of because there's a couple guys that could have their way with me. Keep going.

Segura: Well, here's the funny thing. So they're all attacking me and one of the things that I figure out pretty quickly is that I'm an attainable target because there's all these other movies and shows and comics who have said "retarded." And I'm like, "Hey, what about—Tropic Thunder's on there at the time?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, they're upset about that, but they can't really get ahold of Ben Stiller, so. They can find you, though. They got you." I'm like, oh cool.

And then I go down there and Special Olympics people were like, "Hey, we watched the special and actually you're a funny guy. It made us laugh." And I'm like, okay. And they're like, "But that word is so problematic." And I'm listening. We're having an adult conversation and after we speak they're like, "You really, you're a nice guy and you're thoughtful." And I go, thanks. And they're like, "I didn't want to laugh, but I did laugh at your special." I go, "Thanks, man."

And then the guy's like, "I just want you to know that I appreciate you coming down." And I go, thanks. He goes, "But I'm going to still do everything in my power to try to have your special taken down." And I go, what? And he goes, "Yeah." And I go, okay. And then I left there.

[…]

Segura: But here's what's funny because this all started when you're saying people are saying shit's "gay" again and "retarded." So for a minute though, after this whole went down, first of all, one of the high-ranking guys got fired because he was referencing my special, and then in the reference to my special, he said the N-word in a meeting. And then people were like, "Why are you saying the N-word?" He's like, "No, I'm talking about words." And then he did it twice and they fired him. Right? That was a huge story. I'm not like—

Kreischer: I remember that. I remember. No, I remember that.

Segura: This was in the trades and in New York Times and everything. And then there was kind of a policy for a minute that they were like, "Hey, you cannot say that word in specials." So they stopped Jay Oakerson.

Kreischer: Jay Oakerson, yeah.

I’d completely forgotten the story they’re referring to, so here’s a refresher courtesy of Variety: 

[Jonathan] Friedland, who spent about a decade as a Wall St. Journal reporter and editor, reportedly called a meeting of around 60 employees in the publicity department earlier this year to discuss how the team could better handle backlash to insensitive content. He specifically referred to a joke in Tom Segura’s Netflix stand-up special about how the comedian longed for a time when the word “retarded” was acceptable in polite society.

Friedland told the Journal he was advocating for parents of special needs kids who might see the routine and feel a “gut punch” over the comments — saying, “as if an African-American person had heard the N-word.” But Friedland used the full slur in the meeting.

After wide complaints from staff, Friedland apologized in writing to staff, spoke with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his own team before meeting two human resources reps who were both African American. He repeated the full N-word — again — to the two reps in recounting the story. Two months after that, at an April off-site meeting in Rio set for top executives, Friedland glossed over the event and expressed remorse again, the report said. The apologies weren’t sticking.

Again, Segura’s description of the controversy relies on that feigned ignorance about what slurs are and how they work. Friedland didn’t need to say the N-word to make his point; he chose to use it, and later he chose to use it again. I’m reminded of conversations I’ve had about Shane Gillis’s use of slurs for Chinese people in the clips that led to his SNL firing. His defense (and that of his supporters) was that he was playing a racist character when he said them, to make a point criticizing racists. This argument might sound superficially compelling, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. One can easily criticize racists without using racial slurs, just as one can compare ableist slurs to racist ones without using the words themselves. The offense, when there is an offense, lies in the choice, which is why we tend to seek accountability for patterns of behavior rather than single instances, barring the occasional case where those single instances are particularly egregious. 

Moving on:

Segura: Well then I got a call on my follow-up special. They were like, "Hey, if you talk about the last special and everything that what happened," they're like, "you can't say 'retarded' again. That was really bad. The fallout was bad." And I just kind of accepted it. And I'm not critiquing, I think language and stuff, there's cultural shifts. Things happen. You go, okay. Here's the funny thing. It has been five, six, seven years and now people say, everyone says "retarded" again. And it's in shows, it's in standup.

Kreischer: It's crazy.

Segura: It's just back. The people just kind of were like, "No, we want it back. We're going to say it again." And I don't mean in the malicious way to, I'm just saying when we go, "Dude, what are you doing? This is retarded. You keep drinking." People are, but that version is back in, is like acceptable.

This is a true and important point: there has been a cultural shift. Homophobic and ableist language is more widely accepted today than it was five years ago. Absent from their analysis is the fact that this shift has causes, and they are among those causes. Slurs have returned to the mainstream in part because high-profile entertainers never stopped using them, and in fact spent years reorienting their careers and industry around their perceived right to use them. This coincided with the rise of a political movement dedicated to the eradication of marginalized groups from public and private life—perhaps these things are related.

Kreischer: I gotta be honest with you. I end up going old school where I go, yo, I had a period where I didn't say any of these words and I understood it and I got it. And now that I hear them so casually and callously said, just whatever, I go, "Whatever happened to you guys? Did you guys get beat that easily?"

Segura: Yeah.

Kreischer: We were on your team for a second. I never really used the word. I never really, I'll tell you what, I never made fun of anyone with Down syndrome in my entire life. It's not my thing.

Segura: No.

Kreischer: And by the way, to the point where I remember—

Segura: Making fun of somebody like that—

Kreischer: It's fucking, yeah.

Segura: All the word—I understand why somebody goes that, "This is hurtful." It's not like it's lost on me. But I'm saying you have to accept the way that language works is if enough people agree that a word has a second meaning, then it has that meaning because people are agreeing on it. And with that word, we all—to use it to somebody with somebody with a disability, that is cruel and it's completely unnecessary. It's not funny. But people say it for—

Kreischer: Same with "gay."

Segura: That's what I'm saying.

Kreischer: Yeah. I mean "gay" or it's like—both those words. I just go, I don't know. I've never made fun of gay people. I've enjoyed them.

Segura: You never beat up a gay guy in high school?

Kreischer: No, never.

This is obviously flatly untrue: not only do homophobic and ableist slurs demean gay and disabled people by definition, these guys consciously make fun of gay and disabled people all the time, as I’ve documented in this newsletter. More interesting to me is the admission Segura made earlier, when he complained about how shitty it was to go through the controversy over his 2018 special. To recap: 

Segura: Well, I'll tell you this, man. It was a very shit—I don't think a lot of people realize how shitty of an experience it was […] It was bad. It was really bad. I actually thought that my career was kind of going to end. When you're in it, you really feel like you're in a little bubble. And all I got every day was just people threatening to kill me, send me messages, "I'll beat your fucking head in with a hammer." Crazy shit.

In my years writing about various forms of problematic language in comedy, I have generally found that it is considered puritanical to believe that words can hurt people. Comedians say this all the time: all they do is tell jokes, and if you’re offended by their jokes then you must be some sort of gay pussy. If you step back for a second, though, you will see that it is a very basic principle of language that words can hurt people, and a great deal of morality, law, and society operate with this principle in mind. In the passage above, Segura makes clear that the words of his critics hurt him; Dave Chappelle has wrung many hours of comedy out of the pain levied by his own detractors. Perhaps they might respond that saying “that’s gay” is qualitatively different than threatening to kill someone or get them fired—to which I would respond that identity-based harassment makes it quite difficult for people of given identities to live and work—but the simple fact is they agree on the basic premise. Language is a real thing; it can do real harm. 

They would do well to consider what it’s like for gay and disabled people to move through a world where comedians feel free to use their identities as insults. If they can’t manage that, though, they would do well to consider that if culture can shift in one direction, it might one day shift back.