Name: Laughter Ban in Schools - Bill Burr
Uploaded: 2021-09-26T14:10:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Laughter Ban in Schools - Bill Burr' from Billy Twinkle Toes on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-09-26. Transcript available. Bill Burr talks about the laughter ban in schools.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Laughter Ban in Schools - Bill Burr' from Billy Twinkle Toes on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-09-26. Transcript available. Bill Burr talks about the laughter ban in schools.

Dear Billy Boo, a few months ago a reader wrote into the podcast about
censorship and some crazy stuff that was happening at their kid's school.
Last week I got a letter from my kid's school. It was basically an outline of
what kids and parents should expect going into the new school year.
All right, tucked away in the middle of the COVID protocol and exciting school
activities was some new guidelines on joke making.
It essentially says that kids are not to make any jokes and parents should
instruct children not to provoke laughter.
Oh my God. Do you see what happens? Do you see what happens when unfunny people
get a voice on social media?
Wow, they're going to get rid of class clowns.
I thought that this was maybe some bullying related stuff and wrote it off.
Later in the week I ran into my neighbor who has a kid in the same school
system.
He's a real nice guy and loaded and does a lot of volunteering in town, i.e.
organizing leagues and raising money for families who need help.
Real salt of the earth.
He tells me that he ran into the principal at a recent outdoor event and asked
about the bullying clause in the email,
specifically if this was provoked by any serious bullying of a child.
The principal proceeded to tell him that laughter had nothing to do with
education and jokes of all types were offensive.
This sounds like a bad movie.
My neighbor asked if knock-knock jokes were okay and he said absolutely not.
He went even further to say that teachers were instructed to discipline any
child who was laughing or being silly.
This is great.
I mean, they are creating the incubator for the next generation of comedians,
possibly the greatest comedians of all time.
I had a hard time believing this, so I did something I've never done nor
thought I'd ever do.
I called the school and talked to the principal.
I had to know for myself.
This sounds like clickbait.
After a few questions about what prompted the no-jokes-allowed policy, he
accused me of being an educational detractor who was promoting archaic
tendencies in my own children.
What was your response?
Ooh, big words.
I wear a tie.
Because he said this to him.
He said, because I said that laughter is an important part of life.
Even then, he then quickly changed the subject and asked what my political
affiliation was.
I said, what?
Oh, in a high-screeching voice.
What?
Like you would say, playoffs?
He responded to my what by saying he had the ability to contact child services
if he felt any child was in danger of mental abuse.
Wow.
Yeah.
This guy's handling his position of power really well.
Needless to say, my blood was boiling and I hung up the phone.
I have a few ideas about how to handle this.
I don't want to stir things up.
But also, it seems unwise to let someone threaten me with child services and
call me archaic for wanting my son to be able to laugh and not be a drone while
in school.
How would you handle this?
All right.
I don't know how to handle this.
I don't know.
How do you handle this?
How do you do this now with, like, all of these fucking people out there that
just ruin all of this shit?
I don't know.
I mean, you can't get your kid kicked out of school.
I mean, this sounds like a great clickbait piece for a newspaper or something.
But that always seems like a bitchy move to me to just fucking rat somebody out
like that.
I don't know.
You know what I would actually do?
I think I might go above the guy's head and just say that I was simply, you
have somebody who's wildly out of control with his own power.
I simply asked what, you know, why my kid couldn't laugh in school and he
threatened to call child protective services.
First of all, dude, I wouldn't, I mean, it's, the only thing that should make
you mad is the threat of that.
That he actually is just threatening you.
But what are they going to do?
They're not going to do anything.
They can't take your kids away because you questioned why my son can't laugh at
school.
He's going to have no bruises or anything like that.
But it's just, that's, that is a full on fucking crazy person.
Is this real?
Are you just trolling me?
I can't believe this is true.
If this is, if this is a joke that is really well written.
I got to look it up.
All right.
I'm taking, I'm, you fished me.
I'm fucking taking the bait here.
Laughter ban in schools.
Speech code of the month.
Drexel University's harassment policy bans inconsiderate jokes and
inappropriate,
inappropriately, inappropriately, Jesus Christ, I'm done.
Inappropriately directed laughter.
Wow.
Wow.
Mom, I got suspended for three days for inappropriately directed laughter.
But where were you directing this inappropriate laughter?
I don't know.
I turned my head in the face of the janitor.
I was looking away from the fat kid and it turns out he was missing a leg.
I was, I was trapped in a triangle.
Um, to Janica laughter epidemic.
What is this?
The Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962 was an outbreak of mass hysteria.
I'm on Wikipedia now.
Or mass psychogenic illness.
Rumor to have occurred in or near the village of Kshasa.
Nothing I've read in the last 20 minutes has seemed real.
On the western coast of Lake Vittoria and Taganyika, which was once united with
Zanzibar.
This is, none of this is true.
Became the modern nation of Tanzia near the border of Uganda.
History, the laughter epidemic of, what do they have, rabies?
On January 31st, 1962, at a mission-run boarding school for girls in Kshasa.
It started with three girls and spread throughout the school, affecting 95 of
the 159 pupils.
The laughter epidemic, obviously a slang for whatever disease they had.
Symptoms lasted from a few hours to 16 days.
The teaching staff were unaffected and reported that students were unable to
concentrate on their lessons.
The schools closed on March 18th.
The epidemic spread to somewhere else.
The villages where several women lived, mostly young villagers, had laughing
attacks.
All right, what happened?
Did somebody light a giant fucking bong and the cloud went over the, this, true
or false?
Here we go.
Laughing epidemic, true or false?
It was no joke.
The 1962 laughter epidemic was no joke, according to some stupid website.
The Chicago Tribune.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
This is the fucking internet.
I don't believe anything on the fucking internet anymore.
I just, I just don't, I'm not going to fucking sit here wasting my time looking
up the laughter epidemic.
Did it happen?
Did it not happen?
What would I do with that guy?
Well, in a perfect world, you could walk up to him and be like, hey, fatso, or
whatever the fuck he looks like.
Hey, baldy.
You know, I would approach the guy and be like, you know, I would approach the
guy and be like, you know, something, you threatened to call child services.
You know, I got to be honest with you, dude.
I never do this.
I would go above that guy's head.
And I would, I would, I would file a complaint.
And what's the worst that's going to happen?
Your kid can't go to that fucking school.
Fuck this guy.
Fuck this guy.
If this is actually real, fuck that guy.
I would go above the guy's head and just say, you know, in a very calm way, you
know, I mean, that person should not have that job.
Nor should they ever have any power.
I'm trying to think what happened to that person as a kid.
You know what I mean?
Had man boobs.
It was shirts and skins in gym class.
They made him take his shirt off.
Some sort of, what was that, that, that movie where they dumped the blood over
the, the prom queen.
Carrie.
This guy had some Carrie shit happen to him.
So now your kid can't have any joy.
Yeah, I would go over his head.
That's what the fuck I would do.
I would, I would not tolerate that.
Um, oh man, that reminds me of a landlord of mine that helped break into my
apartment when I was on the road.
They, they were checking the smoke detectors and I was on the road for three
weeks.
So they had evidently the right to go into my apartment to make sure that there
was no, uh, you know, there was nothing wrong with this.
You know, the smoke detectors were working because if they weren't, there was a
fire that could affect the whole building.
So under that, they came in and, uh, I remember I came into my apartment and I
just felt like something was wrong because it was a notice, but I just felt,
and I just started looking around and, uh, they'd stolen a camera.
They had picked through my CDs.
They took some knickknack shit and I went downstairs and told the guy and the
guy immediately goes, you know, I don't appreciate you coming down here,
accusing my staff.
And I, he immediately got defensive and I was just like, you fucking idiot.
Now I know you did it, but there was really nothing I could do.
So I called the cops and they said, well, unless you have like, you know, they
dusted for fingerprints or whatever, they, there's nothing they could do.
And, uh, so I just stood down there in front of the office, just told a few
people not to rent from there.
That's all I had.
I was like, dude, I'm a comedian.
I can do this all day.
And the reality was I had to go on the road the next day.
So my fuck you to them was I changed the locks and then I moved out.
I moved out and then left the real lock in the middle of the apartment.
But then years later, I realized, well, when they couldn't get in, they just
called the locksmith.
So the locksmith, what I basically did was I gave a locksmith some money.
I cost them that money and they never gave me my, uh, security deposit back or
anything.
There just was a crooked fucking place.
Well, that takes me to a bad place.
All right, let's plow ahead.