Opinion: Too Conservative To Be A Comedy Fan?

It’s so ubiquitous, it’s almost part of a pundit’s official job description these days — bemoaning the increasing national division that has politicized every aspect of our lives, from Thanksgiving dinner to Sunday Night Football, and turned them into cultural battle grounds.

But every once in a while, the stark ugliness of our current atmosphere, in which everything has become an ideological purity test, hits you afresh.

This week, my husband called me over to the couch to show me the Twitter account of up-and-coming Chicago comedian, Andrew Nadeau. His quirky ruminations about how 400-year-old vampires are more likely to have the personality of your grandparents (stymied by technology and scandalized by the amount of sex on TV) than of hot high school rebels—provided a pleasant few minutes of giggles.

One tweet, in particular, elicited a hearty “lol” from us both.

me: aaah! a ghost!

casper: don’t worry, I’m friendly!

me: oh. so you don’t try to scare and murder me?

casper: no! I just live with you and want to hang out and talk all the time!

me:

casper:

me: I’ll be honest that actually sounds worse than the murder thing

Something of an introvert myself, I smiled and shared the post, commenting, “I’ve never felt so seen.” I also gave Nadeau a follow, figuring his witty one-liners would provide a nice breather from the political dialogue that comprises most of my social media interactions.

The next morning, sipping my coffee, I typed Nadeau’s name into the Twitter search bar, anticipating a light laugh before starting my workday. But instead of his busy feed of punchlines, I saw a mostly blank white screen. An announcement in bold, black letters stood in the center:

“@TheAndrewNadeau blocked you.”  

In smaller gray type underneath: “You are blocked from following @The AndrewNadeau and viewing @TheAndrewNadeau’s Tweets.”

It went unspoken, he had also blocked me from being his fan.

It was a small thing — some regional comic I’d never heard of before didn’t want me laughing at his jokes — but it hit me like a slap across the face.

I hadn’t replied to any of his posts nor debated anyone in his mentions. I hadn’t disagreed with his vampire observations nor expressed offense at a few posts that mocked the most sacred tenets of my religious faith. I just thought one of his bits was funny. And I shared it with others, thinking they might find it funny too.

I tend to have a rather mild online personality and, to my knowledge, have never been blocked by anyone before. A consummate church lady, I have never posted an offensive term or, I believe, even called anyone a nasty name online. So what was it that made Nadeau decide, even as he’s presumably trying to build the kind of broad following that results in comedy stardom, that some of his fellow countrymen aren’t welcome to appreciate his humor?

A glance at my own Twitter account makes it pretty clear who I am and what I’m about. I’m a mainstream conservative Christian who expresses, fairly politely, the mainstream conservative Christian convictions shared by millions across the United States. I can only conclude that my beliefs in biblical sexual ethics and the free market, in government restraint and the rule of law, made Nadeau feel he must put up a wall to keep me out.

So I wish you luck, Andrew, in your apparent mission to cull an ideologically pure fan base. But please know that every brick like this creates a little more rancor, a little more distrust in the body politic. It makes it a little harder for the center of a common American culture to hold.

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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