Poor, sweet, shrinking violet Hillary Clinton is very angry with a Chicago comedy club, the local Laugh Factory franchise, for making a video poking fun at her. After all, there’s absolutely nothing funny about Hillary Clinton and anyone who thinks otherwise should face a severe and swift punishment.
At least, that’s what the Laugh Factory owner says the Clinton campaign actually thinks. Five of the house comedians made a video called “Hillary v. The First Amendment” (ironically), mostly recylcing old jokes about Hillary’s wardrobe, hairstyle, close relationship with Huma Abedin among other, occasionally crass observations. The Laugh Factory posted the video online, something triggered a warning klaxon in Clinton world headquarters, and Jamie Masada, the club’s owner, quickly got an earful from a “prominent” Clinton campaign staffer who demanded the video be taken down, requested the names and home addresses of the comedians in the video, and threated to shut Masada down if he didn’t comply.
The owner of prominent Chicago comedy club Laugh Factory is alleging that the Hillary Clinton campaign contacted him and harassed him after he released a sketch featuring comedians mocking the presidential candidate.
The video “Hillary vs. The First Amendment” mocks Clinton in a variety of different ways, and includes implications that she is old, badly-dressed, and secretly a lesbian. But Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada alleges that shortly after posting the video, he was contacted by a prominent member of the Clinton campaign and asked to take the video down.
“He said the video was disgusting and asked who put me up to this,” Masada said. The Clinton staffer (who Masada said he would not identify) also wanted to know the identities of the comedians who participated in the video.
Those comedians should probably watch out. Hillary Clinton isn’t a big fan of Internet video. She liked the last one that crossed her radar so much, the guy’s still in jail.
From a local perspective, this is absolutely ridiculous. The Laugh Factory has been a huge part of the standup scene in recent years, and has given slots to some very good, if very new comedians. It’s a very open stage, which is rare when you consider that Chicago is a hub for “alternative comedy,” so anyone with opinions that differ from the Democratic Party platform typically need not apply. Weirdly (not to many of us, but probably to them), it didn’t happen to be the totalitarian, Theocratic conservative fanatics everyone so feared that took the first swipe at censoring campaign year comedy.