by In ordinary times, I’d dismiss much of this stuff as all a bit too ordinary. But we’re decidedly not living through those times right now. Which means hearing Segura imagine death squads come for trivial slights, or later, hearing his mother try to convince him that “God is trying to send us a message” with California wildfires and Florida hurricanes (let alone, the coronavirus) might make us pause. Perhaps it’s fortunate that Segura was not looking to fight with his mom in that moment.
He already had come to terms with how to deal with “cancel culture” as a stand-up comedian. He doesn’t care.
“Because I enjoy upsetting people,” he explained, just after making you picture your elderly relatives saying and doing naughty things to one another. “I don’t know what it says about me psychologically, but there is, I don’t know, there’s a marching band inside of me right now going, ‘Good job, good job.’”
It’s easier, and perhaps more fruitful as a performer, to ignore your haters and detractors. As he tells us in this hour: “I don’t think any performer should digest everything sent their way,” adding: “And I wish I had known that ‘cause it kind of gets to you, you know?”
Nevertheless, he read and heard your complaints about his cracks about gypsies, and especially about Louisiana; not that it changed his mind, mind you.
Because he’s not trying to change yours. Instead, he said: “I think you have a right to be offended by whatever offends you, and I think you have a right to express it. I do not think, however, that you have a right to expect anyone to do anything about it.”
He compares it to feeling hungry, and expecting someone to feed him, or having any other emotion.
Segura addressed a variation on this earlier in his special, talking about the boring guy at the bank who wanted to burden Segura with the details of his life. In that instance, Segura concluded: “If you have the audacity to tell people how you’re doing when they say, ‘How you doing?’ that shit is rude and selfish, all right? There are two acceptable answers to ‘How you doing?’ Fine, and great. And if you’re miserable, you say ‘fine.’”
Why? “Because nobody wants to hear about your problems.”
Same goes for comedians hearing how they offended you. Segura notes that as a parent of young kids, he already deals with emotionally fragile outrage all of the time.
Is he suggesting you’re childish or infantile by taking umbrage at any joke? Before you can suss that out for yourselves, Segura has pivoted hard into harder-hitting truth bombs, such as asking women how they feel about gender equality, or asking his white fans in this Austin, Texas, venue how they’d measure up as slave holders had they been born into an earlier age.
If you are superstitious, or religious, or put much into horoscopes, then Segura won’t be for you.
