The Definitive Guide to Comedy
The lawsuit by a San Diego man claiming Conan O’Brien’s TBS late-night show stole jokes from his Twitter for Conan’s monologue has settled out of court, shortly before going to trial. O’Brien wrote about the decision to settle in an essay today in Variety, saying in part: “I decided to …
Russell Peters couldn’t help himself last month while appearing as a guest on Sway in the Morning on SiriusXM satellite radio. As soon as Sway mentioned Trevor Noah as one of his other favorite stand-ups, Peters went after The Daily Show host, calling him a joke thief and prompting Sway …
In case you missed it, HBO’s VICE News recently took a look at joke theft through the prism of an ongoing lawsuit by a Twitter user named Robert Alex Kaseberg, who alleges Conan O’Brien and his Team Coco staff on TBS stole jokes from him for use in his monologues. …
Over the weekend, comedians caught a New Zealand food company in the act of pilfering a joke from the late Mitch Hedberg about race, and attributing it to its own company. Aunt Betty’s apologized today, admitting to stealing the joke: “Rice is really great if you’re hungry and want 2,000 …
Amy Schumer knows that haters will hate and there’s not much she can do to stop that. Just please don’t call her a joke thief. Ever. Schumer requested and made an impromptu appearance Wednesday afternoon on Jim Norton’s Advice Show on SiriusXM’s Opie Radio channel to defend her honor and comedy credibility. Afterward, …
Comedy Central may have gotten out of the “Fat Jew” business before the masses of protesting comedians got their way…but Josh Ostrovsky’s own countermeasure reveals just how deep the problem of Internet “curation” and “aggregation” goes. To wit. Ahem. Ostrovsky changed the bio of his popular Instagram “thefatjewish” to read …
Let’s not bury the lede before we bury the joke thief. Comedy Central tells The Comic’s Comic today that the cable network never OK’d a pilot for Josh Ostrovsky — aka @FATJEW on Twitter, but more egregiously @thefatjewish on Instagram — and cut ties with the joke thief months ago. …
This just in! Twitter has ramped up its policing of joke thieves, plagiarists and imposters of famous funny folks. A long-running Chris Rock imposter’s account (@ChrisRockOZ): Suspended! A fake Bill Murray? Now just a string of RTs and some private Instagram photos. The @itsWillyFerrell account continues with 1.76 million followers, …
When Saturday Night Live presented a Win, Lose or Draw game show spoof that perplexed a contestant with the dilemma of drawing the Islamic prophet Muhammad, I noted simply: Topical. After all, the Muslim-haters in Texas had just incited a shooting the week before with a “Draw Muhammad” contest. What …
One sketch had them singing for their supper in the Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, Calif. The other stuck them on a riverboat in Nebraska. In both cases — The Groundlings this summer, and SNL this past Saturday — we saw women dolled up in 1980s-era Tina Turner wigs …
