Not even “Saturday Night Live” writers are safe from the Ivy-League PC crowds.
Not even “Saturday Night Live” writers are safe from the Ivy-League PC crowds.
Nimesh Patel, comedian, Emmy Award nominated writer, and the first Indian-American writer for SNL, was performing stand-up comedy last Friday for an event hosted by Columbia University’s Asian American Alliance (AAA). But mid-set, the 32-year-old was removed from the stage because his jokes were making some audience members uncomfortable.
The event was called cultureSHOCK: Reclaim, but apparently attendees neither wanted a shock nor to reclaim anything, as Patel’s treatment shows.
Patel’s set focused on his experiences growing up in a diverse neighborhood in New York City, according to the student newspaper the Columbia Spectator. But when he made a joke about a gay, black man he knew growing up, things turned sour. Patel joked that being gay couldn’t possibly be a choice because “no one looks in the mirror and thinks, ‘this black thing is too easy, let me just add another thing to it.’”
The Spectator reported that 30 minutes into Patel’s set, AAA members “interrupted the performance, denounced his jokes about racial identities and sexual orientation, and provided him with a few moments for closing remarks.
