Review of Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (2005) by Joshc. — 23 Jan 2007

What Bruce did with obscenity and Mr. Pryor - especially in his first concert film - did with race was to find the outer boundary of the audience's tolerance and push beyond it, confronting and confusing the satisfied self-image of the liberal, sophisticated public.

This kind of transgression has long since become ritualized and normalized, and Ms. Silverman's act is the latest evidence that mocking political correctness has become a form of political correctness in its own right.

Her version of insult humor is actually flattering, both to herself and to those who find it funny. She depends on the assumption that only someone secure in his or her own lack of racism would dare to make, or to laugh at, a racist joke, the telling of which thus becomes a way of making fun simultaneously of racism and of racial hyper-sensitivity.

(Like many young, otherwise deracinated Jewish comedians, Ms. Silverman falls back on her ethnic identity as a way of claiming ready-made outsider status.) Everything she says is delivered through enough layers of self-consciousness - air quotes wrapped in air quotes - to make anyone who finds it offensive look like a sucker.

She even makes fun of the idea that she might be thought of as an "edgy" comedian. And indeed she isn't. Ms. Silverman is a gutless comic who is just playing it safe.