Plenty of folks think Sarah Silverman is an unfunny, irresponsible racist. Others think she’s a sexy, slick comedian who has perfected her onstage persona of a spoiled, prejudiced, sexually frank Jewish princess. In Jesus Is Magic, Silverman’s shock-comic shtick is, at worst, harmlessly obvious: her material deliberately pokes and prods at everything off-limits to most comedians in mass culture. You’ll find gags at the expense of Jews, African Americans, Catholics, Mexicans, gays, Martin Luther King Jr., midgets, retarded people and 9/11—for starters. Plus, there’s the requisite AIDS, Hitler and Holocaust material.
With lesser talents, this overdriven urge to be politically incorrect could easily be pathetic: remember when Reagan-era mooks like Andrew Dice Clay or Lenny Clarke could simply belt out any dumbass anti-immigrant remark and get a cheap ovation from the crowd? Silverman’s now-infamous ethnic slurs are usually delivered in the context of clever jokes that meet your basic comedic structural criteria (set-up, punch-line and so on). During this recorded performance she makes reference to the much-maligned “chink” remark she made on national TV, which prompted Asian-American watchdog-group leader Guy Aioke to label her a racist. She coolly atones for this indiscretion in her own special way, with a poke at her own people. “It was like the Jews had lost control of the media or something, she says.”
Her stand-up act is preempted a few times by her surprisingly catchy potty-humor songs and mod-production-value music videos. “Porn Star” is the runaway favorite here, with the classic line, “You can’t put your arms around a dirty gangbang cum shot.” There are more schlong-related references than on all of Liz Phair’s albums combined. Fittingly, Silverman ends the stage portion of the show with a version of “Amazing Grace” with her ass and vagina singing harmony.
As this performance can attest, Silverman has comic gifts that go far beyond using racial epithets simply as attention-grabbing tools for generating ticket-selling controversy. Still, on Jesus Is Magic, there’s something to offend easily offended members of all religions, races, genders, ages and political and sexual persuasions. Maybe we should think of Silverman as simply the most egalitarian of insult-comics.
