Sean Scully Looks at Politics in America | Big Think

Sean Scully Looks at Politics in America

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Josh Lieb is an absolutist when it comes to freedom of speech. As a comedy writer and producer on late night programs like The Daily Show and The Tonight Show, he knows that the freedom to essentially roast leading political figures is vital to true democracy. Jokes made in bad taste may worry you, but you should be absolutely petrified if you’re not hearing jokes and satire at all. It’s the same for hate speech, says Lieb: limiting expression has never changed the nature of hate, it only leads to an Orwellian path—and it’s during these exact moments in history, when the political divisions are so high, that thought criminalization and oppressive control find their way in. Josh Lieb is the author of

I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President and Ratscalibur.

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JOSH LIEB:

Josh Lieb is the former Producer and Show Runner of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. His credits include stints as Executive Producer of NewsRadio and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He won 7 Prime Time Emmys as a producer and writer for The Daily Show. In 2009, he published a young adult novel, I Am A Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President, which was a New York Times Bestseller.

Lieb was raised in Columbia, South Carolina, and graduated from Harvard, where he was an editor of The Lampoon, the college humor magazine. After graduation, he found work writing for Twisted Puppet Theater, The Jon Stewart Show, and NewsRadio. He subsequently worked as a producer or consultant on shows including The Simpsons, Drawn Together, Sirens, Nikki, I Hate My Teenage Daughter, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Lieb's tenure at The Daily Show lasted from 2006 to 2010, during which he also served as Executive Producer of “The Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear” and as co-editor and co-author of Earth: The Book.

In 2013, he wrote and directed a series of comedic shorts to raise money and awareness for the charity Water.Org. Stars featured in the shorts included Matt Damon, Jessica Biel, Sir Richard Branson, and Bono.

Penguin/ Random House released Lieb's second novel, Ratscalibur, in 2015.

In October 2016, NBCUniversal announced an exclusive writing deal with Lieb.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Josh Lieb: We're America—we can say anything the fuck we want and no one can stop us, and that's great.

In any political time the ability to poke fun at the leader or supposed leader is invaluable. It’s not just a stress relief. I’m not one of those people who sees a whole bunch of nobility in comedy, like it’s a great art and important thing we do, but it’s nice. It’s funny. It’s a good thing, and it really is important in democracy to be able to do that. I’m an absolutist on free speech. I think once we can’t make fun of our leaders… As long as we can make fun of our leaders I’m okay. Once we can’t make fun of the leaders, then I’m concerned about where we’re going.

People sometimes confuse—I think legally you should be able to say anything you want. But then again, if you’re seeing that someone is booked on a tv show who you don’t agree with, you’re not violating anyone’s free speech when you say, “I don’t want to be in a program with that person.” Or if your publishing house is publishing a book by someone you don’t like, there’s no violation of free speech or you’re not impinging on anyone when you say, “I don’t care to be associated with this person.” That's fine. But I do think legally we need to be able to say anything we want to say.

I'm worried. I'm worried when I see people get in trouble for slips of the tongue; I'm worried when I see interpretation being used to hurt people.

But the list of words that you cannot say seems to grow. It's never going to get smaller, it's never going to be like, "Well actually you know what go ahead with that one, like, we're cool with that." I think it's fantastic when oppressed groups like sort of reclaim words like when the queer community made queer like “their” word, they said, “All right you can apply that label to us, fine, we'll take pride and we'll slap it on ourselves.” And I think every group does that to a certain extent, or has learned from that example. But once that little demon gets in your head and says, “Can't say that,” we're screwed.

I worry when there's talk of limiting speech. And I worry—I sound like a grandmother—I don't like hat...

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