Ryan Davis isn’t just criticizing Tony Hinchcliffe. He’s arguing that today’s comedy may become tomorrow’s historical evidence
If you know, you know. And if you don’t know, there may not be much I can do for you.
But I have to give comedian Ryan Davis credit for saying something that a lot of people have been thinking about when it comes to the way comedy is being consumed and defended today.
We’ve seen countless defenses of Tony Hinchcliffe, the controversial comedian whose political associations and provocative jokes have generated headlines for years. The most common defense is simple: comedy should be a safe space where anything can be joked about, no matter how offensive, uncomfortable, or painful it may be to certain audiences.
That argument has been used to defend everything from racial stereotypes to jokes about police violence and even the deaths of people killed during highly publicized encounters with law enforcement.
Then Ryan Davis dropped this statement:
“Tony Hinchcliffe is so important to comedy and America. Twenty years from now people will swear that our country wasn’t the way that it is today and will try to change history. They are gonna try to burn the evidence but Tony’s recorded sets and sold out arena shows will stand as proof of things that millions of Americans were cheering for. The type of bigotry disguised as comedy that had people cheering and clapping instead of laughing. They looked more like rallies than comedy shows.”
That’s a powerful statement and observation.
Whether you agree with Davis or not, he isn’t really talking about comedy. He’s talking about documentation. He’s talking about cultural evidence.
History has a funny way of cleaning itself up after the fact. People often look back on ugly periods and convince themselves that “most people weren’t like that.” Yet photographs, recordings, newspaper archives, television broadcasts, and public events often tell a different story.
If you go back far enough in American history, there were public gatherings centered around horrific acts of racial violence. People attended with their families. They took photographs. They collected souvenirs. There was little public shame attached to it in many communities because it was normalized by the culture around them. Today we look back with horror, but at the time many participants saw nothing wrong with it.
That doesn’t mean comedy shows are comparable to those atrocities. They are not. But Davis appears to be making a broader point about how societies normalize certain attitudes in real time and then distance themselves from those same attitudes later.
That is why his comments resonated with so many people.
For many Black Americans, the continued platforming of controversial figures can feel especially frustrating. Years after the murder of George Floyd sparked worldwide protests and conversations about race, some believe the entertainment industry still rewards performers whose material touches sensitive racial issues in ways they view as harmful.
What makes Davis’ statement noteworthy is that he framed the conversation around accountability and memory rather than censorship. He wasn’t demanding that anyone be silenced. Instead, he suggested that these performances may eventually serve as historical artifacts, showing future generations exactly what audiences embraced, laughed at, or applauded during this era.
Interestingly, a lot of people applauded Ryan Davis for speaking his mind. I didn’t see a significant amount of backlash. Granted, the conversation was largely circulating on Threads, so the reach may have been somewhat limited. Still, the reaction was notable.
At minimum, Davis succeeded in getting people to think beyond whether a joke is funny and ask a different question: What does the popularity of certain jokes say about us?
