Apparently anything goes when it comes to comedy on Hulu, especially if it’s comedy written by white people. And it doesn’t matter if the subject of a joke is a 3-year-old and R. Kelly.
Hulu recently premiered a new comedy produced by Saturday Night Live alum Amy Poehler called Difficult People, starring and created by Julie Klausner. In the series, Klausner plays Julie Kessler, a comedian who hates everyone but herself and fellow comic Billy Epstein (played by Billy Eichner).
The scene in question involves Kessler and Epstein having a conversation about a joke that Kessler performed and bombed. The joke involved Jay Z and Beyoncé’s daughter, Blue Ivy, and R. Kelly and touched upon Kelly’s past, including the reported video of him urinating on a young girl.
“I wrote that thing about Blue Ivy and now the Internet is being really mean to me. Unfollow. Kill yourself. From @SpinClassAddict9,” Kessler stated.
“What was the joke?” Epstein asked.
“‘I can’t wait for Blue Ivy to be old enough so R. Kelly can piss on her,’” Kessler replied.
And needless to say, people have taken to social media to express their outrage at the joke.
https://twitter.com/OHTheMaryD/status/633282442292387840https://twitter.com/youngsinick/status/633318238714228736https://twitter.com/daniecal/status/633305556007174144https://twitter.com/itschasdotson/status/633061757490085888https://twitter.com/rebekahwsm/status/629685384406937600
One has to wonder why anyone in the writers room thought the joke was OK or that pedophilia is something funny to joke about. There’s comes a point in comedy and in writing comedy when people need to take responsibility and realize that not everything is funny. A grown man urinating on a child is never funny, and for it to be fodder in a writers room just shows you how detached some people can be from the wrongs and rights of the world.