UCLA has been digitizing their recordings of public events from throughout their history, and this is a talk given by Lenny Bruce in 1966. I accessed it via UCLA’s library website, but the recordings are up on youtube, so I’ll give you a link to the channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5zrXo0H-GugDtgkMIyBUHoUQEmJjJm3A I’m going to be uploading an article on discourses surrounding controversial humor, and so I wanted to do a comedy nugget as well. Bruce interests me in the status he has been awarded as one of the great forerunners of modern stand-up, despite making very few “jokes” on stage in the traditional sense. Here, he riffs about his belief that the American government is not set up to respond to political protest in the form of marches etc., but only to legal action. The structure of this, largely serious, discussion, though, clearly mirrors the structure of many contemporary stand-up routines and still manages to be funny throughout despite its lack of discernible punchlines.