You probably don’t know who Stewart Lee is. That’s a lie. If you’re at this site in its nascent stages, you actually probably do know who he is but this is for people who don’t know who he is. He’s a comedian, which you’ve no doubt gathered from the picture above – a man looking like a comedian.
He’s a Non-American. You listen and you’ll hear the accent and say, “Oh, he’s English” but honestly, if I told you in advance he was Irish, how many would really know the difference. You’d have the idea of “Irishman” in your head and would likely assume that I – the person who is presenting this all to you – knows that he’s actually Irish. And so, even though a part of you would think he’s English, that other part that defers to authority figures would go with Irish. (This is how Nazism happens, people.)
He’s also an atheist. A socialist. A general misanthrope. Between this, the long defense of transgendered individuals, and cartoons mocking religion, by now most people probably think this website is really a hardcore left-wing website masquerading as a place where you get to see fighting and comic stuff. You’re wrong but it’s not a bad assumption, given the facts before you.
Anyways. I, and people of taste, find him to be funny. And I’d like to expand his American appeal, and so every Sunday we shall present a clip of Mr. Lee doing standup from around Not-America (and America, if a clip of him doing a show here arises). I’m calling it Stewart Lee Stand Up Sundays for a few reasons:
- Alliteration is nice to the ears. It was either Sunday or Saturday for that reason. Saturdays tend to have a lot of UFCs though, so they’re booked.
- Sundays are slow. Most people don’t do a lot on Sundays and so a few minutes of laughter is good for the soul.
- I enjoy the subversive* nature of a man who often mocks religion being presented on the Sabbath (this also would’ve worked on Saturdays).
*What a pretentious thing to say write.
I could do Penn & Teller Tuesdays or something, to keep with the alliteration, featuring an American semi-equivalent (in terms of being entertainers who often use their political ideology as the basis for their humor) and then I’d satisfy the libertarian wing of the site. Maybe I will some day, but probably not.
Now then, here he is, for the first time on this website (unbeknownst to him, I’m sure), Mr. Stewart Lee, doing Stand Up, posted on a Sunday.
At first, I thought it was a bit subversive** on my part to link to something you can buy featuring Mr. Lee, given his hard-left leanings. Like asking people to pay money for something from Karl Marx (not really). This made me feel clever.
But: he wrote the book, and he’ll make money off it too, so obviously he’s ok with it. Therefore, he’s actually undermined himself in a way by embracing a form of capitalism so long as it benefits himself (which isn’t true, because I’m pretending for the sake of this paragraph that he hates people making money – which he doesn’t).
**See above for the comment on being subversive and how it makes me a tool.
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