Kat Timpf is Coming to Town

Kat Timpf will be performing a standup routine at the Aladdin Theater in Portland on September 19th to promote her recent book You Can’t Joke About That. Her book is a comical memoir of her life juxtaposed as a manifesto to free speech.

Reading her book I learned a few things about this comedian who is best known as a regular panelist on Fox’s late-night show Gutfeld! First, she is a fellow graduate of Hillsdale College. Second, she has some sad life stories to tell.

And she jokes about them. Joking about life’s troubles has been part of her routine.

She also jokes about how the comedy of the past gets erased when considered to no longer be in good taste. Ultimately, Timpf finds that to be no joking matter:

The only right, honest thing to do is to just keep everything. Erasing a joke to make the past look better amounts to lying about the past. It already happened, and pretending it didn’t exist is no different than pretending that you didn’t bang that guy who was popular in your high school in his parents’ basement where he still lived after you saw him at your reunion.

The limitation of lying is that the truth is always going to be true anyway. The kinds of jokes that people told during a time can really tell us a lot about that time—and why wouldn’t we want to know?

So jokes that don’t age well become historical artifacts. That makes sense to me. I fear no jokes, even the ones that aren’t funny. Timpf is funny. You should go out and see her live.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.