Comedians encourage voter participation

In the low-lit ballroom of the Radisson Hotel, a stage stood with a lone microphone planted in the center.

This was the setting for the USC Funny or Die: Jokes for Votes, headlined by producer and director Judd Apatow. The event, which took place on Sunday evening, aimed to “promote voter registration and getting out to vote this November,” according to its Facebook page.

Jokes for Votes was hosted by Funny or Die, NextGen Climate and the USC Special Events Committee. Apatow and several other comedians, including Ron Funches, Moshe Kasher, Beth Stelling and Taylor Tomlinson, presented comedy segments throughout the evening.

Apatow, who once attended USC, told stories about his experiences in Hollywood as well as some of the lessons he’s learned over the years.

“No one is thinking about you as much as you think they are,” Apatow said about the time he made a joke about David Schwimmer. He convinced himself that the actor hated him for the joke, and went so far as to hide from Schwimmer the entire night at a charity event.

Even though the evening was dedicated to voter registration, few of the remarks were aimed toward the campaign trail. Instead, Apatow’s set included anecdotes about actors Robert De Niro and Mark Ruffalo’s eccentric methods for smiling in photos, as well as a story about an evening with Val Kilmer in which he failed to tell the actor that he had a booger hanging out of his nose “for 45 minutes.”

While most of the evening refrained from talking about the election outright, politics manifested itself in more subtle ways. Kasher, who was named Best New Comic by iTunes in 2009, spent a portion of his set advocating for women by tearing apart the “evils of catcalling.”

“Women have to deal with the strangest things,” Kasher said. “In order to understand what women go through you have to bend your brain. Men don’t fully get it because it doesn’t happen to us, and if it did we would not like it.”

Kasher referred to a man he encountered in New York who would grunt loudly at women he found attractive.

“Never in the history of New York City has a woman been flattered by the growl,” Kasher said.

Similarly, Tomlinson discussed how unsafe it can be for a single woman to feel secure when going out on excursions.

“Being a woman is fun most of the time until you want to go on a walk by yourself,” Tomlinson said. “We have to read all the tricks and trips on Buzzfeed on how not to die. If something bad does happen, society is predisposed to think that somehow it is the woman’s fault.”

The night was not completely void of election humor, as Apatow took the time to personally apologize for Trump’s candidacy. He had written some of the jokes aimed at Trump for the White House Correspondents Dinner.

“Apparently, that was the moment Trump wanted his revenge and decided to run for President,” Apatow said.

Ultimately, the goal of the evening was to encourage voter registration. The comedians urged viewers to register at a booth in the back, or to text the number provided on a flyer at the event to determine if they were registered or not.

Funches argued that while there is always a place for positivity, laughter is needed more than ever in the current social climate.

“I think right now it’s important to be positive and to remember that above all else we are all human and we all want the same things, we all want love, and we all want to be taken care of,” Funches said. “That’s something that’s important to remember.”

Gisella Tan, director of the USC Special Events Committee, said that the evening was one stop in a tour the comedians are doing around schools in California.

Tan emphasized that comedy was an important tool in reaching young adults who may not want to vote.

“It’s trying to get students to come out to register to vote,” Tan said. “In order to get students to be more engaged in politics it’s really essential to present the topic in a more easily digestible form. I think comedy is a really good way to do that.”