Comedian Tracy Morgan’s homophobic comments during his performance in Nashville last week was unacceptable.

His outburst included the comment that his son better talk to me like a man and not in a gay voice or I'll pull out a knife and stab that little n**ger to death.”

The biggest problem with Morgan’s homophobic rant was that it wasn’t funny at all. Let me explain myself.

Historically, creative forms of expressions often exposed inconvenient or awkward truths that are otherwise hard to digest. In modern times, comedians are one of the creative professionals who serve this purpose.

Gabriel Iglesias tells the truth about the lifestyle choice to be fat. Numerous black and Jewish comedians tell the truth about their ethnicity. Recently, Asian and gay comedians are doing the same.

To censor these comedians out of political correctness is to perpetrated political repression.

However, comedians are only covered under this freedom-of-expression umbrella when they’re actually artistic. Even the US law on obscenity recognizes this caveat.

Morgan’s rant was certainly obscene and devoid of artistic merits. It was so unfunny that it drew the protest of audience members from the conservative state of Tennessee.

Why was it so unfunny?

It didn’t expose any truths that polite society was unwilling to talk about. It didn’t point out any absurdities of public perception. It didn’t make any clever play on stereotypes. It wasn’t even dumb humor.

It resembled Michael Richard’s (known for playing Kramer on Seinfeld) unfunny and racist rant against black people.

Without any artistic or creative merits, Morgan’s and Richard’s rants were obscene at best and borders on hate speech.

Morgan’s conduct was unacceptable for a comedian performing in a public venue. People paid and came to his show to be entertained and perhaps be enlightened in the process. They weren’t there to hear an unfunny and offensive rant. That they and the public were subject to it is unacceptable on Morgan’s part.

Tennessee