Comedy, Censorship, and Cultural Shifts

*Explicit Content Warning*

Since Donald Trump won the presidential election, American institutions are shedding what remains of wokeness nearly everywhere. From Columbia University to Facebook, the old guardrails have crumbled.

Something similar happened nearly 60 years ago. After police and prosecutors drove the revolutionary comic Lenny Bruce into bankruptcy and overdose, America began its slide into vulgarity. Despite the best efforts of the word police of that era, the old taboos about sex and profanity melted away. So just how did America's censors end up losing the culture war?

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