Jim Jefferies Lets ‘Freedumb’ Ring Up His Biggest Audience Yet

If you don’t know much about stand-up comedian Jim Jefferies, would it help then if I described him to you as what would happen if Doug Stanhope wanted to become more like Louis CK, yet spoke in an Australian accent?

Actually, that may have been the Hollywood pitch for Legit, the criminally underrated and overlooked FX series that starred Jefferies as a semi-autobiographical version of himself for two seasons earlier in this decade.

But if you have watched Legit (now on Netflix) or have some familiarity with Jefferies (bonus points if you knew his work back before he added another ‘e’ to his last name, thanks SAG-AFTRA!), then great, you’re already on board! Either way, you’ve likely seen at least a few minutes of his work. As mass shootings have become more preposterously commonplace across America, more and more people have shared clips of Jefferies discussing gun control from his 2014 Netflix special, Bare. His takedown of gun politics in America has gotten around, to say the least. All of which has brought many new fans to see Jefferies this past year, which he even gets into during his latest 87-minute performance, Jim Jefferies: Freedumb, out today on Netflix.

But first: Bill Cosby.

Those are the first proper words out of Jefferies’ mouth once the crowd’s initial applause settles down, although the name and the subject matter now tied to the once-elder statesman of stand-up has been revealed to be sadly and horribly improper. As Jefferies explains to the live audience at Nashville’s James K. Polk Theater: “I don’t know if you get all the news here in Nashville, but I may say something that’s very upsetting to many of you. It turns out that Bill Cosby is a rapist…turns out his favorite thing is raping!”

That Jefferies and so many other stand-up comedians have devoted time to taking down Cosby in the past two years has done as much, if not more, to forever alter our understanding of him in the court of public opinion than whatever transpires in the actual ongoing judicial proceedings against Cos. And yet. It also turns out, as Jefferies further explains, that he has to pause his own comedy act to deliver a PSA that rape is wrong — previously harsh critical reviews of the comedian implied that his joking didn’t always translate as such with the audience (or at least with one Australian critic). Although Jefferies has never defended Cosby like he notes Whoopi Goldberg had done on The View.

As long as there are critics who claim you cannot joke about rape, there will be comedians who counter otherwise and provide evidence to that effect. Such as Jefferies here in the start to Freedumb. “You can joke about anything. a joke doesn’t mean intent,” he says. And his intent remains focused on taking down Cosby a few more notches.

The real problem Jefferies has with his criticism is when they transcribe his act. “Now I hate this, and I’ll tell you why: Because my whole skill in life is being able to say horrible things, and still seem likable!” then adding: “If you read my material, it’s a bad read!”

With that warning, and my tacit acknowledgement of what I’m doing and about to do, may we proceed? Very well then!

The great irony here, of course, is that before Cosby’s serial proclivities for sexual assault, nobody was protesting Cosby’s stand-up act — to the contrary, audiences held him in highest regard for not swearing or making offensive jokes. Meanwhile, Jefferies acknowledges that some of his jokes can be scrutinized and interpreted as misogynist, and yet he doesn’t commit rape or attack women in real life.

“This isn’t a TED talk. You’re not meant to take any of this fucking seriously!”

For the next 25-30 minutes, Jefferies jokes about his girlfriend — mother to his 3-year-old son — and the reasons why he hasn’t married her, arguments over whether to vaccinate their child, toilet training, and meeting other parents at his son’s school.

As Jefferies settles into a big comfy red chair onstage, the joke’s on him, as he realizes the very nature of how quickly we categorize certain personality traits as autistic, or later, comparing his son with another child and that child’s parents to him. Is Jefferies himself autistic? And what is his comedic legacy, exactly? He finds himself describing himself thusly: “I say c*nt more than anyone else,” so much that comedy clubs have changed their policies on that word toward other stand-up acts. “Basically, I’m the Rosa Parks of c*nt.”

All of which circles back to the audience Jefferies attracts, and how much that has changed as millions more have watched his gun control routine from Bare.

 

Jefferies used to see only white men his age in the crowd. Now he sees all types, “all because of the gun control routine,” which he notes audiences have watched “five times more than anything else I’ve done.”

“Which is strange because people are coming to the shows now, hoping that I’ll do some political satire, or some social commentary, or something Carlinesque. And how disappointing this evening’s performance must be! I just did 25 minutes on poo-ing!”

Jefferies uses his time in Freedumb to clarify two statistics he made up in the gun control bit because, as a comedian, he didn’t have nor seek out all the facts. One stat he misfired on, amazingly, assumed security guards earned more money than they actually do.

And yet, despite lashing out at religion continuously over his first 15 years of comedy, Jefferies claims he’s only received seven pieces of hate mail about his religious stances, compared to 20-40 hateful messages daily from gun lovers, and 782 such threats and taunts on the day ISIS sympathizers attacked Paris. “I had no idea what crazy was, until I poked that hornet’s nest with a stick,” Jefferies said of gun lovers. But he’s more than willing to provoke them further by imagining mass shootings abroad as the equivalent of porn to gun lovers.

Jefferies also has a funny way of provoking ISIS itself, pronouncing the group as “is-is,” before doubling down on Donald Trump.

And I’m going to quote Jefferies on this. No apologies. Because a little piece of Jefferies enjoys the madness of Trump and wonders why not “see how crazy we can get.” And yet. And yet. Trump’s hostile reactive politics, preying on fear, only fuels the hateful terrorists on the other side. “The recruitment tool can only work if hate is bred,” Jefferies says.

“So what he’s trying to do is, he’s trying to defeat hate with hate. And hate doesn’t beat hate. It’s never f***ing beaten hate. It just makes more hate. Now this just might be the most hippie thing that ever comes out of my mouth. But it’s true. The only thing that can beat hate is love. Now, love doesn’t always beat hate. It doesn’t always beat hate. But it does do something.” And that is this: “Eventually, everyone will see them as the a**hole. Don’t be the a**hole, America.”

Which circles Jefferies back to religion itself. Not just Islam, but all religion, Jefferies argues, slows us down from making progress.

And if we truly want to boast of being the land of the free, home of the brave, Jefferies wonders how brave and free Americans are to maintain higher rates of incarceration than the other 91 free nations of the world, to outlaw recreational drugs, prostitution or assisted suicide.

What kind of world do we want to leave our children, if we have a world left to leave them? What kind of world does Jefferies want to leave to his son?

He tries to answer that in a closing letter he’s already written to his son, to open and read when he’s 18.

Let’s hope we’re all a bit freer by then.

[Watch Jim Jefferies: Freedumb on Netflix]

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.