It was simultaneously shocking and completely unsuprising when, after riffing on Donald Trump at a recent Tampa show, Amy Schumer lost 200 annoyed audience members.
The comedian’s vulgar humor and pointed attacks at conservatives must surely make her intolerable to some audience members; but then again, why would such people voluntarily purchase tickets to her routine in the first place?
As it turns out, some just didn’t want to hear Schumer’s partisan political rant. After requesting that a Donald Trump supporter named Dave Pettinato come onstage, Schumer asked him to provide his reasons for giving the candidate his vote. When the issue of trust surfaced, she demanded to know why Pettinato thought he could trust Trump and not Clinton. Pettinato began to explain himself, eventually stating that he wasn’t really voting for Trump, but against Hillary. Schumer cut him off right there. “Ok, you can go sit down,” she said dismissively.
According to ABC Action News, in an interview with “The Now,” Pettinato explained the experience from his perspective: “Well, within the first couple seconds, I realized that my answers would either be twisted, turned or, you know, she was going to stop them. But it was the challenge to try to get her to acknowledge something that maybe Hillary had done wrong was too much for me to pass up, so that’s why I had to do it.”
In a rant that followed her dialogue with Pettinato, Schumer lambasted Trump as an “orange, sexual-assaulting, fake college-starting monster.” Prompting boos from the audience, Schumer stated that people could leave if they had issues with her content. “Of course, we’re in Florida, you’re going to boo,” she declared. “I know you’re here to laugh, but you choose how you’re going to live your life, and it’s just too important.”
The story was picked up by a myriad of mainstream news and entertainment media sources including The New York Times, THR, The Atlantic and CBS News. To several outlets, Schumer released a statement which included this comment: “I want to thank the 8,400 people who stayed. We have always depended on comedians to make us laugh and tell the truth.” If that is not an example of a celebrity mounting her high horse, what is?
Although Schumer later clarified that she had no hard feelings by tweeting “All love Tampa,” her words about the city’s people have not always been so glowing. As TIME journalist Kate Samuelson reported, the comedian wrote some rather distasteful sentiments in her recent book, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo. In one chapter, Schumer labelled Tampa a “horrendous” city, but assumed she would not offend anyone because she knew “for a fact that no one who lives there has ever read a book. JKJKJKJK, but kind of not K.”
Ms. Schumer, your celebrated brashness may be starting to lose you some followers.
