“It is not the biggest chimp that is the king of the jungle. It is the chimp that holds the biggest banana.”

Charles Farrar Browne is most likely a name you’ve never heard of in 2024 but almost I guarantee you’ve come across his work or rather what his work has inspired. Browne is often called the father of stand up comedy and is frequently hailed as the first person to ever do it in around the mid 1800s. Today’s stand up scene is obviously entirely different from what it was in the 1800’s. One of the great things about stand up is that literally anyone can do it, people like Dave Chappelle and Katt Williams can sell out entire arenas and while that’s only possible for a few comedians it still doesn’t exclude anyone from pursuing stand up, anyone can sign up for an open mic and do stand up regardless of who they are.

I discovered stand up comedy in late middle school when a friend showed me Dave Chapelle’s “Sticks and Stones” special, the concept of stand up comedy immediately clicked with me and it quickly became something I would consider myself to have been “obsessed with”. I think what might’ve clicked with me is how uniquely human stand up is and how it seemed that anyone could do it as long as they were good enough, it didn’t seem to matter what you looked like or who you were the only thing that mattered is if you were funny on stage or not.

Jack Horner is a comedian who has appeared on numerous popular comedy podcasts like “Kill Tony” and “The William Montgomery Show” in his 5 years of doing comedy. Jack is personally someone, that I’ve been a fan of for a while now and I was ecstatic when he responded to my request for an interview for this paper. Jack Horner was born with cerebral-palsy and I was really interested in knowing his point of view on what it’s like to be a comedian who also has a disability. You may be somewhat familiar with Cerebal Palsy, however the CDC defines Cerebral Palsy as “Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of disorders that affect a person’s ability to move and maintain balance and posture.”. Cerebral Palsy affects everyone differently with different severitys, for instance Jack walks with a limp due to Cerebral Palsy whereas other people with the same condition may be completely unable to walk.

My interview with Jack Horner went a lot more deep than I initially thought it would go. I ended up learning a lot after my talk with Jack and I really hope I was able to understand his perspective.

Q: Do you feel like the audience treats you differently because of your disability?

A: “I personally feel like they don’t but other comedians have observed that the audience is kinda rooting for me a little bit.”

Q: What made you want to start comedy?

A: “I was a communications major at missouri southern state university, shout out” I had to write these papers and read them in front of the class and “the little dumb jokes I wrote in the paper made the audience laugh”

Q: Are there parts about your disability that makes stand up more difficult

A: “Yes, definitely the standing up part lol jk”… “Actually no, i think its easier to get more opportunities if you have a disability because if your a host with a disability it gets the audience on your side and on the side of the venue and comedians before the show even starts”… “It makes you a more verbal person… i think i’ve evolved around that to learn how to be a really good talker”

A few days after our brief conversation Jack messaged me back telling me he wanted more to say. He talks about how audience members might expect a certain thing out of a comic with disability, “I would like to veer away from the topic of disability (in his act) and move into other things but they kind of only see me being handicapped” “probably more in my head than actual reality” “and I feel like joking about that nonstop only reiinforces a lot of those negative stereotypes” he says. He goes on to say “Handicap people are different than any other marginalized group that does comedy because being handicapped has not caused the same instutitional discrimination that it has for other groups… it has never prevented you from voting or from getting married or anything like that you know so with people like African-American or LGBT or women you know they might have a social responsibility to incorporate that into their stand up”.

I felt like I learned a lot talking to Jack, the focus of our chat (disability in stand up) is something pretty specific so it’s a conversation I’ve never been apart of before and its a conversation I’ve never heard anyone else having, however while the main topic of discussion was focused on stand up I personally feel like a lot of what Jack told me could apply to disability in a variety of other art forms. It was really enlightening to listen to Jack and hear his perspective. Jack seemed really adamant on the idea that anyone can do stand up and it’s something he absolutely loves and wants to share with the world. Jack really wanted to drive the point home that nothing about you matters in stand up as long as your funny, he told me he made up a saying that I think (and I’m sure he would agree) perfectly encapsulates his point.