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newspeak, lenny bruce and the algo
Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in June 1949. It Orwell's most famous work and it seemed prescient. He was expanding on the essay "Politics and the English Language" (1946). These two works helped generations that followed understand the political role of limiting speech to influence action. Another theme of the book was double-agents--seemingly everybody from party members, pawnbrokers and children were working for the Thought Police. This turned out to be the case for Orwell too, who was an informant for the UK Information Research Department. He was outed by the Guardian and The New York Review of Books in 2003. Orwell tattled on leftists like EH Carr, Charlie Chaplin, Michael Redgrave, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Robeson, George Bernard Shaw, John Steinbeck and Orson Welles. For Orwell, thought crimes, newspeak and the memory hole weren't fiction.[1]
Like the UK, America erected series of censorship regimes following WWII. These also targeted leftists. Some, like HUAC, were federal committees. Others, like the Hollywood Blacklist, were industry standards. Still others, like COINTELPRO, were clandestine attacks on wrongthink by the federal government. These programs didn't promote American capitalism. They did discourage any other way of looking at the world. The goal, presumably, was to "end history" and castrate the dialectic.
Stand-up comedy in the 1950s was in the censored class. America's lingering Puritanism didn't tolerate jokes about STDs, corporate propaganda and Nazis, religion, the news media, President Eisenhower or bestiality. These were the subjects of the album The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce released in 1959. The most infamous censored comedian of his era was censored because he was "blue" not red.[2]
Variety, the Hollywood trade paper, advertised Bruce's opening night at CRESCENDO nightclub in 25 January 1957. In the ad, Bruce has a list of "thanks to" and "no thanks to" which hint at his personal politics and predict his upcoming cancellation. Thank-yous go out to people like Father Coughlin, Bing Crosby, Schecky Green and The Mafia. No thank-yous are reserved for radio stations other than CBS, federal programs (NRA, CCC), his Chrysler, "Oh Say Can You See" and Nick the Greek. Apparently the mob played both sides.[3]
The advertisement for CRESCENDO was probably flagged by McCarthyites but it didn't keep Bruce from working. The first time he was "fired" for obscenity was in July. According to Variety he was bombing in his "first show" at the Slate Brothers grand opening on 17 July 1957. He opened the next set with "an atrociously dirty 'joke'" that no one laughed at (Variety published the "club owners" quote but not the joke). He was fired the next day.[4]
Free speech lawyers make a distinction between being fired from at will employment and losing access to the public square. The government has the ability to restrict dangerous or slanderous speech in public. Corporations limit whatever they want in private. The reality for people who speak for a living: censorship is a death sentence. Bruce died after his conviction for "obscene, indecent, immoral and impure" jokes in New York City in 1964 (upheld by the US Supreme Court) nearly forty years before Gov. George Pataki's pardon.[5]
Bruce started getting arrested for obscenity violations in 1961, San Francisco, for saying "cocksucker" (according to his biography How to Talk Dirty and Influence People). He was arrested in 1962 in Hollywood for saying "schmuck." He was convicted in Chicago in December '62 for making fun of Catholics (George Carlin was in the audience that night and was thrown in the same cop car as Bruce). This one was upheld by the state supreme court and overruled by the feds. Bruce was kicked out of England in 1963 and arrested again in California in 1964. The arrests in New York 1964 stemmed from March 31 and April 1 shows--attended by police spies--where Bruce told "To Come as a Preposition," "Infidelity," "Red Hot Enema," and "Guys Are Carnal." He also told a joke about Elanor Roosevelt (he had two about her, one about "the clap" and one about her voluptuous breasts). These New York sets were what put him on trial and, arguably, killed him.[6]
The arrests certainly ended his career. According to Bruce's official website Variety magazine "refuses" Bruce's advertisement in 1964. This is the same magazine that advertised for him while simultaneously crusading against blue humor before his legal trials.[7]
Lenny Bruce is a seminal figure in the modern era of American stand-up comedy. This is different than the earlier iteration--which evolved from vaudeville, traveling shows, circuses and burlesque. Bruce's generation honed their craft in night-clubs and produced records. This new(ish) space and recording technology allowed the generation of suburban baby-boomers to play their favorite records at home without radio (or film) censors. Then came television which made stand-up comedy a powerful tool of political education.
It was on the Steve Allen show (5 April 1959) that Bruce did a bit about "words that offend me." He explains "how I became offensive..." by insulting Christopher Columbus and promoting Aaron Burr. This opening line would have killed in 2015 when Hamilton was big and statues were being decapitated. He is offended by "nighttime television...shows that exploit homosexuality, narcotics and prostitution under the guise of helping." He was unwittingly describing MKUltra. Bruce continues into his famous bit about children sniffing glue: "the Louis Pasteur of junkie-dom" which features a smash-cut that would make Seth MacFarlane blush. The next thing that offends Bruce is "some motion pictures...exploitation for just the sake of exploiting...race relations." He engages a crude Latin accent to prove what he dislikes. In the humorless present, this would probably be offensive. Without modern baggage it might as well be Hemingway. Then he and Allen "write a musical..." about a couple who stay together and then break up "for the kids" sake. If there is a punch line to this ballad it is "I'll be rich. But all alone."[8]
The soul of this man is visible to every viewer on every television in suburbia. It is a tremendously powerful medium and Bruce is one of the few people who appears on it who is not a Thought Police, spy or double agent. The empathy and cultural commentary that he produces is not conducive to Oceania's Perpetual War footing against either Eurasia or Eastasia (or both).
George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" evolved from Lenny Bruce's "words that offend me." The seven "dirty" words premiered in 1972. They are "shit," "piss," "fuck," "cunt," "cocksucker," "motherfucker," and "tits." A 1973 broadcast of this routine was cited in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation in 1978. The ruling allowed the FCC to censor "indecent" content broadcasts. The court made a distinction between indecent and "obscene" but broadcast censorship (not outright but during certain parts of the day) was de jure post-1978.
If Carlin hadn't done his routine, perhaps it would have been readings of Don Quixote that would have been at issue. A major contention of Cervantes is that ribald, profane and obscene work does not have to be devoid of artistic or cultural merit. The fiction that Quixote believes to be true inspires him toward very real chivalry. He believes he is slaying a mighty beast at the castle gates to save Sancho Panza and the hotel patrons--even though he dreamily stabbing a bladder full of wine. This lesson in morality is hidden in comedy, debauchery and filth.
The embellishments of story-telling are what make lessons about changing cultural mores palatable to the general audience. The farting, puking and cross-dressing of Don Quixote probably would have been canceled by the same prudes that condemned Lenny Bruce and George Carlin--people on the US Supreme Court. Because of this both the Song of Roland and the "Seven Words" are fading cultural figments.
The goal of Orwell's newspeak is not censorship. It is the inability of Oceanians to conceive language outside the party line. Even when confronted with visual evidence--(how many fingers do you see)--it is the party that determines reality through censorship. This indoctrination is what Bruce and Carlin (and later Bill Hicks) were fighting--armed only with the first amendment protection on free speech limited by the Supreme Court. Indecency and obscenity prohibitions limit language but their weaponized function is to stifle thought.
When I was fourteen, I watched the Warren Beatty character Bulworth channel the anti-censorship impulse in the most pedantic way possible. The character was conflating Marx, Orwell, Bruce (Carlin and Hicks) with the foul bogeyman du jour: gangsta rap. I was enthralled by Beatty's bars. But that's only because I was a poorly educated rural child who never heard of N.W.A. or Public Enemy. My dystopian education came from Ray Bradbury (not Orwell)--so I imagined censorship was a large pile of burning books, not an invisible agency of memory holes and intrigue. The family's Ford dealership prejudiced me against Huxley. In my youth, Carlin was an angry old man yelling at clouds, circa Napalm and Sillyputty. The salience of obscenity in comedy was confused by Paul Reubens innuendo and ahistorical warnings against yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Bulworth (with that first dope eminem track) was an eye opener.
From that first media step, the internet was the ladder that got me out of this morass of ignorance. The internet 1.0 was a special place. There was no need for Tor onions or the darkweb. One could correspond with public intellectuals with little more than an email address and a modem. Any idiot could host a geocities page (I had two). A napster search provided every piece of media ever digitized (and infinite bootlegs of old Phish shows). Most importantly, inspired by the Janet Jackson Super Bowl "nip-slip", YouTube was invented. Ironically, non-sexual nudity was verboten on the platform. On YouTube, I was able to watch the black and white Carlin that my parents talked about--uncensored from my dorm room on the west central Minnesota prairie. Its where I first watched the Steve Allen routine described above. This was a leveling type of democracy that rural folk never had before--city culture at our fingertips. This posed the same problem as television sets in the suburbs during the Cold War.
Now the internet is dead. Broadcast television has been dead for years. All media seems to be robot scripts engagement farming each other. The corporations scrape everything that has ever been put online. Then ai is trained from these stolen models. The credit goes to a ghost in the machine and the oligarch that debt-financed it. There is no reward for the creativity of humans--the empathy of a man singing about love and loss over a piano melody. Even so, copy-write lawyers harass artists for imagined royalties. In the typical Marxist sense: the commons has been privatized by an alliance of the state and capital. But the political education that happened in the twenty-some years before the internet was completely cooked might be the tools that will dismantle the system.
YouTube in the 2020s has developed into a minefield of censors. Music labels. Morality police. Foreign governments. Data brokers. Like Orwell, the goal isn't to limit speech, it is only a method to alter thought. Creators are independent contractors working at the outlet's will. They choose to self censor or starve to death. At any time, their content can be shadow banned, demonetized (not eligible for advertisements) or--as in the case of Abby Martin's Empire Files--permanently deleted. If recourse is given it is only an appeal to more robots. This is the censorious possibility of "the algorithm" and the programmers are just following orders. Every creator must conform to the legal threat of censorship or the financial threat of de-capitalization.
YouTube has an evolving informal list of words that will result in demonetization and content creators avoid these words so they can keep working. This is the opposite of Bruce's method. This list includes "rape," "pedophile," "suicide" and other technical words used by scientists, lawyers and doctors to describe the human condition. This isn't a list of vulgarity--like Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" or Bruce's confused Yiddish, STD jokes and spicy enemas. These are words that must exist for someone to accurately report the news. Creators have invented a pidgin (?) vocabulary to talk about memory holed topics. This ranges from rhymes, pedantry to pictures. To earn, a journalist must report on Grape, pdf-files and self-deletions. Discussion of Palestine during the Israeli genocide is defined by a watermelon.
It is only a matter of time before this new language is outlawed. In places like Australia, a watermelon bumper sticker initiates a traffic stop. This is a second step after demonetization. In Europe, hate-speech laws include any form of protest against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Videos of contentious objectors like priests, grandmothers, politicians and even Greta Thunburg being imprisoned in London and Berlin for protesting are everywhere. The reason protests are becoming guerrilla theater is because language is no longer a viable (or legal) method of communication. Even a moderate liberal like Martin Luther King Jr. knows, "A riot is the language of the unheard." Without any other language--riots will continue as economic (and cultural) contradictions intensify.
Let's return to the, admittedly lame, "Obscenity" from Bulworth.[9] It has vulgarity that qualifies for Carlin's seven words, these are already demonetized. YouTuber Andrew Platt maintained a list of demonetized words for three years, until 2022. The list, methodology and a mechanism for testing new words are cited below.[10] I ran "Obscenity" through the list and returned fourteen demonetized words. These are "sucks," "motherfucker," "fuckin," "bomb," "motherfuckin," "government," "shit," "fuck," "cocksucker," "ghetto," "dead," "ass," "slave," and "eliminate." Bulworth was rated "R" in 1998, possibly for language. But it wasn't shunned by polite society--it was nominated for "Best Screenplay" at the 1999 Academy Awards. Twenty-five years later--it is too profane for Google ads on YouTube.
There isn't a censor at YouTube. This is all done using the closed captioning powered by ai. There are mistakes in this process. Appeals go directly to another robot. Who cares? Anyone who is curious or creative about the following censored subjects in this non-exhaustive list based on Platt's crowd sourced work (with racial slurs and sex acts excluded).
Some medical words that are demonetized: "bladder..." "breast..." "gallbladder..." "lung..." "prostate..." "skin... "thyroid cancer"; "Anorexia nervosa," "drug", "arthritis", "addiction", "AIDS", "HIV", "autism", "nurse", "genital", "rehabilitation", "sexual health" and "treatment". A YouTube search for these subjects--perhaps by a patient--is limited.
Like a reconstruction era miscegenation code, "racial" isn't demonetized but "interracial" is. Ironically, "betting" and "gambling" are demonetized. More ironic, "censored" is censored; so is "uncensored". "Bitch", "blonde", "brunette" and "redhead" are misogynist adjacent words used daily in salons that are YouTube indecent. "Boko Haram", "Al Qaeda", "Armenian genocide", "ISIS", "Asians", "Turk", "Arab" and "Zulu" scare internationalists and are on the list (but you be paid for "Trotsky" and "Trotksyist"). Schoolyard classics like "bullshit", "bullying", "jerk-off", "pissing", "poop", "puke" "shit", "shat", "suck", "sucked", "twat", "sonofabitch" and "motherfucker" are in time-out. Drug words like "joint", "hemp", "cannabis", "marijuana", "pot head", "weed", "cocaine", "LSD", "pcp", "salvia", "stoner" and "crack" are scheduled profane.
Words necessary to describe American politics-- "democrat", "democratic", "democrats", "voter", "voter fraud", "election", "election fraud", "electoral", "evidence", "convicted", "adultery", "allegations", "proven" and "idiot" --are impolitic. The words "republic", "Republican" and "republicans" are not censored. This, plus the limiting of "ANTIFA", is undeniable evidence of political bias in the algorithm. This bias continues as "Pro-Choice" is demonetized but "Pro-Life" is profitable. The oldest profession is made invisible as "prostitute", "prostitutes", "prostitution", "sex", "sex work", "sex worker", "strip club", "stripper" and "topless" are unpaid.
There is no place for "farting" (there goes Cervantes) and "fetish" (there goes Marx). Fetish is excluded because censors are perverts. That's probably why "secretary" is outlawed and not because the word is unfashionably gendered. Pirates can't profit from "full movie" or "watch online". Israel (probably) called to outlaw the word "genocide" but not the deed. The appearance of "Hitler", "nazi" and "kkk" are limited by this custom --which undercuts the Supreme Court case Skokie (1977). The ACLU used to protect controversial (albeit, gross) speech like this. The word "slave" is not available to historians or liberators that want to be paid as they purge the land.
The word "immoral" is deemed immoral by YouTube. So is the inoffensive word "offend". Apparently "pencils" has a subterranean meaning that is pointed and leaden. The purple words "romance" and "romantic" are also blacked out. Lenny Bruce's favorite Yiddish word "schmuck" is not on the list but it's attached part "schlong" is censored.
The word "Osama" resulted in demonetization. A video with the nom de guerre "Osama Bin Laden" is the only one on the list marked DELETED. The Emir's full name "Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden" and popular disambiguations "OBL" and "bin Laden" don't appear anywhere on the list. The randomness is absurd. The distinction between demonetization and deletion is similar to the Supreme Court's ruling limiting indecent material and censoring obscene material but these aren't public airwaves and there is no after-dark exception. The test for pornography--that one knows it when they see it--is confused by nominal inconsistencies. An appeal must not include the blacklisted word "smut" as robots don't understand linguistic or contextual nuance, yet.
These words aren't under these same broadcast restrictions as Carlin. Sometimes they are edited from titles and sometimes transcripts. It is arbitrary bit at least it can be tested. At least there is a list. When one adds concepts like shadow-bans, age-restrictions and identity verification it becomes evident that legal defense, health care, childhood education, current events and comedy are all excluded from the platform. It makes us all dumber.
sources:
[1] Garton Ash, Timothy (25 September 2003). "Orwell's List". The New York Review of Books. 50 (14).
[2] Lenny Bruce The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce Fantasy Records, 1959.
[3] "Lenny Bruce opens tonight at CRESCENDO" Variety Daily Hollywood, CA: Friday 25 January 1957. pg 8.
[4] "Nitery Fires Bruce For Blue Material" Variety Daily Hollywood, CA: Friday 19 July 1957. pg 1 and 11.
[5] Rick Marshall and CBLDF "Obscenity Case Files: People v. Lenny Bruce (The Lenny Bruce Trial)" Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. accessed 23 December 2025.
[6] Marshall and CBLDF "Obscenity Case Files..."
Lenny Bruce How To Talk Dirty and Influence People Chicago, IL: Playboy Press, 1965.
Matt Solomon "How Lenny Bruce Was Actually Canceled in the 1960s" Cracked 12 May 2023. accessed 23 December 2025.
[7] "Chronology--The 60's" The Official Lenny Bruce Website lennybruceofficial.com. accessed 23 December 2025 via the wayback machine.
[8] Lenny Bruce on the Steve Allen Show Steve Allen Show 5 April 1959. Youtube: Historic Films Stock Footage. accessed 30 December 2025.
[9] Warren Beatty. "Obscenity" Bullworth 20th Century Fox, 15 May 1998. FULL TEXT at the end.
[10] Andrew Platt "Retiring the Demonetization Word List" Andrew Platt - YouTube Analyzed (@YTAnalyzed) 27 May 2022. accessed: 31 December 2025.
Platt's "Word List" is a Google document spreadsheet available here it also links to YouTube channel: Nerd City (@nerdcity) that covered this topic.
For more on demonetization see: Nicole Lajeunesse "Topics that will get your YouTube video immediately demonetized" Business Creator Handbook
photo credit:
The photo was altered before it appeared on Wiki. It was hand painted and a white background was added. Other version's of this photo (perhaps from different photographers) have a black background behind Bruce and the officer.
full text:
Warren Beatty. "Obscenity" Bullworth 20th Century Fox, 15 May 1998.
Obscenity?
The rich is getting richer and richer and richer
while the middle class is getting more poor
Making billions and billions and billions of bucks
well my friend if you weren't already rich at the start
well that situation just sucks
cause the richest mother fucker in five of us
is getting ninety fuckin eight percent of it
and every other motherfucker in the world is left
to wonder where the fuck we went with it
Obscenity?
I'm a Senator
I gotta raise $10,000 a day every day I'm in Washington
I ain't getting it in South Central
I'm gettin it in Beverly Hills
So I'm votin' in the Senate the way they want me too
and I'm sending them my bills
But we got babies in South Central dying
as young as they do in Peru
We got public schools that are nightmares
We got a Congress that ain't got a clue
We got kids with submachine guns
We got militias throwing bombs
We got Bill [Clinton] just gettin all weepy
We got Newt [Gingrich] blaming teenage moms
We got factories closing down
Where the hell did all the good jobs go?
Well, I'll tell you where they went
My contributors make more profits Hirin' kids in Mexico
Oh a brother can work in fast food
If he can't invent computer games
But what we used to call America
That's going down the drains
How's a young man gonna meet his financial responsibilities
workin and motherfuckin Burger King? He ain't!
And please don't even start with that school shit
There ain't no education going on up in that motherfucker
Obscenity?
We got a million brothers in prison
I mean, the walls are really rockin
But you can bet your ass they'd all be out
If they could pay for Johnny Cochran
The constitution is supposed to give them an equal chance
Well, that ain't gonna happen for sure
Ain't it time to take a little from the rich motherfucker
and give a little to the poor?
I mean, those boys over there on the monitor
they want a government smaller and weak
but they be speakin for the richest 20 percent
when they pretend they're defendin the meek
Now, shit, fuck, cocksucker, that's the real obscenity
Black folks livin' with every day
Trying to believe a mothefuckin word
Democrats and Republicans say
Obscenity?
I'm Jay Billington Bulworth And I've come to say
The Democratic party's got some shit to pay
It's gonna pay it in the ghetto
It's gonna pay it in the...
You know the guy in the booth who's talking to you in that tiny little earphone?
He's afraid the guys at network are gonna tell him that he's through
If he lets a guy keep talking like I'm talking to you
Cause the corporations got the networks
and they get to say who gets to talk about the country and who's crazy today
I would cut to a commercial if you still want this job
Because you may not be back tomorrow with this cooperate mob
Cut to commercial, cut to commercial, cut to commercial.
Ok ok
I got a simple question that I'd like to ask
of this network that pays you for performing this task
How come they got the airwaves? They're the peoples aren't they?
Wouldn't they be worth 70 billion to the public today?
If some money-grubbin Congress didn't give them away
for big campaign money? It's hopeless you see
If you're runnin for office with out no TV
If you don't get big money you get a defeat
Corporations and broadcasters make you dead meat
You been taught in this country there's speech that is free
But free don't get you no spots on TV
If you want to have senators not on the take
Then give them free air time
They won't have to fake
Telecommunications is the name of the beast
that's eating up the world from the west to the east
The movies, the tabloids, TV and magazines
they tell us what to think and do
And all our hopes and dreams
All this information makes America phat
But if the company's outta the country
How American is that?
But we got Americans with families that can't even buy a meal
Ask a brother who's been downsized if he's getting any deal
Or a white boy bustin ass til they put him in his grave
He ain't gotta be a black boy to be livin like a slave
Rich people have always stayed on top
by dividing white people from colored people
but white people got more in common
with colored people then they do with rich people
we just gotta eliminate them.
White people, black people, brown people, yellow people, get rid of 'em all
All we need is a voluntary, free spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction
Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody til they're all the same color.