There are a lot of people in Los Angeles who believe they are oppressed. There are considerably fewer who respond to oppression by working 40 hours a week, putting themselves through college, getting a 3.4 GPA, and eventually moving to Hollywood to become a comedian.
Then there is Beau Robinson, who apparently decided that if America was going to have a nervous breakdown over “white privilege,” he might as well put the stuff in a bottle.
That is the joke. The man is something else entirely. Beau grew up in Woodbridge, Va. His mother suffered a stroke when he was 14. His father left. He and his twin brother came out of the same household, faced the same circumstances, and ultimately took radically different paths. His brother struggled with addiction. Beau went to college, worked his way through it, and built a life for himself. That part of Beau's story matters more than any political argument we had on Dangerous Laughter.
Because whatever you think about his politics, it is difficult to listen to a guy explain that history and then tell him that the most important thing about his life is the color of his skin. His story is not a laboratory experiment proving that everybody has identical circumstances. It is something much more uncomfortable for people who have turned grievance into an industry: human beings still make choices.
Beau eventually made his way into acting and comedy and, naturally, landed in Los Angeles, the city where people who have never met you can explain your privilege to you for three hours over an oat-milk latte.
Then came COVID. Like countless performers, Beau found himself dealing with a Hollywood ecosystem that had suddenly acquired a tremendous number of rules about who could work, where they could work, and under what conditions. Eventually he decided that maybe the better career move was to stop waiting for Hollywood to approve him.
So he built his own thing and White Privilege Fragrances was born. It is exactly the kind of business that makes a progressive marketing executive sweat through his Patagonia vest. Take the phrase “white privilege,” turn it into a product, put it on a shelf and dare people to be offended by perfume. Hey, I did it in 2024 with my second book, so why not Beau?
And yes, the fragrance is unisex. Apparently everyone can smell privileged now, and it is actually good. I have worn it. It is fresh, citrusy, and considerably more pleasant than most conversations about race conducted on college campuses. I am not entirely convinced it could make a bearded lady attractive, but then again, that is a burden no fragrance company should be asked to bear. The Curse of the Bearded Lady remains undefeated.
But the bottle is only the funny part. The more interesting thing about Beau is why the joke works.
We have spent years constructing a culture in which certain political ideas are treated as protected groups. You can mock a president, but perhaps not the right group. You can mock Christianity, but be careful around the approved religions. You can make jokes about working-class white people all day, but try turning “white privilege” into a punchline, and suddenly somebody discovers the Geneva Convention.
Which brings us to the sacred cow. Should comedians have them? Hmmmm, no. Obviously not. The comedian is supposed to be the guy who walks into the palace, looks at the king, and says, “Nice crown. Shame about the IQ.” That is the job. The court jester doesn't get a list from the royal communications director explaining which members of the court are off limits.
We talked about Zach Galifianakis criticizing comedians and podcasters who have interviewed Donald Trump, including Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and others. The argument was essentially that these comedians were failing at their jobs because they were not challenging Trump hard enough.
Fine. Challenge Trump. I have no problem with that. In fact, I think comedians should challenge Trump. I think they should challenge Democrats. I think they should challenge Republicans. I think they should challenge billionaires, Hollywood, pastors, activists, journalists, corporations, themselves and anybody else who wanders onto the stage carrying a giant ego and a microphone.
But here is where I part company with liberal boot lickers: I don't think government should ever punish comedians for bad jokes. I don't care if the comedian is funny. I don't care if the comedian is unfunny. I don't care if I agree with the joke. The government should stay the hell out of it.
If Jimmy Kimmel tells a joke I hate, ABC can fire him. Disney can cancel him. Advertisers can flee. Viewers can change the channel. I can complain about him from my couch like a civilized American. But Washington shouldn't be deciding which jokes are sufficiently patriotic, sufficiently progressive, or sufficiently funny to receive a federal license.
That is how you destroy comedy. And once you destroy comedy, you lose something considerably more important than entertainment. You lose one of the oldest ways a free society tells itself the truth.
Aristophanes was mocking politicians thousands of years ago. He mocked generals, leaders and the culture around him. The tradition survived because civilization understood something we seem increasingly determined to forget: the person who can make fun of power is useful precisely because power does not get to decide what is funny.
That’s why the court jester matters. And that’s why Beau matters. Not because he bottled “white privilege.” Not because he has the correct politics. Not because he’s another comedian yelling into the increasingly crowded microphone of American outrage.
He matters because there is something wonderfully American about a guy who gets handed a difficult childhood, a sick mother, an absent father, a brother lost to addiction, a hard road through college and a Hollywood industry that eventually tells him to sit down and shut up, and responds by saying: Fine. I'll build my own thing. Then I'll make a big joke about it.
That’s a much better dissection of so-called privilege than anything you are going to hear from a professor who has spent his entire life explaining oppression from a tenured position.
Beau Robinson has lived a hard life. He has also lived an American life. He worked. He took risks. He failed. He kept going. He found comedy. He found entrepreneurship. He found a way to turn an accusation into a punchline and a punchline into a business.
And somewhere along the way, he remembered something our increasingly humorless civilization has forgotten. Nobody gets to decide what you are allowed to laugh at. Especially not the king.