Michelle Wolf: The Well

Ladies and gentlemen, please make some noise for Michelle Wolf!

Thank you.

Thank you, guys. It's great to be here.

I, um, actually haven't done a lot of stand-up this year.

I took the first seven months of the year off because I had a baby.

It died.

No, I'm kidding! The baby's fine! Guys, the baby's totally fine.

But here's what they don't tell you about having a baby.

A lot harder to tell dead baby jokes…

…after you've had a baby.

No one warns you about that.

They warn you about everything else.

They say your body's going to change.

You're never going to sleep.

No one, not a single one of you, pulled me aside and was like,

"Hey, you know those dead baby jokes you love?"

"Well, they're going to be a lot harder when you have an alive baby."

"Because you're going to feel."

"You're going to have a lot of regular bitch emotions."

"And you're going to want to recycle."

Most of you didn't even like dead baby jokes to begin with.

They weren't for you.

Look, the baby, she's doing great.

She's doing really good. Know who else is doing good?

Me, thanks for not asking.

You remember me?

I'm the one who's almost always holding the baby.

And I do. I think one of the reasons I'm doing well is because

I try to be the best mom that I can be.

I try to be a good example and a nice person and loving and caring.

And I really try hard.

But then I also still get to be a piece of shit on stage

who tells dead baby jokes.

And I genuinely believe that's the balance every mother needs.

Because you weren't always a good person.

Maybe the whole reason you have a baby is because you weren't a good person.

But you're a mom now, you're a mom now.

But who you were before is still in there, it's still in there.

And you've gotta get it out somewhere, or you're gonna put it in the baby.

Don't worry, she's not even gonna hear these jokes.

She's never gonna hear these jokes because she's in the bottom of a well.

I don't know, don't make them so perfectly baby-sized.

She learned to crawl, she'll either learn to climb or she won't.

I do think being a mom has changed my perspective on a lot of things.

Like, any gay men here?

I've amassed quite a few gay male fans over the years.

I would like to say to you all, publicly now, we're through.

Gay men, I'm not sure I like you guys anymore.

I'm mad at you. I'm mad at you. I'm mad at you.

When you say you're mad at gay men, gay men are like, "Sure you are, bitch."

You like it, you love it. Oh my God, you're…

You guys were… They were grasping each other.

Like, it was like, "We do, she hates us."

This is why I'm mad.

Okay, so, gay guys, you wanted your rights.

That's not the part I'm mad about, that's fair.

You wanted rights, we wanted to help fight for your rights.

We wanted to help for two reasons.

One, because we thought equality was, like, a good thing.

And two, you had a great slogan.

Your slogan was, "Love is love."

And a lot of us, especially us white women, were like, "Oh my God."

"Yeah."

"That's, like, just what it is."

You guys revamped "Live, laugh, love," and we needed that.

So you guys wanted your rights, we helped you fight for them, and then you got them.

And gay men, let's admit it, you guys won, all right?

Charlie, you got the chocolate factory.

You got the chocolate factory, you turned it into a weird sex palace.

The Oompa Loompas have very different jobs now.

They're not mad about it.

I'm not mad about any of those things.

I'm happy all those things happened.

What I'm mad about is that women,

we started losing our rights, and all you gay guys were like, "Okay, bye."

"Sorry about all that abortion stuff."

"Maybe I'll take the baby."

"Is it going to be mixed? I would love if it were mixed."

I thought… I thought we were on a really good path towards equality.

And then, um, Netflix put that Jeffrey Dahmer documentary out,

and they put it under the LGBTQ category.

Which is fair, he was gay, you know. Not the headline of the story.

That wasn't the final episode, it wasn't like,

"And can you believe it? Gay!"

So Netflix puts it under the LGBTQ category,

and then a lot of people got angry.

So Netflix took it out of the LGBTQ category,

and that made me really angry,

because you don't just get the good gays.

You gotta take all the gays.

Yeah, sure, sometimes you're Elton John, and that's great.

And other times you eat people.

Believe me, I know what I'm talking about.

I'm a white woman. We don't just get the good white women.

You know, sometimes we're Ruth Bader Ginsburg…

and other times, we're the rest of the white women.

Honestly, I thought the whole thing should make gay men feel more equal.

It's like, look at gay guys.

They can lure people back to their homes, murder and eat them too.

They're just like straight men.

I really… We did… We lost abortion this year.

I don't know where it went. Oh, it's probably in the alley. Uh…

Oh.

Could be worse, could be in the well. Uh…

And we lost abortion.

They overturned Roe v. Wade.

And my problem with the abortion debate for the last several years

actually hasn't been with Republicans.

Republicans have been very clear about what they've wanted, okay?

Republicans, love or hate Republicans,

you've got to admit, those guys are planners.

They see a problem, and they will chisel away at it until it's a swastika.

They've been trying to overturn Roe v. Wade since it became a thing.

They've been playing the short game, the long game,

and they finally got it done.

Now Democrats, Democrats also had a strategy

to make sure Roe v. Wade wouldn't be overturned.

And Democrats' strategy was, "Don't worry, it's not going to happen."

Democrats' strategy is the same reason you need an abortion.

"Don't worry, baby, it's not going to happen."

Democrats are very frustrating,

because they're the least effective group of people I've ever met.

It's like everyone else is running a regular race,

and Democrats are like, "Let's go three-legged."

And everyone's like, "No, we'll just run regular."

And they're like, "Well, we're in this together, so…"

It's frustrating because they have a lot of good ideas.

They talk about a lot of things that sound really good,

they just can't get anything done.

They can't… They don't plan for any obstacles or problems.

They just… And they can't get anything done.

Know what Democrats remind me of?

Democrats remind me of that old guy who started Jurassic Park.

Because I think we can all agree, a dinosaur park is a fantastic idea.

We would all love a dinosaur park.

We would love that. But this guy didn't plan for anything.

He wasn't like, "What if there's a storm…

…on my dinosaur island in the middle of the ocean?"

I'm not saying I would necessarily ever vote Republican.

But I would definitely pick one to run Jurassic Park.

They would have kept the dinosaurs very separated.

And, if you remember this, one of the fatal flaws was

all the dinosaurs were supposed to be female.

They weren't supposed to be able to have babies.

But then somehow, they ended up having babies.

Republicans wouldn't let this happen.

They'd be like, "These lesbian dinosaurs can't have kids."

Isn't Jurassic Park so much more terrifying

when you think of it as a lesbian dinosaur island?

You're like, "I wanna go, I just feel like there's going to be a lot of rules."

Republicans, also very good, they're very good at naming things.

They got "pro-life."

I think we can all agree, "pro-life" is great. That's fantastic.

"Pro-choice…" "Pro-choice" is so dumb. It just sounds bad.

You just sound like an annoying girl who can't decide what to order.

You're like, "What are you gonna get? Mmm."

Pro-life is great. Pro-life is good.

And we can all agree, we're all pro-life most of the day.

All of us like life most of the day.

There's a solid 95% of the day.

There's 5% of the day where we're like, "I don't know about life. This is…"

But we also know that Republicans are only, like, pro-life technically.

You know? Like, not in practice.

If they were actually pro-life, they'd care about things like, you know,

healthcare and education and gun safety, and…

You know, they'd care about things like trees.

They wouldn't be like, "Who needs clean water? You can just drink oil."

I don't have oil either.

So they're technically pro-life, you know?

It's kind of like if a pedophile called themselves "pro-child".

It is technically true.

Super pro-child.

I'm going to let you guys sit in that.

Is there anything more mom than drinking a warm beverage that's cold?

Whoo!

So now we're living in a world where we have to have all the babies, right?

We have to have all the babies.

So you'd hope they'd create some sort of infrastructure for us.

Because it's not just one person having a baby.

It's like we're collectively having the future,

and we should care about that,

because, you know, I don't think right now is going too great.

So maybe we should just, with the future, I don't know, try something different.

You know? And you'd hope there'd be some infrastructure.

Things like healthcare and education.

But also like, you know, caring about moms.

You know, remember them?

Uh…

Yeah, not everyone's even clapping. That's great.

Uh…

Feels fair. You're probably like, "I'm annoyed at my mom."

Uh…

"I don't care that she made me,

she called three times today about her password."

And…

We should… We should, you know? Like…

Hopefully we get to a place where we can, like,

you know, give like…

have things like maternity care,

and lactation support,