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Woman heckles Utah comedian with racist slogan

Posted at 11:08 AM, Apr 10, 2018
and last updated 2018-04-10 13:10:27-04

WEST JORDAN, Utah — Utah comedian Jay Whittaker said a woman interrupted his show on Saturday night by heckling him with a racist slogan.

Whittaker, who performed at Wiseguys Comedy Club at Jordan Landing, said he was 45 minutes into his set when a woman heckled him by saying “white power.”

“She was mumbling it a couple times beforehand but it was mostly drowned out by the laughter between jokes. When I heard it the third time and the front rows heard it (which had black folks sitting right up front stage left), I had to speak up. I called her out and told the waitstaff to cut her off from drinking. I didn’t call her any disrespectful names despite her drunk hatred. I did the best I could to address it with class and tact and kept the show moving,” Whittaker wrote in a post on his Facebook page.

Whittaker played a clip of the incident and shared more of his thoughts in the “Nicer Than Drake” episode of his podcast, “The Incredibly Vocal Minority with Jay Whittaker,” which he recorded Sunday.

“The last thing I want is somebody to yell out ‘white power’ at my show, and then I just dismiss it and she thinks it’s OK to say to another black person that may be at the show and then something else could happen.  No, I handled it right there,” Whittaker said in the podcast. “Some people say I overreacted. Some people say I underreacted.”

In his Facebook post, Whittaker said Wiseguys Comedy Club supported his reaction and, despite the heckling, Saturday’s show was one of his all-time favorites.