Clean comedy

Clean comedy is a comedy genre that is generally free of ribaldry: racism, rape jokes, pejoratives, profanity, obscenity, incest, illicit drugs, off-color humor, toilet humor, explicitly sexual content, and similarly objectionable material. Comedians may try to circumvent clean-comedy restrictions by using innuendos, euphemisms, doublespeak, double entendres, and gender-neutral language. Clean comedy is not necessarily unprovocative.

Clean comedy is considered by some to be a higher form of comedy than bits that rely on the shock of profanity or sexual content to elicit laughs. Bob Newhart said in a The Wall Street Journal interview that getting laughs from clean material "is harder. It's just harder...I got a certain satisfaction out of getting a response from the audience and knowing I'd done something that may be harder." David Brenner said "Many who rely on dirty humor do so because vulgar language helps sell weak jokes."