Anthony Jeselnik can still be mean, but he's made attempts to remove jokes from his act that elicit the wrong type of laughter

The Ringer

It seems like Jeselnik, whose Fire in the Maternity Ward Netflix special was released this week, has been almost "grandfathered" in with his ability to get away with telling off-color jokes. But Jeselnik says he has tried to evolve his comedy. For instance, he cut a joke about hate crimes following the synagogue shooting in his hometown of Pittsburgh. “It would get a huge laugh,” Jeselnik says, “but (I would ask) ‘Why are people laughing at this joke?’ I don’t want to have a joke that makes people think hate crimes are cool. I don’t think I would have (removed it) 10 years ago. But now with the way the world is, some things just aren’t funny to me.”