Comedy is cancelled, what does that say about us?

Humphries used humour to prise out the truth, but if you don't believe in truth, only truths, then there is nothing to be revealed, except your own "truth," your own minor exceptionalism.

When speech can be "violence," then even comedy has to be tame. So his manner and his purpose are completely at odds with the current moment.

Humphries might have been our most famous drag queen, but the female garb served an imaginative purpose-we all knew he wasn't a woman, and that was part of the fun. It also took the threat out of his jibes by adding an extra level of fantasy to the show.

Dame Edna Everage hosts high tea ahead of her My Gorgeous Life national tour in Sydney, Australia, on Sept. 11, 2019. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

When he apparently fell out of favour with the Comedy Festival, according to News.com.au, it was for this:

"In 2018, he described being transgender as a 'fashion,' and in a 2016 interview, he declared that those who undergo gender reassignment surgery are 'mutilated men,' while also dubbing transgender former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner a 'publicity-seeking ratbag.'"

This was the Humphries behind the bejewelled Edna glasses, briefly shorn of his jokes. Far be it for a comedian to speak the truth!

His cancellation underlines the differences between the generations he represents and the present.

His generation was strong, honest, playful, innovative, and generous, like their humour. The modern generation, in this instance, reveals itself to be timid, uninterested in real truth, puritanical, formulaic, mean and humourless.

This cannot be good for our prospects.

A society that finds every statement a potential slight is one which cannot progress. Without the ability to speak our minds, we will become strangers to each other, locked inside our own minds and the platitudes which are the only sentiments we will be allowed to express.