Minnesota’s outrage machine kicked into high gear this week after a downtown St. Paul bar canceled six sold-out comedy shows by Canadian comedian Ben Bankas. It’s a decision that, while rooted in safety concerns, has sparked wider concerns over what many residents say isn’t edgy humor, but outright hate.
Camp Bar and its Laugh Camp comedy club pulled the plug on Bankas’ weekend run after clips of his stand-up went viral, featuring grotesque remarks about Renee Good, who was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer earlier this month in Minneapolis. The material, recorded just days after her death, included slurs, mockery of Good’s sexuality, and comments suggesting she “should have been shot” sooner. The transcript reads:
““Now for a moment of silence for Renee Good. Really hope that dog’s OK … and her pet. Her last name was Good. That’s what I said after they shot her in the face.’
Bankas goes on to call Good a ‘dumb, retarded lesbian’ who ‘should have been shot 10 minutes before.’”
“This isn’t comedy, it’s violent hate speech,” one top comment read, which was a sentinment echoed through the rest of the thread.
Others were less measured. “The nerve to even pretend that’s comedy,” one user wrote. “What is wrong with these ghouls?”
Camp Bar owner Bill Collins told the Pioneer Press the cancellation wasn’t about taste or ideology, but safety. After the clip spread, Collins said he began receiving threats of protests and boycotts outside the 150-capacity venue.
“I’ve never had anything happen like this before,” Collins said, adding that he feared for both the audience and the performer. Comparisons were drawn to recent politically charged protests in the Twin Cities that escalated despite heavy police presence.
The move, however, may come at a steep financial cost. Collins estimates the bar stands to lose roughly $18,000, and Bankas’ management agency, CAA, has reportedly insisted the club still pay the comedian in full, warning that refusal could mean no future bookings from the powerful agency.
Patrick Strait, author of Funny Thing About Minnesota…, told the Pioneer Press that Bankas fits a mold of comedians who thrive on provocation and confrontation. But many Minnesotans flatly rejected the idea that this was even failed shock comedy.
“I’m into dark humor,” one commenter wrote. “This isn’t that.”
Another added: “It’s just a bunch of name-calling about a dead woman. Even from a conservative perspective, how is that funny?”
Several users mocked the broader comedy ecosystem that rewards this style, blaming what they called an “edge-lord pipeline” tied to culture-war outrage and podcast fame. Others jokingly dubbed Bankas “Maple MAGA,” with Alberta and Texas catching stray jokes along the way.
The backlash was sharpened by Camp Bar’s history as a gay bar, which made the use of homophobic slurs particularly galling.
While some acknowledged that the venue canceled the shows only after protests loomed, most agreed that the end result mattered more than the motive.
Bankas’ shows have been canceled before. Last year, multiple Canadian venues dropped him following crude jokes about Indigenous people, a pattern that many Minnesotans say undercuts claims that this was an isolated controversy blown out of proportion.
