I’m gonna try to keep this short cause I have been told nobody wants to read through an entire “manifesto” these days. If you are the bookworm type there is an FAQ at the end that should last you at least two solid poops worth of sitting down time.

I met Amy roughly 12 years ago. I had just moved to NYC from Fairbanks Ak to seek my fame and fortune as a comic. I was standing outside The Village Lantern where there was an open mic in the basement. A couple of comics were standing around talking about how the girl on stage, Amy Schumer, had done some of Margaret Cho’s jokes. I was a total newbie and horned in on the chat to suggest we tell her rather than gossip cause she probably didn’t know. I got a bunch of blank stares but decided to do it anyway. I was so new and I thought what if I did that accidentally and nobody told me and I got a rep as a joke theif? Anywho, she came outside and I asked her if she was Amy and said some folks said the jokes she was doing belonged to Margaret Cho and I thought she would want to know. She gave me a big smile and a head tilt and said Oh my god thank you in an overly enthusiastic way and walked off. I was satisfied I had done my good deed for the day and didn’t give it another thought. Until…

A few months later some comics I was, and still am very fond of, one of which was booking a show I wanted to get on at Gotham, started being really cold to me. I pressed one of them for information when I saw him out and about, and eventually pulled it out of him that Amy had been telling people that I was pretending to be gay to get spots. It was quite a shock since I have a bunch of material about people thinking I am gay even though I’m not, and quite honestly it is a sore spot for this lumbering manimal of a gal. I was also really disappointed that somebody I thought I was helping was trying to hurt me. I was even more disappointed when I found out she was pretending to be bisexual to get in with the same group she was trying to keep me out of. To me, that’s some Heathers level psycho shit.

Needless to say I avoided her after that as much as possible. There was this one time at the Caroline’s Christmas party that she made it a point to come up to me and snark “you look nice, like you finally learned to dress for your body type”. My delicate little ego was crushed. In her defense I do dress like I don’t know I’m fat and I went through a phase where I would wear wall tapestries as sarongs, but I guess I thought as an adult I wouldn’t have to deal with high school style mean girl nastiness, and now it just drives me bonkers that she is considered a feminist icon.

So then she was on Last Comic Standing and instantly famous. That’s when shit got real. I was once again in front of The Village Lantern, this time for a show that was practically an open mic and I was talking about how guys hit on me weird like saying they like big feet or I look like I can take a punch and I was trying to tighten it up as a joke. I blew through my time dicking around with the intimate crowd and didn’t get to it. Then Amy goes on and I was already rolling my eyes making gagging faces in the shadows in the back of the room like a big butt hurt baby, and she told my story. I heard her say “he said I look like I can take a punch” and my ears started ringing. I took a deep breath and heard the crowd laughing and thought WHAT THE FUCK SHE IS A REGULAR SIZED PERSON WHY ARE THEY LAUGHING? After her set I was breifly comforted cause I have a competitive streak and felt like I had the better set. But nobody cared. They wanted to talk to the girl who was on TV, not the girl who was the funniest that night. I felt sick. My mentors at the time told me not to say anything cause she was on TV and I was (am) a nobody so it could only hurt me. Since that day I have not watched one thing she has done except for about 15 seconds of her interview with Barbara Walters cause she looked sad when I was flipping channnels and that made me happy. I’m only human for fucks sake!

Fast forward to a few years later and she is massively famous and about 40-60% of the people who appraoch me after shows either say I remind them of Amy, ask if I am a fan because they think I am just like her, or, and these are the worst, insist I stole my act from her. I had a couple in Nashville get really aggressive with me and insist what I did was word for word what they had seen Amy do. I got really upset. I tried to explain to them that she stole from me but they didn’t understand how that could be cause I am a nobody. I couldn’t make them see that the fact that I am a nobody is exactly why she can get away with it. The only thing worse than being ripped off by somebody so famous I can’t even block them out is having audience members accuse me of being the one doing the stealing.

So I didn’t keep it that short but this is the wrap up. You may have heard about other comics accusing Amy of stealing material, most notably two women who later apologized after the internet shouted them down and declared women only have three premises anyway so stop being a bunch of jealous cunts. Look, I get that there is such thing as parallel thinking and coincidence, and I sure as hell am not gung ho about sitting down and watching her entire library to pin point what she took. Instead I tell my crowds now that if they hear a joke and think it is hers, to come to me after the show and I will tell them about the life event that the joke is about, cause I don’t make this shit up. I exaggerate a bit, but my jokes are real. That is why this means so much to me. That is why I don’t care anymore if I get backlash for writing this. She isn’t just stealing jokes, she is stealing my life.

FAQs

Hey Hailey, are you just doing this cause you want attention?

I’m not ONLY doing it cause I want attention. I am doing it because when I go to buy tampons Amys face is on the magazines at the checkout and when I watch South Park her face scrolls along the bottom of the screen and she is featured in every commercial break. I am doing this because about half of the time I do an audience meet and greet, somebody either accuses me of stealing her jokes, or tells me how much I remind them of her. I can no longer ignore it or “be the bigger person”. I am doing it because I should have done it years ago when people told me not to because it would only hurt me. I am doing it because not doing it hurts me and even if all I get is haters and think pieces about what a jerk I am that don’t even use my name in the headline, I will have done what I can to stop her, and others who are tempted to do the same, from hurting somebody else like me. And if I do get some attention, great! I love attention. LOOK AT ME!!!

So what, are you like, Mother Teresa or something?

How dare you! She lured people into death camps so she could force them to convert to Catholicism and then sell their hair to the highest bidder! But I am also no angel, I have made lots of mistakes in my life and I even once told a joke I had written as a tag for another comic. It slipped out, I was mortified and had the producer erase the tape and told everyone who complimented me after the show that the towel bit was actually somebody else’s like a compulsive freak.

Are you like, super pumped for all the well meaning but misguided SJWs out there to pick you apart?

Not as pumped as I am for folks to find some typos in there and attack my intelligence and education. I figure if people want to say I am anti feminist or a jealous fatty, at least they read the dang thing. Plus, I wrote it, so now I can refer people to it rather than having the same maddening conversation over and over and over till I die.

It sounds like you are just jealous.

Um, okay technically that isn’t a question. But yeah, I am jealous. She has an amazing career and money and power and all that jazz. But more accurately I am ALSO jealous because when she first started being the bain of my existence she was just a sad open micer pretending to be bisexual to get more spots. I should have spoken up then but I was afraid of the stigma that comes with complaining in this business and even more afraid that since she has a huge capacity for evil that she would find ways to make my already rocky life into a storm I couldn’t survive. I am still scared but not too scared to speak up because all these years later I have people who love me no matter what and that makes me feel brave. I also love myself more and I am willing to take bigger risks to stand up for myself.

But yes, super jealous.

Why don’t you do a side by side video like the one that shows Carlos Mencia stealing Bill Cosbys jokes?

First off, I don’t want to. I don’t want to watch her, it literally makes my blood pressure spike and gives me a terrible headache just thinking about her cause she makes me so mad and I am a delicate flower. I also am sort of a hippie and starving artist so I don’t have her stuff on hand or the skills to make a side by side, but I will probably end up having to do that eventually. But oh wouldn’t it be lovely if somebody out there in internet land were to do it for me? (Hint, hint) What I have been doing in the meantime is letting the audience know that if they hear me do a joke they think is hers to let me know and I will tell them the real life situation I got the joke from and we can call my mom or ex boyfriend’s or whoever we have to in order to prove that my joke is mine and written about my life.

Why don’t you just get over it and write more jokes?

Well because I am just not that zen bro. I write new jokes all the time but it really does bother me that putting them on youtube or soundcloud means she can harvest them. Also there is the fact that even if I quit comedy and never watch South Park again (I really don’t think I can live without South Park) I would still have to live with seeing her everywhere and being reminded of her constantly. I wish I was so cool and Ghandi-esque that I could just not give a shit, but I’m not and I give lots and lots of shits. Also, my new miscarriage material is pretty tight. Check it out sometime.

Don’t you think that maybe you guys just had the same ideas for jokes and she is just a better business woman than you are?

She is totally better at business than I am. My savings account is a jar I bought at the dollar store full of foreign currency that I don’t want to exchange cause it makes me nauseous to pay the bank fee. Considering the circumstances under which we met, the way she has treated me, accusations from other comics, the differences in our physical appearances and upbringings, dating choices, and size, the frequency of audience accusations, and the fact that she took a story straight from my mouth to the stage right fucking in front of me, no I don’t just think we had the same ideas for jokes.

Even if she did steal jokes, isn’t it more important that she is breaking ground for all women in Comedy?

Nope.

Are you sure? Cause women sure do get a lot of guff and maybe her benefits outweigh her cuntiness.

For sure women don’t get a fair shake in comedy. Heck, we don’t get a fair shake at the bus stop. We are categorized as either whores or ugly bitches. I, by the way, get assigned to both catagories. To me, people like Amy Poehler and Tina Fey and Ellen DeGeneres are helping to improve equality for women in comedy by being super funny with their clothes on*. In a perfect world people wouldn’t judge all women based on what a few do, and comics would be comics and people would be people. I also don’t see Amy Schumer holding a lot of doors open for other women, I see her standing on the work of other women for her own personal gain. I also once read a speech she gave at a feminist rally in hopes that she had changed and was doing something good with her power, but alas, it was just a story about how she seeks the approval of a higher class of men now than when she was in college. In a way I feel like she is hurting women in comedy directly by stealing material, and indirectly because her business model conforms to the still popular misconception that men are the only ones who know what is funny.

* I’m not criticising people who take their clothes of for a living, it’s honest work and a perfectly valid choice of profession, but if your job is to be funny and you have to get naked to get attention for it, I think maybe you aren’t that good at your job.

If Amy never stole from you, do you believe you would be a huge international superstar instead of her?

Probably not. I have a ton of mental health issues stemming from abuse and homelessness and lack of access to medical services. I also have a tendency to be really honest and unfiltered and that shit does not play well in the hierarchy of show biz. I do believe I would be a more peaceful person and have less mental health issues if my bullies face wasn’t plastered all over the world and I didn’t have to constantly defend myself from accusations from audience members. I do think that if she hadn’t stolen from me and other comics she wouldn’t be a huge international superstar and wouldn’t have the power to keep me and others from having opportunities we would have had otherwise. For all I know she is actively working against me, but I have no way of knowing how much of that is real and how much of that is my ego hoping that the only reason I don’t have a CC Presents is because she doesn’t want me to. I guess maybe? Maybe I would be. But I think it is more likely I would be right where I am but with less bullshit to deal with.

If you are so funny that the most famous woman in comedy steals jokes from you, how come I never heard of you and you aren’t booking that much stuff?

Soooo glad you asked me that question cause I do truly enjoy thinking about all of the mistakes I have made and my myriad personality defects. As I mentioned before, I have some issues. I also have other issues, like poor self worth and an inability to ask for what I want in a direct and effective manner when it comes to my art. I also recently took off a bunch of time off (after an international tour including my Edinburgh Fringe debut…*clears throat*) cause I had to put my dog down and I lost my home and my best friend (she didn’t die, she turned out to be an asshole) and then managed to screw up my new situation in my grief and what turned out to be a hormonal imbalance caused by a large ovarian cyst, my brother ditched me and I misscarried a set of twins after being on bed rest for a while and followed it all up with surgery, both thoracic and oral. So, sob story short, part cause I can be a bit hard to work with and part cause of some curveballs I just didn’t manage well.

Are you sure it isn’t cause you are delusional and Amy just plucked your few good jokes so they wouldn’t be doomed to obscurity with the rest of your shtick?

To be fair I think I probably have some narcissistic traits. I often imagine that the universe is sending me signals through the songs I hear over the store PA while shopping. I continue to tweet about social issues even though I have less than 2,000 followers, that is maybe a sign of megalomania. I really do think I’m talented though and I have a few things to back that up. I have an IMDB page, that’s a crumb. Back in 2010 the Glasgow International Comedy Festival created a slot for new American talent to fit me in. I was on Stand Up in Stilettos and my YouTube and Comedy Time videos have mostly positive comments (except the Laugh Factory one, those comments are mostly speculation about my gender and if I hate Asians or not). I was on The Nasty Show at the Montreal Festival which is kind of a big deal. I’ve sold a metric butt ton of t-shirts and I made number 66 on a TBS sponsored list of 101 funniest working comics! Amy was number 3 but who’s counting? I think I am pretty damn good at this comedy stuff and getting better all the time.

So are you saying Amy is the devil and we should all throw rocks at her until she goes back to hell?

No! I definitely don’t support violence of any kind unless it is for self defense or a Quentin Tarantino film. I also ask that you not do that thing where everyone barages her with abuse and name calling. However, if you want to say a little prayer for her to get a yeast infection or whatever, I won’t be mad attcha. Maybe a real classy boycott would be cool. I don’t think she is the devil. I like to imagine that she succumbed to pressure she felt or got too caught up in strategy or something equally 80’s teen movieish. I guess she could be the devil, I have made it a point to not be anywhere near her for almost 10 years now so I guess she could be eating kittens or saving them, I don’t know. All I do know is the stuff I wrote about in the main post.

So are you gonna spend the rest of your days correcting the misinformation people spread due to laziness and poor reading comprehension?

I imagine I will be lousy with threats and taunts and messages for a while, but I will still make room for getting stoned, playing with my dog, and having tons of awesome freaky sex with my super hot and talented boyfriend. And ice cream. I will always have time for ice cream.

What do you hope will happen next?Ideally I would like for Amy to apologize to me and any other comics she has stolen material from and for her to stop doing it. I want her to give credit where credit is due and use her fame to be an actual roll model instead of a Kardashian parody of a public figure. I am also hoping to at the very least, be able to enjoy performing comedy without having to convince every third person that I wrote my own fucking jokes.