Drew Magary
Uh Oh, the Comedy People Are Afraid Again
Is it really that hard to not tell racist jokes?
You know you’ve made it in the comedy business when you get to publicly bitch to large audiences about how your precious jokes are under attack. That was the case again this fall when Saturday Night Live annulled its hiring of comedian Shane Gillis after everyone found out that Gillis said nakedly racist shit on his own podcast just a year prior. Click the link right here and you’ll find that Gillis’ comments aren’t coded racism, nor are they cleverly worked into good material. It’s just basic, clumsy racism, as easy to diagnose as a severe case of herpes.
Not that such racism ended up mattering to Gillis’ peers, many of whom used his stillborn tenure at SNL to, for the 900th time, sound the alarms about how their craft is under attack from the dreaded cancel culture. Here’s industry veteran Bill Burr:
We’re not running for office. When is this gonna fucking end? You millennials… you’re a bunch of rats, all of you. None of them care. All they want to do is get people in trouble.
Here, predictably, is Bill Maher, who proudly called himself a “house n‑‑‑‑‑” on his own HBO show and still gets to reap $10 million a year from them for the privilege:
