Comedian Ricky Gervais is going to be back for a fifth time hosting the Golden Globe Awards — the annual drunken bit of ridiculousness put on by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Gervais has been on the Wokescold Nation hit list ever since he made Caitlyn Jenner jokes at the 2016 Golden Globes. It should be noted that in 2016 pretty much ninety-nine percent of the adults in America were making Caitlyn Jenner jokes. A bar opened in my old Los Angeles ‘hood in August of 2016 that had a picture of Bruce Jenner on the men’s room door and Caitlyn on the women’s.
It was the thing to do in America.
To his credit, Gervais has refused to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness from the Wokescolds.
Stand-up comedy is perhaps the last firewall in the battle for free speech. Free speech is messy and that messiness has to be embraced and respected or we’re all off to the gulag. Gervais gets that.
People like the idea of freedom of speech until they hear something they don’t like. So there’s still a pressure, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to water it down or back down and not say what I want. It’s just another form of what we’ve been through many, many times — it used to be called P.C. I think those things start off with very good intention and then they’re mugged. It’s a good thing to not be racist and sexist and homophobic. But it’s not a good thing to not be allowed to make jokes about those things, because you can tell a joke about race without being racist. I’m happy to play by the rules. It’s just that the 200 million people watching have different rules. That’s the plight. When people say, “He crossed the line,” I say, “I didn’t draw a line, you did.” It’s relative. It’s subjective.
Subjectivity is lost on the SJW scolds. They want comedy to be safe for everyone. That’s impossible because not everyone experiences the same comedy in the same way.
Try telling that to a self-righteous SJW millennial who is dying to call you any kind of “phobe.”
No doubt, much to the chagrin of the cancel-culture types, Gervais’s unapologetic approach isn’t hurting his career:
Ricky now holds the record for the fastest selling stand up tour of all time selling 3 million tickets worldwide. This secured him a 40 million dollar deal with Netflix and the most watched special of the year! pic.twitter.com/gl69Btnlyz
— Ricky Gervais Trivia (@GervaisTrivia) December 2, 2019
Gervais has an absolutely brilliant Netflix original show called After Life. It’s poignant, it’s funny, and it’s original.
It also probably couldn’t have gotten made if he had let the SJWs run him over in 2016.
During a recent radio interview, I said that Lenny Bruce didn’t go to jail for dropping f-bombs just so we could become prissy sixty years later.
Ricky Gervais isn’t getting prissy any time soon.
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PJ Media Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.”
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