TV host and comedian Howie Mandel last week joined a chorus of other comedy artists who are pushing back against woke censorship in the profession.
Comedians who make “offensive” jokes often find themselves fired or canceled by venues where they are scheduled to perform. Shane Gillis, for example, was fired from Comedy Central’s “Saturday Night Live” because of jokes he made concerning Asians, for which he later apologized. Actor and comedian Kevin Hart was barred from hosting the Oscars because of jokes he had made years before about people with same-sex attraction, for which he also apologized.
But other comedians like Jim Breuer, Bill Burr, Rob Schneider, and actress-comedienne Roseanne Barr have made waves for refusing to comply with prohibitions against “offensive” content. Barr told GEN last week that “In America, all of our comedians practice self-censorship – for the most part, and DARE NOT dissent against Obama Inc.”
Now Mandel has taken his own swipe at the industry’s woke standards.
“If you think of comedy as an art, they started telling us there are certain colors you can’t use,” the Deal or No Deal host said on the Stand Up World podcast last week. “If you’re a painter you shouldn’t say, ‘You can paint anything you want, but don’t use black, don’t use any yellows, and it’s really not right to use blue.’ Art suffers, and there isn’t anything we shouldn’t talk about,” Mandel said.
The TV host recalled that his close friend, the late comedian Gilbert Godfried, was fired from his job voicing commercials for insurance company Aflac because of jokes he made online about the 2011 earthquake in Japan. Mandel explained that the Aflac job was 65% of Godfried’s income.
“You don’t have to laugh at the joke. You don’t have to like the joke. You don’t even have to get the joke. But you’re going to take away, you’re going to remove his livelihood — this is a man with a wife and two kids — you’re going to just negate him for this joke that you don’t like, that isn’t even pointed at one particular person?”
“Who is damaged by this?” Mandel asked. “Who has ever been damaged by comedy? Ever?”
He added that comedy, which requires “embarrassing” or “awkward” elements in order to be effective, first started being shut down on college campuses.
“But I think the pendulum swung really far into the woke, and I feel people like Shane Gillis and Bert Kreischer and Ari Shaffir . . . these people who don’t give a sh*t about that and believe in the purity of what [stand-up comedy] is — and it is an art form — are bringing the pendulum back, and they’re selling bigger numbers than anybody that is trying to conform to what you believe you need to conform to.”
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