Others figure that what he said was in the distant past and irrelevant. It was on a wiseguy podcast, which is like a drive-time radio show in Pahrump, Nevada or something. Who is listening?
Yes, we do make allowances for what people do in their youth. Sometimes. Judge Kavanaugh may have gotten drunk on beer a lot, and waved his dick in co-ed's faces, but he's not doing it now. And we saw how calm he was in defending himself as an adult. No longer a college lad, he didn't sniffle, get red in the face, and nearly burst into tears like a cheerleader who sat on her pom-poms.
Shane Gillis.
THIS guy.
Who knows. He did a good audition, obviously. He could've been the next SNL asshole...maybe not a Belushi, maybe not Norm MacDonald who made a career out of blurting bad taste (but funny) remarks. But a redneck-ish Adam Sandler or Pete Davidson?
We'll never know.
It was discovered that on a frat-boy podcast with his partner in crime, Matt McCusker, the two did some kind of Beavis and Butthead riff on Chinatown: "Let the fucking chinks live there..." "How can there be so many fucking restaurants down there? I hate the food in Chinatown, it sucks, dude...shitty meat, a chemical they made up (MSG), noodles..." "It's full of fuckin' Chinee in there...Chinatown's fucking nuts."
Are you laughing?
No, nothing here was intended to be "funny." Like a bad Howard Stern show, or more accurately, a bad Opie & Anthony, the idea was to just nod your head and agree with a pair of rude pinheads.
At some point, Dopey Gillis fired a shot at Asian-American presidential candidate Andrew Yang, calling him a "Jew Chink."
Since the Internet is quaking with PC fears, it hasn't been easy to find EXACTLY what Gillis said or in what context, but it's a safe bet that "Jew Chink" was simply a variation on "Cheap Gook." Or some other less-than-charming and not-funny term.
Dopey's defense?
"I'm a comedian who pushes boundaries...you're going to find a lot of bad misses. I'm happy to apologize to anyone who's actually offended by anything I've said. My intention is never to hurt anyone but I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks."
Pushing boundaries and using shock-value words is something Lenny Bruce did, and the conservative Steve Allen championed this. Knowing Steve, I doubt he'd champion "Jew Chink," as courageous comedy.
As hilariously un-PC as Norm MacDonald often got (and especially on SNL when he was doing the "Fake news" there), I don't think he would've hammered home a punchline of: "Chinatown...it's full of...CHINEE in there...CHINKS live there!"
Don Rickles? No, Don said a lot of brutal things, but nothing like that. Nothing that could easily be considered gratuitously nasty and overtly racist, and without a real punchline in sight.
Gillis went to Twitter (of course) to get in a cheap shot on SNL, declaring he liked MAD TV better. Ha ha.
For his part, Andrew Yang took the high road, saying: "I've experienced a lot of anti-Asian racism throughout my upbringing, and it hurts. It's something that is very real, and I do think anti-Asian racial epithets are not taken as seriously as slurs against other groups."
In other words, if Gillis had used the N-word and spoke about restaurants in Harlem, he'd have his head handed to him.
BUT..."I believe that our country has become excessively punitive and vindictive about remarks that people find offensive or racist and that we need to try and move beyond that."
Yang didn't think Gillis should be fired JUST for joking about the Chinks. Excuse me, the CHINEE.
I'm not sure where he stood on the firing of the ESPN reporter who pointed out a "chink in the armor" of an Asian basketball player.
Yang Tweeted (how ELSE do we get our news) that: "Shane Gillis reached out. Looks like we will be sitting down together soon."
There's nothing more PC than "reaching out" is there?
Here's something odd about Dopey Gillis. He didn't seem to learn anything from GUY AOKI. Remember him?
GUY AOKI came out of nowhere to stalk bad-girl Sarah Silverman.
Sarah, sort of Norm MacDonald with a vagina, could always get away with bad-taste humor. Coming from an innocent-sounding girl, who could object? On Conan O'Briens talk show (July 11, 2001) she joked about trying to get off jury-duty. She figured a good way was to write something offensive on the form like:
"I hate Chinks."
Ha ha. Shock value joke. Not intended to ACTUALLY mean she hates Chinese people, but to show she's unfit for jury duty.
She stopped herself by saying that she knew that such a thing would be horrible, so on the jury form she wrote:
"I love Chinks."
GUY AOKI began to protest this, and pushed for an apology. O'Brien offered one. Silverman didn't, complaining that this was just a guy seeking to get publicity at her expense. She had a point. The guy was insisting he was going to follow her from gig to gig and never let up. They both squared off on an uncomfortable episode of "Politically Incorrect" (August 22, 2001) which, I recall, involved AOKI being abrasive and Silverman flustered.
It all died down, but didn't it send a message that "CHINK" might not be a useful word to use in comedy? Or, following the ESPN fiasco, even "chink in the armor?"
Or was Shane Gillis still watching "All in the Family" re-runs, where Archie, without meaning MUCH offense, calmly referred to the joy of "going out for Chinks" at the local take-out?
Humor doesn't have to be PC, but it does have to be...FUNNY.
I had this discussion with Steve Allen a few times. I asked if there were topics, as Poe suggested, "of which no jest can be made." He said of course...NOT. You can tell a joke about anything. The question is whether you should.
Another late comedy friend, George Carlin, put it this way: "Who says RAPE isn't funny? Imagine Bugs Bunny raping Elmer Fudd!"
When Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas, Sherry Kinison on Facebook moaned about how tragic it was, and there were memes telling people to donate to the victims, and pray for them. I instantly thought of Sam Kinison, and if this was 1989 instead of 2019, he might do a variation on his Ethiopia bit: "You're in the BAHAMAS...you're in the PATH of HURRICANES. Live where there ARE NO HURRICANES!!"
He might add, "Now you want people to donate money, but how can they, when they've come to the Bahamas as tourists, and spent it all on the overpriced wet bar, overpriced boat rides, and everything else you gouge them on! Nobody has money to GIVE YOU!"
Yes, that's as cruel as the "You live in a desert! You see this? It's SAND! Nothing grows here!!" But people laughed.
Now, people don't know when or if to laugh, and alleged comedians don't know how to tell a joke. They only know how to say "I was only kidding" when it turned out what they said was just racist opinion.
An irony is that Gillis wasn't the only new cast member for the new season. Another guy is an Asian...named YANG. "I'm not making this up..."
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