‘If we can’t suspend outrage when listening to comedy, then we’ve lost something in our culture.’
Comedian Shane Gillis is taking heat in the mainstream media over a stand-up monologue on SNL about women’s gym fashion. On today’s episode of The Editors, Rich asks Charlie what he thought of the skit and the subsequent backlash.
“It was largely self-deprecating . . . but let’s suppose that it wasn’t. At what point did women become immune from the ramblings of stand-up comedians? This is just special pleading,” says Charlie.
“If the host of Saturday Night Live had said that all men in Alabama were Nazis, do we think we’d have seen the same people complaining about it? No, they think it’s punching down, because they have a completely incoherent conception of women. Women are equal until you make fun of them, and then it’s punching down. . . . People say, ‘If we indulge that, then we mainstream misogyny.’ No, no — it was a joke from a stand-up comedian. That’s what they do.”
“Humorlessness is catastrophic for culture,” he explains. “If we can’t suspend outrage when listening to comedy, then we’ve lost something in our culture.”
The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.