It's always good waking up to Ricky Gervais taking the piss out of cancel culture. He does it with a certain panache only the Brits can. Sort of like the way a certain c-word rolls so eloquently off their tongues. The comedian joined the Smartless podcast, and by rule you can't not ask Gervais about free speech. The relevant part starts around the 1:05:00 mark of this audio link. Or, here's a handy summary of what he said.

Ricky Gervais compares cancel culture to 'road rage'youtu.be

Two points of his I want to touch on:

Who's gonna cancel me? Twitter? YouTube? If I have to, I'll go to Hyde Park and stand up on a bench and shout sh*t.

The scary thing is being canceled if you say the wrong thing and suddenly Netflix can take you off their platform. You could be the most woke, politically correct stand-up in the world at the moment, but you don't know what it's going to be like in 10 years time. You can get canceled for things you said 10 years ago.

The first bit is easier to do when you have a pile of f*** you money. Ricky Gervais has a pile of f*** you money. So do cats like Bill Burr and Dave Chappelle. Your average person on social media who made an off hand joke one day, or who made the mistake of tweeting while angry, doesn't. But the point of social media being bullsh*t is well taken. Also, we have Parler and Rumble now.

His second point I want to focus on. Smartless is hosted by three Hollywood actors: Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett. They were mostly agreeable to what Ricky said. I'm curious. Let's say someone made a rational comment about trans activism as Gervais has made. The usual suspects come from that person's job. Is Jason Bateman going to stick up for that person from getting fired from Ozark? Will Sean Hayes stop them from getting fired from whatever Will & Grace reunion they're up to? I wouldn't bet money on it.

Cancel culture is ridiculous. Less are willing to say that when it comes for someone in their orbit. Ricky Gervais is thankfully not one of those people.

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