Monday, January 06, 2020

Ricky Gervais targets the self-righteous

I guess I missed a big TV moment. Ricky Gervais had been chosen—God knows why—to host the somehow-still-prestigious Golden Globes Awards this year, and he took the opportunity to flay his out-of-touch, sanctimonious, Hollywood-elite audience about their unjustified preachiness and ugly hypocrisy:

“I mean, the companies that you work for, Apple, Amazon, Disney…if ISIS started a streaming service, you would call your agents, wouldn't you?” he said. "So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to give a political speech. You’re in no place to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God, and fuck off.”

I have to wonder how many stars who won awards actually followed that advice. I also see, in the comments section to the above-linked article, that a lot of conservatives are crowing "Preach it, brother!" about Gervais's attack. Those righties would be wise to remember that Ricky Gervais is no friend of the right, either; if anything, I'd say his default position is leftist. But Gervais is one of the sane leftists who has gotten sick of how the far left has hijacked discourse and sanity in the name of a cancel-culture agenda that sees anything and everything as the enemy—a black-and-white, dogmatic attitude that isn't far different from that of fundamentalist Christianity, which views the island of the righteous as surrounded by a sea of unrighteous enemies. If only these lefties could see that irony.



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