Bruce Dowbiggin
Gervais, Chappelle: Laughing In The Face Of Cancel Culture
The passing of comedian Tommy Smothers over the holidays almost went unreported. But in 1968, the prime-time TV show featuring Smothers and his brother Dick was considered the essence of counter-culture resistance against Viet Nam, racial intolerance and the drug scene. Folk singer Joan Baez used the show to pay tribute to her husband David who was going to jail for avoiding the draft.
Its creative staff featured (among others) David Steinberg, Steve Martin, Bob Einstein, Rob Reiner and Lorenzo Music in sketches that defined the insubordination of the younger generation. One of its producers was a Canadian, Alan Blye. In one cheeky running gag Pat Paulsen ended up running for president. So when CBS cancelled the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1969 to placate sponsors and the White House it produced a furor. Cries of “censorship” reverberated from the hip Left. “Never again would censors attack free speech” they wailed.
LOS ANGELES – MARCH 30: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. A CBS comedy / variety television show. Premiere episode broadcast March 30, 1988. Pictured from left is Tom Smothers, Dick Smothers. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)
Fast forward to the dawn of 2024. Two controversial comedians launched new podcasts on Netflix in the teeth of a howling mob of Woke critics who want them banned for heresy or apostasy. But Ricky Gervais and Dave Chapelle are not being threatened with cancellation by Trumpian reactionaries. No, it’s the current generation of smug progressives who want them silenced. Permanently. For breaking the code.
This is typical pushback from the scolds: “Gervais’s jokes, which mock illegal immigrants, homeless people, trans people and more, are the sort of opinions that, far from getting you cancelled, are likely to be vote winners at the ballot box,” Nervous Nick Hilton wrote in the leftwing UK The Independent. Says humourless trade paper Variety: “Ricky Gervais’ New Netflix Special Tries So Hard to Be Edgy and Offensive — but It’s Just a Total Bore.” Take that.
Chappelle has been raked for “punching down” on the Left’s pet causes. For all the threats Gervais and Chappelle have received over alleged LGBTQ-2 slurs in the past, they have never backed down from the comedic art of in-your-face political commentary. And their new products Armageddon (Gervais) and The Dreamer (Chappelle) are no exception.
Sample: Chappelle tells an extended story about meeting his idol Jim Carrey on the set of Andy Kaufman biopic Man On The Moon. The problem was that Carrey stayed in character as Kaufman even between scenes. Chappelle is advised to call him Andy, not Jim. But an exuberant Chapelle forgets and still calls him Jim.
The crew is mortified. Chappelle is puzzled, talking to what is clearly Jim Carrey but calling him Andy. It was a strange experience says Chappelle. Dramatic pause. “Sort of like how I feel talking to a trans person.” The crowd explodes in guilty laughter, knowing that it would kill their own careers to ever voice such “sedition” in everyday conversation.
Gervais is equally aggressive. In one bit he talks about the mob who want to pull down statues of people who might have been involved in the slave trade 200 years ago. “But they built that beautiful hospital over there,” says Gervais. “Okay, you can leave that. But pull down the statue and throw it in the canal.” Pause. “But he built that canal.” Ricky-as-rioter: “Okay, you can leave that. But pull down the statue.” Etc.
Both men reflect on their bête noir reputations. Chappelle pokes fun at his tour with Chris Rock in the months after Rock was slapped by Will Smith at the Oscars. Then Chappelle himself is assaulted onstage in L.A. by a homeless man allegedly incensed over Chappelle’s jokes about gays. He references his security man now perched just offstage. And describes Puffy coming to his rescue.
Gervais does a symposium about words-as-weapons in the radical left and its effect on audiences. He pleads for divorcing the comedian from the comedy, urging his audience to laugh freely again. Hearing the uproarious laughter for forbidden words and concepts in London (Gervais) and Washington D.C. (Chappelle) was like attending a secret society, a Resistance to the tyranny of radical scolds. And a glimmer that the worst could be over.
For those with memories that go back even further than The Smothers Brothers, these extemporaneous challenges over free speech recall 1960s comic Lenny Bruce, who was hounded till his death for controversial material on sex and politics. In his later years Bruce, who was an unrepentant liberal, would forgo jokes and routines just to read trial transcripts from his cases to a stunned crowd.
Like Gervais and Chappelle, he was obsessed about free speech and liberty. Unlike them, he was not rescued by Netflix.
Gervais and Chappelle stand in stark contrast to the podcast/ TV series Smartless, featuring comedians Will Arnott, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes. This is the Scientology of comedy. Drumming consensus. Started during Covid, Smartless features the trio talking glibly about their lives in the culture bubble and introducing a surprise guest to the other two. Needless to say Smartless stays on the approved side of Woke culture in its lengthy list of guests.
While the roster is choked by “safe” entertainment and news figures (Rachel Maddow, Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Kimmell, Jen Psaki, Bill Maher) you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone bending even slightly Right on the roster. Wayne Gretzky? Certainly no one is going to do a comic dissertation on why the people who lionized the Smothers Brothers now endorse swatting the homes of their enemies. Or palling it up with Hamas.
The episode with black comic Kevin Hart is especially revealing for the three progressive hosts. (The roster of Smartless guests is paler than a Vatican synod.) Using the Woke Ranking of Grievance, Hart is untouchable for this Hollywood crowd. Exotic and uncontrollable, he owns the set as Arnett, Bateman and Hayes try not to get caught off the reservation as he savages them for talking about peeing sitting down.
As the gay man on set Hayes is similarly protected from most cancellation sins. But Canadian Arnett and especially Bateman are like long tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs. As the conversation heads to the DMZ of comedy Bateman keeps saying, Oh, not you’re not going to get me canceled. His palpable fear of falling afoul of his censorship colleagues is as far from Chappelle and Gervais inviting censure as you can get and still call it comedy.
Speaking of which. Ricky has come up with a fabulous idea for the moribund Oscars broadcast. He thinks he and Chappelle should co-host. Make our day. As long as there’s a camera on the Smartness guys as their world is torn apart.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
The Toronto Maple Leafs made the “what colour is that green light?” decision to fire their head coach Sheldon Keefe last week. The removal of Keefe after five years followed a dispiriting first-round playoff series loss to a very ordinary Boston Bruins team. Coaching may or may not have been the root cause of that loss. (Keefe himself admitted “teams are waiting for the Leafs to beat themselves”.)
The real reason for the firing is 1967, and we don’t think we need add more than that.
In essence, the management of MLSE— the owner of the Maple Leafs and a lot of other sports stuff in Toronto— needed to throw a body to the baying hounds of disappointment. Also known as Leafs Nation. Newly minted CEO Keith Pelley, fresh from the PGA Tour/ LIV psychodrama, was certainly not going to pay the price.
Nor was GM Brad Treliving who has only been on the job for two seasons. The key decisions on Toronto’s lopsided salary cap were decided long before Treliving occupied his desk. That left two people in vulnerable positions. 1) Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan, who has been drawing an MLSE cheque for a decade. 2) Keefe.
When was the last time you saw a coach fire a team president? Precisely. Keefe joins the list of (briefly) unemployed coaches who circulate in the NHL like McKinsey consultants. Shanahan gets a lukewarm mulligan from Pelley. But after the failure of the Kyle Dubas experiment— “who needs experience?”— and now just a single playoff series win in a decade Shanny’s best-before date has arrived.
Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan attends a news conference in Toronto on April 14, 2014. Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said Peter Horachek will remain the team’s interim head coach until the end of the season. Shanahan met the media Friday for the first time since coach Randy Carlyle was fired on Tuesday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Depending on who he and Treliving enlist to coach— remember, Mike Babcock was too tough and Keefe was probably too player friendly— it had better produce instant results. Because Shanny, the pride of Mimico, is out of chances. The coach choice will also be affected by whichever player or players that management decides are superfluous to ending the Leafs’ ridiculous run of misery.
The Leafs brass’ press conference last Thursday did little to shed light on what happens after Keefe’s expulsion. Just a lot of MBA determinism on a bed of baffle gab. A crabby Steve Simmons question/rant briefly threatened the harmony of the moment, but order was restored. And the media bitching switched from the press box to social media and podcasts.
Speaking of the fourth estate, the other unmentioned aspect of this story— indeed every story in the NHL these days— is just how it was revealed to the public. When people sipped their morning Tim’s or Starbucks the (almost) coincident bulletins came down the social media pike about Keefe’s dismissal.
Predictably, Chris Johnston of Sportsnet and Daren Dreger of TSN announced the breaking news within heart beats of each other. While there had been speculation on Keefe’s fate for days, the announcement coming from the networks duo confirmed the story in the minds of the industry. That allowed everyone else drawing a cheque as a hockey journalist to pile in and swarm the dead body.
In today’s sports journalism, where social media has replaced newspapers, scoops are governed by a protocol. There are the heralds— in the NHL it’s currently Johnston and Dreger— and then there are the disseminators. The days of a rabble of reporters all scrambling to get a story bigger than who-will-play-in-tonight’s-game are gone. Today, it’s a very narrow funnel for scoops.
It’s the same in the NFL where Ian Rappaport (NFL Network) and Adam Schefter (ESPN) monopolize the tasty scoops on behalf of their employers, who also happen to be NFL rights holders. In the NBA, Brian Windhorst (ESPN) has the inside rail when it comes to the LeBron James/ Steph Curry scoops. In MLB… it’s probably Ken Rosenthal (The Athletic) but no one cares about baseball anymore, do they?
The leagues like it this way, doling out stories to guys they can trust. None of this is criticism of Johnston or Dreger, who have deftly maneuvered themselves into the coveted “from their lips to your ears” spots. From our own experience we can remember the exhilaration of having the best source or sources on the really big stories. Like Johnston/ Dreger, we worked hard for a long time to develop those sources and only very reluctantly let anyone else horn in on our stories.
It was also our observation that this order of things journalistic suited a lot of reporters who either couldn’t get good sources or didn’t want the stress of being first on stuff. It was enough that, like the Keefe story, they’d get the goods eventually and most fans would not care who was first. So long as you had a take. So be it.
Some resentful types took potshots at our work if it upset their pals in the dressing room or the management suite. On the Stephen Ames/ Tiger Woods story in 2001, we had the late Pat Marsden tell us on air that we’d done a great job on Ames’ criticisms of Tiger. Only to hear him lambaste us— again on FAN 590— only minutes later as we listened driving home from the studio. But we digress.
Many reporters are complacent in playing the game, so long as their bosses didn’t enquire why they are getting scooped all the time by the same few rivals. With the death of daily newspapers that doesn’t happen much any longer. (Many editors today may only see stories when publication brings a libel notice.) For them a salty take is good enough.
The scoop business is also affected by the multiple roles now demanded of sports media types. In addition to their “day job” on a beat they also have to supply digital content and talk-back hits to the Mother Ship. Most also are feeding a weekly podcast, dictating time on air rather than time working the phone. There are only so many hours in a day to chase a story.
Better to play the Breaking News waiting game.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
Have you ever been to a concert where a hot new product like Tesla is mentioned and many in the crowd applaud in approval? Have you been at a dinner party when you say you went to a new Thai restaurant, and everyone at the table explodes in rhapsodic glee? Have you ever been to see a comic and he mentions he has the latest iPhone with the nifty camera and people actually cheer?
You see those people cheering a piece of tech or a style of cuisine? Those are the people who believed Justin Trudeau when he told them to sink everything into real estate when interest rates were near zero. They. Will. Believe. Anything. So long as they think it makes them cool kids. Trudeau could say he can control the weather by stopping cows from farting, and they’ll be wearing a bovine flatulence T-shirts pronto.
Now, we can hear you laughing in derision at our skepticism about the real estate-economy that has taken over the nation— the new economy that Justin fed, watered and then bragged about. (To the exclusion of the other cornerstones of our once-dynamic nation state.) The one that will be going to Market one of these days for a meeting with an air compressor.
Again, you laugh. Despite the housing shortage Justin says we can easily accommodate two million new souls a year, no problem. He says Trump was a vile racist for wanting to exclude unhinged radicals from zombie countries back in 2017. The freshly-arrived from Trump’s “shithole countries” with “shithole value systems” and “shithole economies’ will prop up the value of Canada’s two-million dollar cash-cow bungalow in West Van or Etobicoke. And the Happy People believe.
Why? Because Justin and his cabinet are in Control, and they’ll just rein in these types when they get here and start asking that Jews be exterminated or white people surrender the merit system to DEI droogs. That little dustup at the universities where nervous trust-fund virgins claim to be onside with systemic rape? Justin can stop them anytime. Everything is cool. After all, Canada is the model for a postmodern state.
And that stuff about how the Canadian real estate market being 80 percent propped up by drug money, kleptocracy profits and Blackrock? Pshaw. That is just the Far Right Diagolons trying to panic you into hiding your money from the government which just wants to send it to the “shithole” countries in a kickback loop. If nothing else, the banks will save you— if there’s any shareholder value left after this deranged DEI diversion.
Can’t happen here? We know people who were around the EU in 2008 when the U.S. mortgage debacle cratered economies around the world. For years they’d been served by Poles in the service industry, Spaniards in the restaurant kitchens and Bulgarians doing the physical labour. Life was good. Everyone drove a Beemer and owned a condo overlooking the sea.
Then, one day, they noticed that all the airport parking lots were overflowing with Beemers that went unclaimed. No one had paid rent in months. The banks noticed that all these lovely fellow citizens of the EU had drained their savings, reached their cash credit limit on the Mastercard and skedaddled with the dough. Funny, they all must have gone on holidays to once, no?
No. They were gone. Bye bye. Adios. And the credit bubbles in Ireland, Norway, Iceland, France and other EU worthies popped like the champagne they’d been sipping for years on easy credit and idiotic notions of productivity. Nations like Iceland went bankrupt overnight. Counties in England threw their keys on the table. People’s life savings evaporated.
But Justin says that won’t happen here on his co-watch with Jagmeet the Bespoke. Sure, no one under the age of 40 can afford those two-million dollar cash-cow bungalows in West Van or Etobicoke. But those old Boomer geezers will die soon, and after we tax the daylights out of the estate, the kiddos will inherit the house. Probably after we turn it into a four-plex or fine them for having empty bedrooms because they couldn’t afford kids.
One of the ferocious beauties of market economies is their way of periodically turning on themselves when too many people are getting rich too easily. The Canadian RE economy of Justin Trudeau is one of them. It’s about a decade old without any sign of dropping. Life is good. Everyone drives a Tesla and rents a condo overlooking the sea.
Little wonder. Everything he and his faculty lounge of dimwits like Chrystia Freeland, Melanie Joly and Steven Guilbeault have done this decade has been to prop up the value of real estate owned by their real pals in Asia, Europe, the assorted kleptocracies in Africa or the sub-continent. It was like an ad for Chlorox the way these “investors” blithely laundered their dirty money in Canadian condos and low-rises. When news leaked out that mobsters were using casinos in B.C. (where Justin’s maternal side came from) as a laundering station it was covered up very quickly.
But the clock ticks. Even Justin’s former finance minister Bill Morneau is warning that the bubble is going to pop if Justin keeps printing more money to keep the real estate values so unsupportably high. The entire middle class of Canada, which has ridden the real estate train, will see their life savings evaporate like Jody Wilson Raybould’s political career.
No matter. Justin’s been living in government housing since 2015 (some of it with his Mommy). What does a trust-fund nit know about making rent cheques or a mortgage payment? Without Sophie spending like a dervish, he never needs to look at an America Express card again. He’s got 17 more months to build up credits with his future benefactors, and he’s not applying the handbrake now.
Okay, you can applaud now.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
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