Steve Harvey has had it with cancel culture. The television host and comic shared his thoughts on how society’s love of ending careers and policing humor is ruining comedy.
Harvey went off on political correctness while promoting his new show, Judge Harvey.
“Nobody can say anything he wants to — Chris Rock can’t, Kevin Hart can’t, Cedric the Entertainer can’t, D.L. Hughley can’t. I can go down the list.”
But who can?
“The only person that can say what they want to say on stage is Dave Chappelle because he’s not sponsor-driven. He’s subscription.”
Harvey claims cancel culture and political correctness “killed” comedy. So much so that he will never put out another comedy special.
Steve Harvey has no plans for another stand-up comedy special due to cancel culture https://t.co/s0mtA8tMT0
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) January 11, 2022
Is Comedy Cancelled?
The “cancel culture isn’t real” folks point to comedians continuing to work, but they ignore the unseen costs. And, there is a chilling effect to consider as well.
Comedians walk on eggshells now, afraid to offend some random group. Look at what happened to Patton Oswalt.
Oswalt committed the unforgivable crime of posting a picture of himself with his longtime friend Dave Chappelle. He then penned this forced and unnecessary apology, which was mostly the comedian talking about what a good guy he is.
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Yes Louis CK is still coming out with specials, but he lost millions of dollars and had to build his career up again from scratch.
Harvey said, “One of the reasons I stopped doing stand-up is because my wife told me God was about to do something for me that I didn’t know about yet. I didn’t I didn’t know he was going to give me this TV career, but he did. And it turned out to be the best thing that happened to me. But if I had tried to continue as a stand-up, there’s no way I could maintain a TV career because political correctness has killed comedy.”
He went on to say, “Every joke you tell now, it hurts somebody’s feelings. But what people don’t understand about comedians is that a joke has to be about something and somebody. We can’t write jokes about puppies all the time. The joke can’t be about bushes all the time. Some of these jokes will have to be about people because that’s the most interesting topic. So if I come back, I’ll have to wait until I’m done and I’m not done. I want to do one more. I’ll probably have to call it, ‘Well, this is it.’”
And cancel culture doesn’t just come for heavy hitters. Most often the people getting “canceled” are everyday people.
Called It Offense Culture
There are swaths of people out there who just want to be offended. It is the extension of our social media-addicted world.
When everything is shrunk to 280 characters you can either describe an event as the BEST or the WORST. There is no room for debate and discussion anymore.
The Internet isn’t all to blame, though. I think the media plays a huge role in our polarization. No one watches the news when everything is going well. So our 24/7 news cycle feeds us views of anger and division in between ads for Medicare scams and beer commercials.
If we are going to fight against cancel culture we have to start by ignoring the trolls. The majority of these people screaming about people don’t even watch the performers they want to be banned from the air.
So why pay them any mind? Get off Twitter and get into real life, and you’ll see people don’t care when a comedian says something “mean.”
Do you know why? Because most people can understand a joke when it is just a joke.
This tweet sums out my feelings.
Really sad listening to Steve Harvey talk about “cancel culture.” Nobody can take a joke anymore because we live in a world full of booger eating geeks.
— Cop ? (@Copizzle) January 12, 2022
Is Steve Harvey right? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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