Why There’s Never Been a Funny Cancel-Culture Joke
Comedians aren’t getting dragged for being offensive — it’s for writing bad material
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Last weekend, Bill Burr’s Saturday Night Live monologue did exactly what anyone familiar with Bill Burr’s comedy could have expected: It blew up the internet.
The money shot, of course, was his bit on White women taking over movements made for and by people of color. It was masterful. It was also just good enough to make us forget that moments before he had tossed out a series of jokes that landed like a turd in a bucket of Kool-Aid. And they were all about comedians’ favorite subject: cancel culture.
First, Burr brought up how people last year tried to cancel John Wayne based on a Playboy interview from 1971, then pivoted to knowing how to dodge confronting conversations with your grandparents. The whole thing was predicated on the idea that all old people are racist — and the whole thing just died.
Even though it bombed I sincerely hope that Burr’s peers saw how his SNL monologue played out and finally came to the conclusion the rest of us have known for years: Cancel culture jokes just simply aren’t funny.
