SNL fires comic Shane Gillis days after hiring him

Right. And powerful.

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It’s gonna sneakily lift you off your feet

I’m a comedian who pushes boundaries

Really? You mean the same damned boundaries comedians have been pushing since at least the 1950’s? The same damned racist stick that got laughs in clubs back in the hey day of the comedy circuit in America? Those boundaries, kid? The types of jokes that were analyzed, deconstructed, reconstructed, and critiqued, by great comedians like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and others? The type of lazy, boring, uninspired, unfunny humor that no longer pushes ANY boundary except “what the hell can I get away with saying today?”

At least come up with a new argument. If you’re doing the same racist jokes that have been done forever and have long since lost their humor except to the racist element in our country, you’re not pushing any boundary but the ones the white supremacists love to admire in their “advocates of free speech.”

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Yay, this.

Maybe we should follow what art does. Marcel Duchamp was about as edgy as you could be in 1917 with his “Fountain”. Arty people still try and push the boundaries. There are no authorities that say what is and is not art. But just being offensive without having some other merit is not seen as being worthwhile for most of us. And Marcel Duchamp or Lenny Bruce did it better, anyhow.

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Sure, he’s hosting December 21.


“I’m a comedian who pushes boundaries,”

This guy is a comedian who reinforces boundaries. Conversational racism is about making sure outdated social boundaries are repeated and known because hearing them said makes an insecure bigot feel safer.

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“Asian” means people with last names like Yang.

And now he can launch his new career as a right-wing “victim” of political correctness.

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Womp womp.

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This is apparently still not too edgy, because it’s there on SNL’s own YouTube page.

But just in case, I am downloading the whole series from YouTube so I can watch them in years to come, and laugh my head off.

This guy comes from Mechanicsburg, PA. They’re about 8,000 people and maybe 99% white. He thinks Harrisburg is Paris.

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You are implying Gillis’ racist slurs and Belushi’s Mifune impression are both equally comedic art?

Bullshit.

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Someday, someone of Japanese descent is going to call Belushi’s character a hurtful stereotype, and then we will see if SNL says “Bullshit”.

Repeat after me buzzfeed, it’s racist, not “off-color”.

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Seconded. And as brilliant as Jackie Gleason was, The Honeymooners was anchored around Audrey Meadows’ cool, unconcerned yet devastating attitude. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Meadows

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It WAS a hurtful stereotype. It was also the late 70’s and media was full of such stereotypes. It’s 2019, and this comedian is promoting the same hurtful stereotypes. So we shouldn’t grow as a society and become better? Maybe it’s time to stop claiming this is “pushing boundaries” and, as tuhu said above, it . . .

. . . reinforces boundaries. Conversational racism is about making sure outdated social boundaries are repeated and known because hearing them said makes an insecure bigot feel safer.

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Perfect example; it took a little longer than the simpsons did, but Sesame Street is a shell of what it used to be.

As an Asian-American, I loved Belushi’s samurai character. He played him as the coolest guy in the room. He wasn’t mocking him the way Dana Carvey played an old Chinese man on SNL. If you want to talk about offensive, Google that one.

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SNL back when it was “Saturday Night” had plenty of comedy which we would consider insensitive today. This sketch hasn’t really aged like a fine wine, either.

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You mean “would a comedian get hired as a SNL writer in 2019 if their recent standup material was the kind of thing Murphy was doing in the 1980s?”

I should think not, just as I doubt any comic would have wowed Lorne Michaels in 1976 with a comedy routine out of the 1940s.

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