Gutfeld: Cancel culture is bully culture
'Gutfeld!' panelists react to critics claiming 'cancel culture is not real' after comedian Louis C.K. sold out Madison Square Garden despite admitting to sexual misconduct in 2017.
Tonight we're going to talk about a comedian, so if you don't like comedy, now's the time to switch over to Colbert. Here's a look at their current studio audience.
STEPHEN COLBERT: I wish you could see the smiles on the faces of my audience, and I wish I could, too, because they're still wearing masks.
If you saw our audience, they're not wearing those masks, but I don't blame them for wearing masks, their breath must stink from eating so much crow. So this past Saturday, Louis C.K. performed to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden. Hell, that's pretty big, Elayne Boosler can't even do that. That was meant to be confusing. I wasn't going for laughs there.
LOUIS CK, FANS SLAMMED AFTER HE SELLS OUT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN: 'KEEPS ME UP AT NIGHT'
TYRUS: Until you laugh at that, it's going to keep coming back.
It's true. So back in 2017, Louis C.K. admitted to masturbating in front of several different women — oddly enough, none from the cast of "The View." After publicly apologizing, he was labeled an irredeemable pervert and officially canceled. His movie and TV deals were 86ed. He was universally shamed.
Now, for the record, I don't condone what he did, and the women involved have every right to feel how they feel, but at least Louis asked for permission, I mean, first. Jeffrey Toobin didn't even send an evite and CNN hired him right back. It's like they wanted to see his penis again. I know, it's disgusting. How do they stay in business?
Anyway, so Louis was a pariah. He lost millions and took a few years out of the spotlight, but now he's back. And the cancelers aren't happy, they wanted to ruin him forever, because that's how cancel culture works.
If I'm a loser in life, they feel that I'm going to make you one, too. But in this case, Louis is back because he had the resources, talent, fan base and perseverance.
Of course, some took that to mean that he never really paid a price at all and worse, that neither has anyone else. You know, there's a word for people who think like that. What is it again? Oh, yeah ----------, it's hard to say.
So let's take this tweet from MSNBC columnist Marissa Kabas: "Louis C.K. played Madison Square Garden last night. Cancel culture is not real."
And this prompted one well-known wisea-- to add: I "saw my grandparents the other day doing fine. COVID deaths are not real." Now, of course, my grandparents have been dead for decades, so it had nothing to do with COVID, they died in a shootout trying to score some Lipitor at a Hells Angels bar in Oakland.
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But you see the point, that C.K. sells out an arena means that there is no such thing as cancel culture, that's not logic, it's not even thinking. Using that reasoning, Louis C.K. never exposed himself to those women because, well, he didn't do it to you or me either.
Meanwhile, the same people pushing the notion of microaggressions think losing years of your career and friends and being publicly shamed aren't punishment enough. In a way, you really have to kill yourself, and then they announce when that doesn't happen and their dreams don't work out that the drooling mob that they riled up, it really doesn't exist at all.
As if Louis, J.K. Rowling, Dave Chappelle, Joe Rogan in their public persecutions, they never existed. Of course, they had the resources to survive. Most people aren't that lucky.
Emmanuel Cafferty got fired when a stranger tweeted a picture of his hand making a so-called White power gesture, and he's not even White — doesn't have any hands either. I made that up. Don't write in if you don't have hands — well, you can't, but I apologize in advance.
James Tibor got canned by Google after giving the company honest feedback that they requested. Gibson's Bakery, we talked about them, a family-owned business — Oberlin College tried to destroy after false accusations of racism.
But my favorite, the sports fan with a cardboard sign asking for beer. Carson King used his fame from this to raise over $800,000 for a children's hospital, but a reporter found tweets from when he was 16 and Carson was publicly humiliated.
But as luck would have it, someone dug into the reporter's past, found some of his problematic posts, and he got fired. How about that?
Pictured: Louis C.K. on "Saturday Night Live" season 22. (Photo by: Dana Edelson/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
Think of all the people who aren't canceled, but have to say things like "men can have babies" so they don't get canceled or lose their job teaching high school. The poison of cancel culture is what it does to regular people, not people at the top of the food chain.
It's not just be careful what you do, it's be careful what you say, or think, or tweet or tweeted 10 years ago. That's why we need to keep fighting this crap. You can't let the cancelers keep you from doing what you do best, especially if it's for a laugh, because if comedians can't say ridiculous and sometimes awful things, then we are all screwed.
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Now, if you never want to watch Louis C.K. again, then don't, who cares? But if you demand no one else gets to watch him, do us all a favor and experiment with bungee jumping from a light fixture, because cancelers don't want apologies, they want scalps. So let's call it what it really is: bully culture. Except this time, they want more than your lunch money.
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