Ricky Gervais Takes Aim at ‘Offense Culture’ and Donald Trump

“Comedians tell a joke and they get in trouble; Donald Trump says a terrible thing and means it, and he gets elected.”

That’s how Ricky Gervais started his most recent op-ed article in the upcoming issue of The Hollywood Reporter. Gervais muses on the current state of American politics, stating that the success of Trump in the current election is a direct correlation to the culture of political correctness that exists in the U.S. “Trump hit a vein,” he says. “He hit the peak of political correctness, and he’s an antidote to all that. People are tired of being told they can’t say things, so he’s suddenly this poster boy for saying what’s on your mind, however terrible it is.”

In that sense, the comic says, the possibility of a Trump presidency was inevitable. “Think about it: We live in a world where there are warnings on bottles of bleach — we have to tell people not to drink bleach. In that world, Trump can be president,” the comedian joked. According to Gervais, all of this political correctness — some warranted, some excessive — has led to the possibility that we will have a man who acts like a “Twitter troll” elected president. Gervais seems to be one part incredulous and one part amused by this fact.

His comments about Trump were just a lead-in to the main thrust of the article: that the U.S. has become a place where being offended has become a sport for some, and that offended-ness has no place in comedy.

“I really believe you can and should tell jokes about anything. No harm comes from exposing taboos. You can tell jokes about race, about disability, about sex, without them being racist, disableist or sexist. Some people don’t get that,” insists Gervais. “‘Ooh, you can’t joke about that.’ That’s ridiculous. It’s almost like joking about a terrible thing is worse than seriously believing a terrible thing.”

Gervais qualifies this with an example from his most recent Golden Globes hosting appearance: “I did a joke at the Globes where I said ‘The Golden Globe for special effects should go to the team that airbrushed the Sex and the City 2 poster,’ and then said ‘Girls, we know how old you are. We saw one of you in an episode of Bonanza.’” Gervais says that Kim Cattrall, who was the butt of the joke, publicly said that the joke was terrible and ageist, but Gervais insists that the point of the joke was that the women didn’t need to pander to Hollywood: “There’s nothing wrong with being a 50-year-old woman. Why are you making it worse for everyone? Why do you have to be 20? You don’t have to be 20.”

Gervais continues on, saying that the advent of Twitter and other social media platforms have made being “outraged” much easier. Whereas in the past, people’s anger might have been directed through a letter (or more likely, their anger would have fizzled out by the time they got around to writing it,) people nowadays can instantly channel that anger via Twitter, which often results in a shit-storm of other people angrily arguing about whatever topic is at hand.

“Someone not getting my jokes isn’t my problem; it’s theirs,” says the comic. That’s the crux of the argument: That you’re entitled to not enjoy a joke, but you’re not entitled to an apology for it, or to seeing the person who made the joke’s credibility/livelihood/personal life tarnished. Or, as Gervais puts it, “Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right.”

Read Gervais’ full article at THR.com.

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