Reports are that the right wing blogosphere is up in arms over Ricky Gervais apparently being fired in mid broadcast from the Golden Globe Awards Ceremony.
John Nolte should be more careful when he picks his heroes.
Gervais didn’t come out swinging against Obama. He didn’t renounce his membership in Britain’s National Health System. His targets weren’t Susan Sarandon or Alec Baldwin.
Robert Downey Jr. is a little upset but he’s hardly Democratic Spokesperson No. 1 in Hollywood.
Meanwhile, Bruce Willis is fuming just as hard. Remember him, conservatives? He’s one of yours, I believe.
And one of Gervais’ main targets that night was “The Tourist.” I don’t pretend to be a Tea Party expert, but I’m pretty sure they’re more about repealing healthcare than “The Tourist.”
Sure it stars Johnny Depp, notorious George W. Bush and Iraq War critic, but it also stars Angelina Jolie, daughter of Hollywood’s leading conservative, Jon Voight. And Gervais didn’t attack either of them, he attacked the Globes themselves for even nominating a critical and commercial flop in the first place. Oh, and let’s not forget the swipe he made at former conservative golden boy Mel Gibson.
In some ways the reaction of the blogosphere was as predictable as Gervais himself.
Gervais did what any really sharp comedian would do. He was channeling his inner Don Rickles.
If Nolte is so naïve to think this was some brave political statement he should try to get Ricky to speak at the Republican Convention. That ought to be a lot of fun. Nolte and his friends meanwhile do what they do.
They latch on to anything that makes Hollywood uncomfortable. Now granted there are some denizens of Hollywood so liberal they consider Che a conservative. And a few of them were in attendance at the Golden Globes.
But Gervais lobbed few if any bombs specifically in their direction, and he never did it simply BECAUSE they were liberal. And if you really look at the speech, he left as many if not more Hollywood conservatives bruised and battered than he did true liberals.
I do agree with Nolte in that is was a brave performance. But it was brave in the way Andy Kauffman was brave, particularly when he brought out Tony Clifton.
He was brave the way one of his targets Robert Downey Jr. was brave in “Tropic Thunder.”
Comedians dance on the line between good taste and offense. The really courageous ones stomp all over that line. And he was brave because he did this not at a Friar’s Club Roast but at the Golden Globes, the place where actresses spend a fortune on designer dresses and the rich and famous turn out to be fawned over endlessly by the press.
That’s not a night you expect a vicious skewering. That’s not a political statement. It’s more of a human one.
