Shane Gillis Cosigns Trump's Threats to Prosecute Obama
And a few more thoughts about Marc Maron's comments about comedy's right-wingers.
Here is Shane Gillis, today, co-signing Donald Trump’s threats to prosecute Barack Obama. Along the way he also embraces the right-wing fantasies that Russiagate was a hoax orchestrated by the Democrats and that the prosecutions of Trump himself were politically motivated:
Matt McCusker: I think he's trying to get people back, man. The Epstein stuff sunk him down. But now he's saying he's going to arrest the Clintons, or he's going to subpoena the Clintons. It's such a funny move.
Gillis: Yeah. He said he was going to arrest Obama too, didn't he?
McCusker: He threatened something about that.
Nate Marshall: Yes.
Gillis: Yeah.
McCusker: Now but he's for real. I think he's subpoenaing the Clinton family. I don't know, we'll see if that actually happens.
LeMaire Lee: But for real, Obama, he did literally send one to—was it Pam Bondi, to—
Gillis: Get his ass.
Lee: —Arrest Obama, yeah.
Marshall: Can he actually do that though, or is he just yapping?
Gillis: That's what they did to him. They literally did this to him.
Marshall: No, I know, but—
Gillis: And when he does it, everyone's like, "Nooo."
Marshall: I just mean—but they also couldn't do it to him, and I never felt like he was gonna for real get locked up.
McCusker: Yeah, but they made him pay 400 million fucking bucks.
Marshall: You say what?
McCusker: He had to pay $400 million.
Marshall: Oof.
McCusker: Yeah.
Gillis: I think they might get the Obamna and Clintons on the Russiagate shit, because if you look into that one, that was—they really did that.
McCusker: That was a bad one.
Marshall: So this is more of a bag attack than really trying to get people locked up.
Gillis: You gotta try to attack the bag.
Marshall: Okay, all right.
McCusker: Yeah.
Marshall: Well they attacked his bag. I would try to go—
Gillis: Yeah.
McCusker: Economic subterfuge.
Gillis: That's good. That's what I want our leaders in this country to be doing.
Marshall: Yeah.
Gillis: Accusing each other of pedophilia and—
McCusker: Fining each other.
Gillis: —crimes. And just fining each other.
McCusker: Yeah, it'll be interesting. Although if they arrest Obama, he might glow up and write a cool letter from jail. It's always the move.
Gillis: He'd be unstoppable.
I recently had a conversation with someone who asked me if I think there is too much in-fighting on the left in comedy for it to mount a coherent opposition to the right in comedy. On the contrary, I think the problem is that there’s too little in-fighting. Damn near everyone on comedy’s left and center-left is friendly with the right-wingers, and there’s negligible interest in policing these associations. Gillis, for instance, works with nominal lefty Stavros Halkias, who is currently guest-hosting one of unhinged transphobe Tom Segura’s podcasts alongside right-winger Chris Distefano; just yesterday Patton Oswalt appeared on a Legion of Skanks show at the Comedy Store. In the Good One interview I mentioned the other day, Marc Maron stressed that even as he criticizes comedy’s fascists, he maintains a collegial relationship with them:
No, I know these guys, and just my nature as a person and as a communicator and whatever—look, there’s always been monsters in comedy. And there’s always been people you disagree with. I just felt that given that we’re not really dealing in that world anymore, and that there are people with real power who are indulging real evil, that you can’t be quiet about that. It’s not player-hating, it’s cultural commentary in a tribalized world. But if I saw Tony, yeah, he’d be like, “Hey, man,” and I’d be like, “What’s up?” I’m not gonna be like, “I’m not talking to that guy.” You know what I mean? I know we’re still peers and that whatever shots I’m taking—there’s a weird kind of thing in the community where it’s like, “Why you gotta bust on your peers?” I’m like, “Well, they represent something.”
This goes back to a joke years ago that I did about Adam Sandler. I felt that that joke that I did on Conan about the Adam Sandler fan on the skateboard or whatever was an indictment of a youth culture that I thought was inane. But Sandler took it personally. And I, it was really this idea—yeah, but you're a cultural icon, so you're not beyond—it’s not even reproach, we have to be able to talk about you. I know we’re in the same business, but it really wasn’t meant as a dig towards you. But it becomes impossible to separate and you just gotta take the hit.
With respect to Maron (no, really), this is all nonsense. The guys he’s talking about are Nazis, and it is not normal or acceptable to be peers with Nazis. This is understood in just about every other realm of the world, or at least it was before Trumpism’s ascendance. As I’ve been writing for years, the threat posed by comedy’s right-wingers is not only ideological, although that should be enough. It is also practical. A workplace that accommodates racists is not a safe or equitable workplace for people of color; a workplace that accommodates misogynists and rapists is not a safe or equitable workplace for women; a workplace that accommodates transphobes is not a safe or equitable workplace for trans people. These comedians do not deserve collegiality because they are themselves antithetical to collegiality, and it is frankly hypocritical of Maron to call them fascists in his act while maintaining community with them behind the scenes.
Seth Simons
To be fair, of course, the problem goes well beyond Maron. Nearly everyone in comedy does this, because comedy is so thoroughly infested with fascists. I suspect Maron, or others in Maron’s position, might feel that it is not worth the effort of turning their noses up at the fascists among them, and I believe they are 100% wrong about. The thing with all of these fascists—Tony Hinchcliffe, Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, Andrew Schulz, all of them—is that they crave acceptance in the spaces and by the people they consider below them. As much as they sneer at the mainstream and pride themselves on their success in alternative media, they desperately want to be part of the mainstream. And though they make a living deliberately provoking outrage, they also cannot stand criticism. I believe I am living proof of this as someone who has driven many comedians insane just by writing about them on my blog or on Twitter. If they were to find themselves under a steady stream of reproach by their high-profile colleagues—not just the occasional glancing blows, with respect to the comics who deliver occasional glancing blows—it would consume them; they wouldn’t be able to shut up about it, and they would expose themselves as the weaklings they are.
If you'll forgive me for quoting myself the last time I made this argument, again in response to Marc Maron, I still believe everything I wrote here:
Comics like Maron, who do not depend on traditional standup gatekeepers to reach their audiences, are in a unique position to call out abuse in the industry and agitate for change. (To his credit, he recently explicitly criticized Rogan.) They can name names, shame abusers and enablers, condition their appearances on equitable lineups and fair pay, encourage their colleagues to stop working with bad actors, and go right back to podcasting and performing at venues that depend on them to draw a crowd. It might cost them gigs, yes, and it might do the opposite. If the chud crowd can burnish their brands doing the wrong thing, I have to believe the good guys can reap some spoils doing the right thing.
Clearly he's grown more comfortable naming names since 2021. Great! He can afford to get more comfortable still putting his money where his mouth is. None of this will get rid of comedy's fascists, of course; a real solution depends on social transformations beyond comedy. But it would be the first step in a larger conversation about what can be done within comedy to marginalize the enemies of comedy, which is exactly what these people are.
