Total Cultural Victory

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One way to read Netflix’s Roast of Kevin Hart, which aired last night, is as a victory lap for comedy’s racists, who no longer have to pretend they’re not racist in order to work with major media companies like Netflix, and who in fact can admit it outright. The two-hour-long special was full of racist jokes with little more to say than that their targets were Black, told by comedians who freely acknowledged what they were doing. Naturally, there was also plenty of misogyny and homophobia mixed in. Here are a few of Shane Gillis’s zingers, for instance:

“Sheryl Underwood is here. Give it up for Sheryl… Sheryl’s husband killed himself. Apparently Black does crack if it’s married to Sheryl and jumps off a fucking roof.”

“Here’s a fun fact about Kevin. Kevin has a 44-inch vertical leap, and I know that because he can kiss his wife on the lips. Being five-one sucks, but at least you can tell him apart from all the other Blacks. Yeah, they told me to be racist. What am I gonna make fun of—‘Oh, you got a huge dick and and you’re a billionaire?’”

"After he got fired for being homophobic he went on an apology tour… And in one of the interviews he said, ‘I’m in love with the man I’m becoming.’ Gay. Fucking homo, dude. I’m gonna break a dollhouse over his head after that fucking shit."

“A few months ago Kevin performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, sponsored by the Saudi government… Kevin actually did really well in Saudi Arabia, but only because they thought he was the monkey from Aladdin. Abu. They were thinking about Abu. Abu. Abu, which is coincidentally what Kevin hears whenever he puts out one of his dogshit specials.”

“This dais is full of degenerate scumbags and they’re gonna be up here saying a lot of terrible racist things tonight.”

“Kevin is so short that they’re gonna have to lynch him from a bonsai tree. That was three weeks of deliberation on that joke. Look, I understand how serious the word lynch is, but bonsai is so funny.”

“Get ready to hear some real racist jokes from a guy who truly believes them and hopes JD Vance is watching—guys, Tony Hinchcliffe.”

“Regina Hall is here. Everybody make some noise. They added her last minute, so I don’t have anything for her. But here’s a joke we couldn’t do for Sheryl. It’s something about Aunt Jemima, I don’t know, it got cut, it was clever, you would’ve loved it. Give it up for Regina Hall, everybody.”

“People keep saying Lizzo is washed up, but I believe the correct term is ‘beached.’ Nice flute, you fat fucking bitch.”

“Thank god [Teyana Taylor]’s good-looking, because boy is that bitch not funny at all.”

And here’s Jay Oakerson:

“Sheryl Underwood is as Black as the road is black. She looks like somebody made a genie wish for a puddle of mud to come to life. Sheryl Underwood is as Black as an interstellar phenomenon. If she stood against a brick wall, the road runner could run right through her. Sheryl Underwood is so Black we had to bring on Draymond Green just to color balance the fucking cameras.”

“My good friend Tony Hinchcliffe is here. Tony fucking Hinchcliffe is here. Make some noise, god damn it. Lot of people might not remember, but Tony actually got canceled one time by his very own Asian opener for calling Tony a racist. And then Tony hired a new Asian opener to prove that he wasn’t a racist. Which I thought was the original opener because I’m a racist.” [Ed. note: keen observers will remember that in addition to calling Hinchcliffe a racist, Peng Dang in fact posted a video of Hinchcliffe being racist. It is true, though, that Hinchcliffe hired a new Asian opener, Kill Tony regular Hans Kim, to prove he’s not racist.]

And here’s Hinchcliffe:

“He got into a fist fight on a private plane—proof that no matter how much money Black people have, they’re still just gonna act like niiii… njas. Always fighting. Like Bill Cosby, Hart is a Black comedian from Philadelphia. Unlike Bill Cosby, women don't know when Kevin is inside of them. You've done good though, Kevin. The Black community is so proud at you. Right now, George Floyd is looking up at us all, laughing so hard that he can’t breathe.”

It won’t shock you to hear that the roast’s writing staff was mostly white men, or that Gillis’s writers were entirely white men: Mike Lawrence, Zac Amico, JP McDade, Nick Mullen, and Dan St. Germain. If you’re keeping track, Amico is a regular in the Legion of Skanks comedy universe; Mullen, obviously, is late of the podcast Cum Town, currently an executive producer of The Adam Friedland Show, and a frequent Gillis collaborator; Lawrence is a longtime roast writer; and McDade and St. Germain are longtime stalwarts of the New York City comedy scene. 

In a sense, then, what we saw on Netflix last night is what we could always see in any comedy club or podcast hosted by (in Gillis’s words) degenerate and racist club comedians. The only difference is that now Netflix is giving them a global platform. 

111 True Things about the Netflix Is A Joke Festival

For the record.

HumorismSeth Simons

What Else?

–On TikTok, the actor Justin Heo described what happened when he responded to a casting call for Mark Normand’s new YouTube series. Basically, things got really racist:

I did not sign up to be a part of this racist social experiment. I did not know what I was getting myself into. None of us knew what we were getting ourselves into. We were tricked into doing it. And there's a reason why Casting didn't specifically say Asian businessmen. They knew it's problematic. So my question is who signed off on this? Who thought this was okay? What's most offensive to me is that not only were we tricked into coming here to be the butt of a racist spectacle that we did not sign up for, but Mark, the creator of this show, the comedian who was highlighted in this entire episode, he couldn't even come up with actual material for Asian men. He just had to resort to racist stereotypes, antiquated stereotypes. It brought me back to elementary school. Honestly, I felt so just exploited and dehumanized, and it just is not sitting right with me.

–On Francesca Fiorentini’s The Bitchuation Room, comedian Megan Gailey said that “Louis [CK] is still doing what Louis was doing”:

–And elsewhere at the Netflix festival, John Mulaney went in on RFK Jr.: