The problem with Shane Gillis

Saturday Night Live recently announced three new cast additions. One of them was a comic named Shane Gillis.

Unfortunately for SNL, Gillis has an extensive history of making ugly, derogatory remarks about Asian Americans, among others. Vulture's Megh Wright goes into more detail about that history and includes links to some of the material.

I only had the stomach to listen to the first of the items Wright cited, an excerpt from a podcast Gillis co-hosted. It's ugly. What is worse news for Gillis is that it's not funny. That's not a rebuke, that's an observation.

Gillis and his co-host obviously got their rocks off mocking a culture different from their own. That's the kind of humor that appeals to young boys, and by "young" I mean under the age of twelve. The rest of us outgrew it when we learned to be decent human beings.

Gillis and his ilk will dismiss my complaint as "political correctness". I've written about that twice before. Once was in a request to Rep. Mike Bost not to use the term "Orientals". In that request I noted, "... 'political correctness' is a term seemingly used only by those uninterested in the principle at its heart: civility — common courtesy".

The other mention was in a discussion of the racist massacre at a South Caroline church in June 2015. I digressed slightly from that topic to rebuke comedians who were then complaining that political correctness was shackling them, making them afraid to rake risks.

There has been a minor fuss raised by some comedians of late, railing against so-called "political correctness" and its supposedly deleterious effects on their standup routines. I almost blogged about it, but I thought Jerry Seinfeld's idiotic whining didn't deserve any more attention than it had already gotten. My feeling was and is, if you as a comedian can't figure out how to make people laugh without visiting tired stereotypes, maybe it's time to find a new job.

The impulse that keeps an audience from laughing when a comic makes an easy joke based on a dumb stereotype is the same impulse that keeps us from succumbing to the mindless contempt for somebody else based on irrelevant characteristics like race. It's a sense that tells us, "This ain't right". It's a moral compass. It's a conscience.

Gillis falls squarely into the camp of comedians who ought to find other work.

I say that because he pretended to apologize:

“I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said.”

Bullshit, Shane. You're not happy to apologize to anybody and you sure as hell haven't apologized to anybody. You're pissed that your old material — some of which is only as "old" as 2018 — has resurfaced with such a vengeance, and you're worried that the blowback could cost you your new gig.

I don't know how to reach someone as defiantly close-minded as Gillis. I only know that his wide-ranging and simpleminded contempt for others, including gays and women as well as Asian Americans (and likely Asians generally), can't be written off as a necessary rough edge for comedy. That's a lazy excuse put forward by people who don't give a shit about denigrating people who are already targets of bigotry.

SNL, I don't give a shit if you fire Gillis. I really don't: I don't watch. What would give me a little hope would be if executive producer Lorne Michaels promised to take Gillis in hand and teach him to be a better person.

Not your job, Mr. Michaels? Perhaps not. In that case, then, you'll be judged by the company you keep and hire. We'll just have to accept that you don't mind, perhaps even endorse, Gillis' deep contempt for others and his penchant for punching down.

Honestly, I don't want to turn Gillis into a pariah who can't get work because of his crummy past behavior. I want Gillis to become a better human being who understands exactly why the rest of us condemn what he currently thinks, or pretends to think, is just "edgy" comedy. I want him to turn his life around and help to undo the harm he has done.

[UPDATE: I guess Lorne Michaels wasn't interested in taking on the challenge. Gillis is out.]