Burr stuck up for Shane Gillis after his SNL firing, saying on Lights Out with David Spade last week: "None of them care! All they wanna do is get people in trouble!" But as David Sims points out, Burr's recent Netflix special Paper Tiger showed how comedians can push buttons and be inscendiary when it comes to race and get away with it because of its comedy context. "As much as the term would likely provoke an eye roll from Burr, the comedy scene largely remains a 'safe space' for performers to test out all kinds of incendiary jokes," says Sims. He adds: "In comedy, the humor is always going to matter most; it’s perhaps the only notion held sacred by such an irreverent art form, and it’s one worth remembering every time a new set of complaints about 'cancel culture' emerges. Gillis’s jokes flopped because they were not only offensive, but also entirely without perspective—a series of rambling and irrelevant thoughts delivered by a man who seems delighted to mock people he views as different from himself. Burr should understand better than anyone that when stand-ups are onstage, no matter whom or what they’re talking about, the spotlight is always going to be trained on themselves. It’s the sort of legitimate scrutiny that Gillis seems to have been unprepared for."
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TOPICS: Bill Burr, Saturday Night Live, Shane Gillis, Standup Comedy