Actor-comedian Deon Cole is joining a growing number of Hollywood entertainers who are speaking out against the censorious “cancel culture.”
Cole spoke on The Daily Beast‘s podcast The Last Laugh about his new Netflix stand-up special Cole Hearted, which starts streaming today.
“Cancel culture is horrendous,” he said. “For you to pinpoint something like that, you want to crush me, you want to cancel me, you want to ruin me. And it’s really fucked up that we live in this era where you cannot make mistakes. Because I know that growing up, that’s how I learned. I learned from mistakes.”
“So I should be allowed to make mistakes and learn from them, but this culture nowadays, they’re like, man, if you mess up it’s off with your head,” the Black-ish star said. “And it’s sad because I don’t trust that you really know what you’re doing, if you’re that perfect and you don’t make no mistakes. You have to allow someone to grow with the times. The way things were then aren’t the way they are now. And the way things are now won’t be the way they are in the future.”
During the conversation, Cole said that he approaches college campus engagements with some trepidation owing to the millennial generation’s sensitivities.
“If I decide to do a college, which is very, very, very rare, I just stay as P.C. as possible,” he said.
“My point of view really isn’t important. Let me just make them laugh the best way I can, but I’m not trying to change the world. I’m not trying to give my point of view on anything at any college at all. I’m in and out. I just don’t know about that generation being able to handle what I have to say. It’s about me protecting their feelings and protecting myself.”
Cole is the latest Hollywood figure to speak out against cancel culture — where left-wing political activists working in conjunction with the mainstream media apply social media pressure to get their targets and adversaries fired or de-platformed.
Iconic comedians including Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, and Marlon Wayans have all expressed loathing and misgivings about cancel culture and the destructive effect it has on the entertainment industry.
South Park co-creator Matt Stone has also slammed cancel culture, laying blame at the feet of entertainment journalists who he believes took a hypocritical stance on Chappelle’s latest Netflix show.
“They may have laughed like hell at that, and then they went home and they know what they have to write to keep their job,” Stone recently told The Hollywood Reporter.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com