Comedian Marc Maron says he has grown to see cancel culture as a good thing, and those who want to express provocative ideas without losing their livelihoods are “right-wing fascists.”
On the Nov. 11 WTF with Marc Maron podcast, the veteran comic and now-mainstream actor attacked those who stand up for free speech, as first noted by former Breitbart entertainment editor Christian Toto. The timing of the episode seems to be in response to the controversy over Dave Chappelle‘s latest Netflix special, The Closer. Maron has also cashed checks from Netflix as a supporting player in GLOW.
Using very convoluted reasoning, Maron said that while he supports a comedian’s right to joke about society, modern cancel culture is good because it eliminates hate.
“Anti-progressive, anti-woke comedy… plays into this whole attitude that you can’t say anything anymore,” Maron explained to his listeners.
“The reason I got into comedy was to be provocative, to be challenging… or just to f*cking start sh*t. That was the legacy I wanted,” Maron admitted. “My heroes were people who said the dark stuff, the angry stuff. What made people uncomfortable.”
He said he idolized outspoken comedians such as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin, who shocked audiences with dark, cutting humor in their day.
However, Maron now claims that trying to emulate his idols stunted his career, and since he “grew the f*ck up,” his act has improved.
Still, despite his new paradigm, Maron claims that he doesn’t disavow the off-color and rude jokes he made early in his career. For instance, he used to use the word “retard” in his act. But after being contacted by a woman who was offended by the word, he realized that it was hurtful and stopped using “the R-word.”
“It was not defensible… what kind of world is it where you can’t say [that word]? This world. So, I stopped,” he insisted.
However, he said this shortly after explicitly saying, “I don’t disown any of that stuff.”
Now he claims that being “anti-woke” only “drives a wedge in the cultural dialogue and the comedy community.”
Worse, as far as Maron is concerned, “right-wing propagandists” use free speech arguments as a political weapon, and if free speech can be quashed to stop the right from having a winning argument, then he is all for it.
Free speech, Maron said, is “easily turned out by the right-wing propagandists. It serves a movement toward an anti-democratic, fascistic system. What they’re doing is fundamentally pissing on the less fortunate, the vulnerable, the minorities.”
In the end, without stating it head-on, Maron came to the side of those who destroy comedians for un-woke jokes.
“Free speech is an American right. You can say whatever you want. You just have to shoulder what comes back at you, what you reap after you’ve slung your garbage,” he concluded.
In other words, sure, you can say what you want, but you should lose your livelihood if Maron opposes what you say.
Christian Toto notes that ctor and comedian Kevin Hart was fired from his Oscar hosting gig because he made a non-woke joke ten years prior. By his own standard, Maron could still be hounded into the unemployment line for his many years of “retard” jokes that he says he won’t disavow.
“It’s why he’s a hypocrite, a comedian who won’t defend free speech but thinks by hewing to far-Left dogma he’ll be safe as his peers get canceled,” Toto wrote.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.
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