{"id":343353,"date":"2025-12-30T19:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T19:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/343353\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T19:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T19:37:10","slug":"comedy-beat-virtue-signalling-elites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/343353\/","title":{"rendered":"Comedy Beat “Virtue Signalling” Elites"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRicky Gervais<\/a> is in typically unapologetic form in his latest Netflix<\/a> stand-up special.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe co-creator of The Office<\/a> used Mortality \u2014 which premiered on Tuesday \u2014 to bemoan a \u201creally weird\u201d time for comedy and declare victory over elites who \u201cfind anything offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFilmed at the London Palladium this year, Gervais said: \u201cIt\u2019s great to hear this sort of laughter again, because you probably don\u2019t notice it as much as comedians, but we\u2019ve had a really weird 10 years where we\u2019re really second-[guessing jokes].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe explained: \u201cPeople find anything offensive, but we pushed back and we won. So f*** them. Until the next time. They haven\u2019t gone away. They\u2019re just licking their wounds. They\u2019ll be back with something madder. But remember who it is next time? Right?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s always these sort of educated, middle-class, privileged, elitist, sort of people telling ordinary working-class people what they can and can\u2019t do and say and laugh, not realizing how important comedy is to ordinary people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGervais has been at the sharp end of controversies around comments in his previous stand-up specials. His 2022 show\u00a0Supernature\u00a0came under fire for trans jokes<\/a>, which he later said didn\u2019t target \u201ctrans folk, but trans activist ideology.\u201d In 2023, a petition was started requesting that Netflix remove material about young cancer sufferers from Gervais\u2019 Armageddon special.<\/p>\n

\n\tGervais said there had been numerous attempts to get him canceled over the past 15 years \u2014 including from fellow comedians who criticize him for \u201cpunching down.\u201d \u201cThey\u2019ve always failed,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m too old now not to say what I want. I want to say and do what I want all the time. I want to do my favorite thing all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGervais turned to anthropology to offer an explanation for the rise of cancel culture. He said: \u201cThere\u2019s still two ways you can raise your status in society. One, be competent at something, like, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s a good hunter, go with him, he\u2019s good for the tribe.\u2019 The other way you can raise your status is to have virtue like, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s not a great hunter, but he\u2019s wise or kind or whatever.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd then, with the advent of social media, people suddenly discovered they could just say they were virtuous. No evidence, no proof, just loads of flags in their bio. And they would raise their status by bringing other people down, catching other people out \u2026 And that\u2019s where the term virtual signaling comes from, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued: \u201cThe most annoying thing about virtue signalling is people being smug about having the morality of the age. You\u2019re what you\u2019re like because of where you are and when you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGervais said he considers himself to be anti-racist, but acknowledged that he could have been a slave owner in another century. He joked: \u201cI\u2019m willing to admit that if I\u2019d have been born 300 years ago and I was white and wealthy, I\u2019d have probably owned slaves. I\u2019d be nice to them, so shut up, right? Yeah, I\u2019d be the best slave owner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGolden Globes Gag<\/p>\n

\n\tThe After Life creator also reflected on his time hosting the Golden Globes, praising the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for never censoring his jokes. He did reveal, however, that he stopped himself from making a gag about Jason Momoa<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Ricky<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTodd Antony\/NBC\/NBCU Photo Bank\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI thought the meta joke would be to show my hypocrisy and my cowardice, like, \u2018I\u2019m ok to slag off actors who\u2019s scared of actors? But when it comes to a big dude, I\u2019m not so brave.\u2019 So I was gonna go, \u2018I\u2019ve got nothing bad to say about our next presenter, because he\u2019s got a cock like a baby\u2019s arm.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI told my mate I was gonna do that, and my mate went, \u2018Do you think people will think that\u2019s racist?\u2019 I went, \u2018Why is it racist?\u2019 \u2018Well, because he\u2019s a person of color.\u2019 I went, \u2018It\u2019s nothing to do with that. It\u2019s to do with the fact that he\u2019s so big, he\u2019d probably have a cock like a baby\u2019s arm.\u2019 So I didn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ricky Gervais is in typically unapologetic form in his latest Netflix stand-up special. The co-creator of The Office…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,20947,392,78115,133101,13881,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-343353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-jason-momoa","11":"tag-netflix","12":"tag-ricky-gervais","13":"tag-ricky-gervais-mortality","14":"tag-the-office","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}