something I’m not thankful for: woke writers trying to cancel people they disagree with

(Last year I suggested the following; “I think the day after Thanksgiving families should reconvene around the table to talk about what they’re not thankful for. Rant a little. Don’t put to much thought into it. Just let it fly.” In that spirit I will once again let fly.)

In reading an article that appeared recently on the online website Far Out Magazine, asking whether or not the opinions recently expressed by John Cleese and Terry Gilliam (two very liberal men with uniquely differing views of the world) would hurt the legacy of Monty Python, I thought I would remove the parts where the author Mick McStarky inserted his own woke stupidity and just leave the aforementioned opinions. That way you can decide for yourself if anything that they said was inaccurate, let alone offensive, or if McStarky is just a tedious, holier-than-thou dumbshit with no self-awareness of where he sits in the intellectual hierarchy.

John Cleese, an ardent proponent of black comedy, has criticized political correctness frequently over the past decade. He said: “(It is) a sort of indulgence of the most over-sensitive people in your culture, the people who are most easily upset… if you have to keep thinking which words you can use and which you can’t, then that will stifle creativity”.

Cleese expanded on this point by saying: “The main thing is to realize that words depend on their context… PC people simply don’t understand this business about context because they tend to be very literal-minded”.

In 2019, he reiterated a point he had made in the past that he felt London was no longer an ‘English’ city, claiming: “Virtually all my friends from abroad have confirmed my observation. So there must be some truth in it… I note also that London was the UK city that voted most strongly to remain in the EU”.

Cleese added, “I suspect I should apologize for my affection for the Englishness of my upbringing, but in some ways, I found it calmer, more polite, more humorous, less tabloid, and less money-oriented than the one that is replacing it”.

Regarding the BBC’s diversity debate, Terry Gilliam stated: “I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian”.

Gilliam, who lamented in 2020 that he was “tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world” labeled the #MeToo movement a “witch hunt”. Discussing the multitude of allegations brought against the convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, he said: “These were ambitious adults… There are many victims in Harvey’s life, and I feel sympathy for them, but then, Hollywood is full of very ambitious people who are adults, and they make choices”.

As of late, Gilliam has made headlines by weighing in on the furor surrounding comedian Dave Chappelle’s new Netflix show ‘The Closer‘, where he argues that “gender is a fact.” Urging his fans to watch the show via his social media, Gilliam wrote: “To me, he’s the greatest standup comedian alive today: incredibly intelligent, socially aware, dangerously provocative, and gut-wrenchingly funny”.

Much better. Without all of the woke crap it reads much better. He ends the article with a clip from John Cleese talking about creativity, freedom of speech and blacklisting himself from Cambridge University, which cements Mr. Cleese’s status as a brilliant and important voice in our culture today and why Mick McStarky should shut the fuck up.