Monty Python Stars Take Opposite Sides On Anti-Woke Comedy
(PatriotWise.com) – Former Monty Python co-founder Eric Idle has a somewhat different opinion about cancel culture than that of his former colleague John Cleese.
In a recent appearance on the podcast “On With Kara Swisher,” Idle was asked about comedian Dave Chappelle’s complaints that he is being canceled over his supposed “controversial” jokes.
Idle sarcastically asked where Chappelle has complained about it, “on SNL?” He added that if Chappelle was complaining on Saturday Night Live, “you’re not being that much canceled, are you?” He said if Chappelle was alone in his room doing his complaining, “I’d have a lot more sympathy.”
Idle then brought up another critic of cancel culture, HBO host Bill Maher, telling Swisher that it bothers him when Maher complains to his audience when they don’t laugh at his jokes, noting that if they aren’t laughing, “they’re telling you they don’t find it funny.”
He told Swisher that comedians shouldn’t “moan about the audience,” explaining that if an audience isn’t laughing, the problem isn’t the audience but the comedian’s material.
Idle also discussed comedy in general, suggesting that comedians that it is “disastrous” for a comedian to “want to be liked.” He said generally, English comedians don’t care about being loved while it seems important to American comedians that they are “somehow liked or loveable.”
Idle’s fellow Monty Python star John Cleese has been a long critic of both the “woke” values in the entertainment business and “cancel culture.”
Last month, it was announced that Cleese would be co-hosting a new show on the UK’s right-leaning GB News. During an interview about the new gig, Cleese explained that while he hadn’t been familiar with GB News when they first approached him, he later learned that the channel was focused on “free speech” rather than being specifically “right-wing.”
Idle and Cleese co-founded Monty Python along with Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Graham Chapman in 1969.
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