Friday, March 21, 2025

Caving to woko haram?

Despite being a Massachusetts lefty at heart, comedian Bill Burr has never been afraid to ding his own side of the political aisle. Part of being a successful stand up comedian is to combine the funny lines which contain at least a grain of truth. 


Like his riff on abortion. 





And given the pain of leftists was still pretty raw less than a week after the 2024 presidential election, Burr's monologue on Saturday Night Life that weekend definitely poked at that active wound. 

 




Yeah, I know Burr still took gratuitous shots at Donald Trump, but those were standard fare lines one would hear regularly from the late night leftist triumvirate of Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers. Hardly shocking. But what was eye-opening was Burr's willingness to put a hilarious spin on the left's dysfunction. 


After I indulged in that monologue the weekend after the election, I theorized that Burr had reached a point where he was "un-cancelable" since a lesser known comedian may have been drummed out of the business altogether. And while I don't know how much (if any) blowback Burr received for that performance, I feel as though he started to go from edgy comedian to frothing leftist. 


Stephen Miller at The Spectator noticed this as well. 


Beginning some time last year, however, Burr’s act started to risk taking a backseat to his media armchair-political scolding, whether it’s Israel, Ben Shapiro or now Elon Musk. It’s one thing to work material about any of those topics into a stand-up routine, as Burr has done with Israel, when he spoke about “launching missiles at people using kids as human shields.” Last year, he had a spat with Bill Maher on Maher’s podcast over the Middle East and Maher’s defense of Israel. He fired volleys back at Ben Shapiro, who criticized that back-and-forth and in several promotional appearances has decided to target Elon Musk and his “shitty cars.”


Look, if Burr really believes all this and appears on TV shows and/or podcasts to convey these viewpoints, so be it. But if spewing prog invective is what his standup act will ultimately devolve into, then I don't see that having much of a shelf life. 


As Miller points out, we've already seen what's happened to late night "entertainment" when it chose that path.   


Late-night comedy shows are a great case study. Hosts would often poke fun at the politics of the moment or a president, but around the time Obama entered the stage, and Trump after, late-night hosts turned into self-affirming lecturers. Jimmy Kimmel, for instance, built a career on crude, male-driven humor, only to go on and take over ABC’s late-night spot, which he transformed into a grievance vessel for Hollywood liberals. In place of comedic monologues and jokes are political diatribes that have driven away a good part of the audience to places like Greg Gutfeld and Fox News. Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and to a certain extent even Jimmy Fallon have followed suit.

On a recent appearance on The Breakfast Club, Burr lamented that Musk threw out several “Sieg Heil” salutes and was at a loss at how the Democratic Party just let him get away with it. Burr here is sourcing his material from the bowels of ActBlue Twitter/X influencers. He can do far better than ripping off Harry Sisson and JoJofromJerz.


Trump has broken a lot of high profile entertainers, media types and elected officials. Given how Burr has railed so hard against "cancel culture" over the past decade, I genuinely thought he'd be able to resist going full TDS. I'm not saying he's there yet, but a recent interview on NPR where he went off on Elon Musk sounded quite deranged. 





Between that and his appearance on The View, Burr seems to be actively seeking out platforms to spew his leftist rhetoric. And the hosts of those programs are A-OK with him being a useful idiot, especially since he's one of the biggest names in comedy. 


Miller concludes his piece with what could be considered a stern warning regarding Burr's career, to the extent he still cares about it. 

 

Burr should not have to temper his comedy for anyone, or any moment, and Donald Trump and Elon Musk are certainly fair game; however, when you turn into just another Hollywood liberal ranting into a microphone during an interview, people will simply move on. It would be a shame if that happened to a great talent such as Burr.


As someone who has seen Burr in person, I'm hoping that doesn't happen. 


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