Remember The Sarah Silverman Program? It was a Comedy Central show back when The Daily Show was still funny and offering insightful commentary and it starred Sarah Silverman as an exaggerated version of herself who was incompetent and stupid and had be looked over by her sister Laura, played by her actual sister Laura Silverman.
It was a really funny show and Sarah was never afraid to push boundaries. And over a decade later, one of the bits she did on the show came back to bite her on the ass.
I am, of course, talking about the episode where Sarah wears blackface for basically the whole episode. The gist of the episode is she gets discriminated against for being Jewish, and wears blackface to prove being Jewish is harder than being black because again, she’s playing an idiot on this show. It wasn’t a bad episode, but 30 Rock did it better. Twice.
Unlike Jon Hamm, Sarah Silverman says that the blackface episode of her show cost her a movie role.
Guesting on The Bill Simmons Podcast, Silverman said that she was let go the day before shooting on her scenes was due to start because of the photo, taken on the set of The Sarah Silverman Show.
“I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part,” she said, “then, at 11pm the night before, they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode.
“I didn’t fight it. They hired someone else who is wonderful but who has never stuck their neck out. It was so disheartening. It just made me real, real sad, because I really kind of devoted my life to making it right.”
She also brought up cancel culture.
Silverman did not name the film but discussed “cancel culture” with Simmons, saying that the current climate had left her feeling fearful. “I think it’s really scary and it’s a very odd thing that it’s invaded the left primarily and the right will mimic it,” adding that she dubs it “righteousness porn”.
“It’s like, if you’re not on board, if you say the wrong thing, if you had a tweet once, everyone is, like, throwing the first stone,” she continued. “It’s so odd. It’s a perversion. It’s really, ‘Look how righteous I am and now I’m going to press refresh all day long to see how many likes I get in my righteousness.’”
She’s right, of course. People on the internet like to be bullies, and they like to be bullies to people in a way where they can say they’re in the right because someone didn’t live up to their perceived moral standards. It’s kind of like… Did you see the clip from the DSA meeting where the people were asking for “points of personal privilege”?
That’s what cancel culture is. We’re all talking about something important, and then people start making attacks because someone clapped or said “Guys”. Only on Twitter you get death threats for days because you said female. It’s dumb and it accomplishes nothing.