‘Saturday Night Live’ Fires Controversial New Hire Shane Gillis in Desperate Attempt to Cling to Relevance
I don’t know if you’ve caught Saturday Night Live lately, but it was been terrible for years. How terrible, you ask?
That sketch lasted three minutes! That’s twice as long as the cue card scene in Love, Actually lasts to begin with. And in that three minutes the only actual joke is Clinton saying she’s never seen a movie.
Which is to say the bar was not high for Shane Gillis when he was hired. All he had to do was be as funny as Colin Jost and Michael Che.
Unfortunately for Gillis, he did a racism on a podcast 20 people listened to, so he got fired before he ever made it onto the show.
The shocking thing to me is how long it took internet “detectives” to find a year-old clip of Gillis using the word “c***k” in a rant about Chinatown. Literally only an hour or two after he was announced as a cast member were people all over this obscure podcast.
When I was a kid, we started to see these conservative Christian groups spring up where all they did was watch every show on broadcast television and look for things to complain to the FCC about. They would not only complain, though, but they would mobilize a network of followers to complain, and threaten advertiser boycotts. I can’t help but think the same thing is going on now, only instead of trying to get Ellen DeGeneres cancelled for being gay they’re trying cancel Dave Chappelle for saying “f*g”.
The consensus on Twitter is pretty much the same joke about him turning right-wing and getting a Netflix special.
congrats to shane gillis for launching his career! can't wait for his netflix special, 'cancelled' https://t.co/veiTZ6fXlV
— jared richards (@jrdjms) September 17, 2019
Congratulations to Shane Gillis on his impending million-sold-million-unread "memoir," bank-breaking kickstarted podcast, sold-out run of top stand-up venues and "cant-miss" Netflix special about how silenced he's been. Thoughts and prayers.
— Bob Chipman 😁 bobchipman.bsky.social (@the_moviebob) September 16, 2019
Netflix Presents: Shane Gillis — "Why Can’t I Say It? "Spring 2020 https://t.co/TLf6mKvD37
— Justin Davis (D4C) (@OGJOHNNY5) September 16, 2019
Seriously, I just picked on the checkmarks here but there are hundreds of tweets of this exact same joke. To be fair, it’s funnier than anything that Saturday Night Live has written since John Mulaney left.
If there’s one person who knows about getting fired by Saturday Night Live, it’s Norm Macdonald. Norm was fired for making too many jokes about O.J. Simpson being a murderer, and that rankled NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer, a friend of Simpson. So it’s no surprise Norm reaches out to him.
@Shanemgillis Hey, Shane, I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine how you must feel. The work it takes to get that show and to have it snatched away by some guy who does "Spoken Bird" poetry. Unacceptable. Please DM me, pal, when you have a moment. I'm so sorry.
— Norm Macdonald (@normmacdonald) September 16, 2019
Gillis, for his part, made a statement on Twitter.
I was on his side until he said he was a Mad TV guy. Aside from My White Momma that show was just five minute sketches based on answers from an @Midnight hashtag game.
But at least we know this sort of racism against Asians has no place at Saturday Night Live.
Oh.