Earlier this year, comedian Ricky Gervais delivered a seismic opening monologue at the Golden Globes in which he roasted liberal Hollywood for posturing woke while allegedly being total degenerates in their private lives, from friendships with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein to shady business deals with communist China.
“If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a political platform to make a political speech,” Gervais famously told the crowd. “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything, you know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God — and f*** off, okay?”
Gervais simultaneously roasted corporations like Apple and Amazon for producing supposedly “woke” creative content while doing business in authoritarian countries like China.
“Apple roared into the TV game with ‘The Morning Show,’ a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing — made by a company that runs sweatshops in China,” Gervais said. “Well, you say you’re woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?”
Looking back on that iconic moment that shook the internet and triggered hardcore do-gooder liberals everywhere, Gervais told Yahoo Entertainment that the moment became so “zeitgeisty” because people were sick of seeing the hypocrisy.
“It was quite zeitgeisty,” he said, as reported by Fox News. “I suppose because people were tired of being lectured by multimillionaires telling them to recycle when they’re flying around in private jets. So I think people were tired of the hypocrisy.”
Gervais added that he did not necessarily believe everything he said in his speech, and only said it to make the best joke possible.
“I’ll often take a complete opposite stance to what I actually believe if it makes the joke better. I’ll pretend to be right-wing, left-wing or no-wing! It depends on the joke,” he said.
During his iconic speech, the internet went aflame with actor Tom Hanks’ viral reaction to a joke Gervais made about Felicity Huffman’s involvement in the college admission scandal. On that, the comedian did not believe Hanks was upset by anything he said.
“I don’t think he was anti what I was saying,” he said. “I think he sort of thought, ‘Oh, this is a bit hot. Is this OK?’ But the flip side of it, when I teased Leonardo [DiCaprio], and he really laughed, people loved that! People love a celebrity going, ‘You got me.’ That’s all you have to do.”
Segments of the American media did not exactly embrace everything Gervais had to say that night. Indeed, Gervais was immediately blasted for cruelly repeating “right-wing talking points” to score cheap laughs.
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