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Sarah Silverman Regrets Former ‘Blackface’ Comedy Sketch, Laments Cancel Culture

   DailyWire.com
Sarah Silverman attends NRDC's "Night of Comedy" Benefit, in partnership with Discovery, Inc. hosted by Seth Meyers on April 30, 2019 in New York City.
Roy Rochlin / Stringer / Getty Images

It seems that even comedienne Sarah Silverman cannot escape the grasp of cancel culture. Speaking on “The Bill Simmons Podcast,” the notoriously left-wing feminist revealed that a blackface comedy sketch she performed on her 2007 TV show recently got her fired from a movie.

“Comedian Sarah Silverman revealed that she was once fired from a movie over a controversial sketch from her 2007 TV show that had her appear in blackface,” reports Fox News. “The often outspoken stand-up revealed that she didn’t argue when she was fired from a recent film role the night before shooting began after an old image of her in blackface surfaced.”

The blackface image came from a sketch on “The Sarah Silverman Program” in 2007, which her character donned in order to discover whether or not people have a more difficult time in America being black or Jewish. At one point in the episode, her character says, “I look like the beautiful Queen Latifah.” Silverman said it was “disheartening” to be fired over a past joke.

“I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part, then at 11 P.M. the night before, they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode. I didn’t fight it,” Silverman said. “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.”

Sarah Silverman referred to this cancel culture of shaming celebrities for every past act of impropriety as “righteousness porn.” Strangely enough, she admitted it to be a problem primarily among leftists, though she believed conservatives will eventually “mimic” it.

“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,” she said. “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. 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.'”

Silverman admitted that she would never do the blackface again today and would most certainly be avoiding other potentially offensive jokes.

“It’s OK to go, ‘Wow, look at this back then. That was so f***ed up looking at it in the light of today of what we know,’ but to hold that person accountable if they’ve changed with the times, like for me … I held myself accountable. I can’t erase that I did that, but I can only be changed forever and do what I can to make it right for the rest of my life,” she admitted.

Silverman’s words echo comments made by comedian Jerry Seinfeld in 2015, when he explained why he hates playing on college campuses. “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so P.C. They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice.’ They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

Sarah Silverman has previously lamented how cancel culture destroyed comedian Louis C.K.’s career over several #MeToo allegations which included having two women watch him masturbate. While Silverman did not exactly defend C.K.’s behavior, she downplayed the predatory aspect of it, portraying it as a failure on his part to understand the power he had over his victims.

“I know I’m going to regret saying this,” Silverman said. “I’ve known Louis forever, I’m not making excuses for him, so please don’t take this that way. We are peers. We are equals. When we were kids, and he asked if he could masturbate in front of me, sometimes I’d go, ‘F*** yeah I want to see that!’ … It’s not analogous to the other women that are talking about what he did to them. He could offer me nothing. We were only just friends. Sometimes, yeah, I wanted to see it, it was amazing. Sometimes I would say, ‘F***ing no, gross,’ and we got pizza.”

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