Shane Gillis Is A Comedian. It’s OK To Laugh.

Shane Gillis hosted Saturday Night Live over the weekend and used the opening monologue to tell some jokes, something the long-running show has been attempting to lean back into recently. Naturally, his attempts drew ire, particularly his observations about what women wear to the gym these days. In what was ultimately a bit with a self-deprecating punchline, Gillis said, “I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now? Look, I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe [it]. Have you seen it? I’ve seen it. You’ve seen the shorts? They’re those neon, like, artificial bait-colored, and the wrinkles go around the cheeks and all combine at the butthole. And don’t look! You’re not allowed to look.”

That line is where the coverage tends to end, with both Dan Levy and Kelly Lawler at USA Today omitting what Gillis said next. He concluded the joke with “And don’t look. You’re not allowed to look. For real don’t look, ‘cause they are filming. I’m in the background of like 10 TikToks right now.” He then pantomimed looking kind of creepy. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but Gillis, despite not claiming any party, is Republican coded, so he’s not allowed to say those things.

It’s not that Gillis is conservative. He makes fun of conservatives, Republicans, and Donald Trump constantly. But he’s not an overt liberal, so that makes him the enemy in the way that, say, an Anthony Jeselnik isn’t. Jeselnik conceded the point in an interview with the New York Times in 2019, saying that woke comics don’t criticize him: “I think because they know I’m woke.” Whatever Gillis is, “woke” isn’t the right word for it, so he constantly gets excoriated.

Levy said of Gillis’ SNL open: “This is not a women’s issue, this is an everybody issue. Because the more that men objectify women in the media, the more that other men see them as objects and treat them as objects. They are not objects. They are superior human beings to men, OK? And I’m sorry if this gets me in trouble with the internet, but f*ck.”

Levy, a gay man and nepo baby, was much more supportive of “Heated Rivalry,” a show ostensibly about hockey that instead served to objectify men and turn them into playthings meant to delight the female gaze. Lawler, on the other hand, willfully omitted the punchline, saying it didn’t exist, and wrote about how comedians like Gillis contribute to what happened at Cornell. She stops short of saying he’s the one who supplied the ketamine but otherwise lays a host of issues at his feet.

For starters, “There’s an aphorism that when someone tells you who they are, you should listen. Gillis has never stopped telling us who he is. And that person is part of the problem in this country when it comes to how we talk about women and sexual assault. And he should be ashamed.”

Before we continue, it’s worth noting that “when someone tells you who they are, you should listen” isn’t just an aphorism; it’s attributed to Maya Angelou. It’s shameful that Lawler erased a black woman, though I suppose her white privilege clouded her view. Either that, or she doesn’t trust Oprah, the primary source for the quote. Either way, she should probably work on her own racism before lecturing others about their sexism.

Second, this is just silly: “It is dehumanizing. It keeps women quiet. It keeps men emboldened to do more and take more. And it keeps the names of men like Gillis in the news, gathering views. It takes the spotlight off women like Jane Doe, who have been hurt more than any of us who are not survivors can contemplate. It makes the story, once again, about what men want.”

I’m not going to claim to speak for all men, especially because there are some weirdos out there. But I’d hazard a guess that most of us really don’t want to end up looking creepy in the background of a TikTok. Moreover, Gillis was hosting Saturday Night Live. Millions of people watch it. He was already in the news, getting views. As to it distracting from coverage of Jane Doe… ok? I guess, technically, people watching the monologue weren’t simultaneously watching the news for updates, but that was a choice they made as viewers. Gillis didn’t break into their homes and force them to tune into SNL.

His real sin, though, was that he isn’t a doctrinaire liberal. He may even be a centrist. Or perhaps he is actually a conservative. Regardless, even being conservative-adjacent means you’re expected to play by different rules, to avoid saying anything that can be misconstrued. You’re especially not supposed to say that Donald Trump is funny, even as you otherwise criticize him. In fact, you should probably avoid speaking altogether.

But as a nation, we must confront this, because this isn’t an issue about comedians or those in the audience; it’s an everybody issue. It’s about all of us coming together and remembering it’s ok to laugh, especially at the lurkers in the back of random gym videos, even if the lurker is you.

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Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the Cookin’ Up a Story podcast, which you can listen to here. You can also follow him on X: @rcromwell4