Comedian Ricky Gervais Brings Back REAL, Roasting Satire

Celebrity, Comedy & Humor, Culture, Ethics, Film, Hollywood

Ricky Gervais’ opening monologue at the 77th annual Golden Globes was neither left nor right, it was just right: uproariously witty.

Here is the full transcript of Ricky Gervais’ roast of Hollywood, courtesy of The Daily Mail. The best parts I highlighted: 

Hello and welcome to the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards, live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel here in Los Angeles. I’m Ricky Gervais, thank you.

You’ll be pleased to know this is the last time I’m hosting these awards, so I don’t care anymore. I’m joking. I never did. I’m joking, I never did. NBC clearly don’t care either — fifth time. I mean, Kevin Hart was fired from the Oscars for some offensive tweets — hello?

Lucky for me, the Hollywood Foreign Press can barely speak English and they’ve no idea what Twitter is, so I got offered this gig by fax. Let’s go out with a bang, let’s have a laugh at your expense. Remember, they’re just jokes. We’re all gonna die soon and there’s no sequel, so remember that.

But you all look lovely all dolled up. You came here in your limos. I came here in a limo tonight and the license plate was made by Felicity Huffman. No, shush. It’s her daughter I feel sorry for. OK? That must be the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to her. And her dad was in Wild Hogs.

Lots of big celebrities here tonight. Legends. Icons. This table alone — Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro … Baby Yoda. Oh, that’s Joe Pesci, sorry. I love you man. Don’t have me whacked. But tonight isn’t just about the people in front of the camera. In this room are some of the most important TV and film executives in the world. People from every background. They all have one thing in common: They’re all terrified of Ronan Farrow. He’s coming for ya. Talking of all you perverts, it was a big year for pedophile movies. Surviving R. Kelly, Leaving Neverland, Two Popes. Shut up. Shut up. I don’t care. I don’t care.

Many talented people of color were snubbed in major categories. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that. Hollywood Foreign press are all very racist. Fifth time. So. We were going to do an In-Memoriam this year, but when I saw the list of people who died, it wasn’t diverse enough. No, it was mostly white people and I thought, nah, not on my watch. Maybe next year. Let’s see what happens.

No one cares about movies anymore. No one goes to cinema, no one really watches network TV. Everyone is watching Netflix. This show should just be me coming out, going, “Well done Netflix. You win everything. Good night.” But no, we got to drag it out for three hours. You could binge-watch the entire first season of Afterlife instead of watching this show. That’s a show about a man who wants to kill himself cause his wife dies of cancer and it’s still more fun than this. Spoiler alert, season two is on the way so in the end he obviously didn’t kill himself. Just like Jeffrey Epstein. Shut up. I know he’s your friend but I don’t care.

Seriously, most films are awful. Lazy. Remakes, sequels. I’ve heard a rumor there might be a sequel to Sophie’s Choice. I mean, that would just be Meryl just going, “Well, it’s gotta be this one then.” All the best actors have jumped to Netflix, HBO. And the actors who just do Hollywood movies now do fantasy-adventure nonsense. They wear masks and capes and really tight costumes. Their job isn’t acting anymore. It’s going to the gym twice a day and taking steroids, really. Have we got an award for most ripped junky? No point, we’d know who’d win that.

It’s the last time, who cares? 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. 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?

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. 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, OK? It’s already three hours long. Right, let’s do the first award.

Suleimani: America Is Judge, Jury And Executioner; Decides Who Lives, Who Dies

America, Argument, Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Republicans

“Suleimani deserved to die.” That’s the consensus on Fox News. It’s also how assorted commentators on the channel prefaced their “positions” on the killing of this Iranian.

Major General Qassim Suleimani was assassinated by a US drone air strike at the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP).

Even the great Tucker Carlson—the only mainstream hope for us Old Right, America First, anti-war sorts—framed the taking out of Suleimani as the killing of a bad guy by good guys:

“There are an awful lot of bad people in this world. We can’t kill them all, it’s not our job.”

However you finesse it, the premise of Tucker’s statement is that the American government, and the cognoscenti who live in symbiosis with it, get to adjudicate who’s bad and who’s good in the world. The debate is never over right or wrong, but over whether our universal American Judges should or shouldn’t act on their immutably just moral calls.

Even Tucker, whose antiwar sentiments are laudable, conceded that this Suleimani guy probably needed killing, which is the same thing Iraqis old enough to remember America’s destruction of Iraq, circa 2003, would say about President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.

So who’s right? Or must we accept that it is up to the United States government and its ruling elites to determine who lives and who dies around the world.

The atavistic argument—“Suleimani deserved to die”—made on Fox News holds true only if you believe that the US is the repository of an international and universal code of law and is deputized to uphold this code of law.

This primitive argument is true ONLY if you believe the US government is universal judge, jury and executioner, deciding who may live and who must die the world over.

As to whether the US government has a right to eliminate a state actor by declaring him a “terrorist”:

Like it or not, Suleimani was an Iranian state actor, the equivalent of our Special Operations Commander.

We would not tolerate Iranians designating America’s Special Operations Commander, Gen. Richard D. Clarke, as a terrorist, although they may have plenty reasons to do so.

Our Special Operations forces and their command encroach on the Iranian neighborhood much more so than Iranians and their special forces encroach on American territory.

If Iranians took out America’s Special Operations Commander somewhere in North America—we would definitely consider it an act of war by Iran.

* Image courtesy BBC News.

UPDATE III (1/09/020): Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller DOES AXE Dissident Voices

Conservatism, Critique, Ethics, Neoconservatism, Political Correctness

Here, Tucker Carlson loudly protests the habit of expunging dissent voices, right and left.

OK, but Tucker Carlson is affiliated with Daily Caller, right? And Daily Caller axed my very dissident column because a hate-group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, persists in telling nasty lies about me and my views. (Along the lines outlined in my refutation of “Slate’s Resident Idiot” when he “Slandered this Jewish Woman — Me.”)

How is that resisting the status quo? Daily Caller also removed op-ed editor Robert Mariani and replaced him with indistinguishable neocons.

I think they all swim in very polluted waters.

UPDATE I (12/30/019):

Tucker markets a syndicated column with a buddy, Patel, who is editor-in-chief of Daily Caller. As its founder, Tucker has plenty sway. Other dissident columns have been removed, too. Love Tucker, but can we stop making excuses for our idols?

https://twitter.com/jesse31522/status/1211568797141762049

UPDATE II (12/31/019): 

Regarding this comment on Twitter: Then Tucker must NOT wax fat against dissidents being expunged, when his pride-and-joy site, the one he founded, does that very thing to those of us who were Old, Hard Right before Tucker was. And there are other thinkers who’ve been purged from Daily Caller. Mencken warned about this kind of mindless mindset among Americans. Find a hero, usually a celeb or a politico–and worship, worship the idol, excuse his every incongruous stance. You can be sure Tucker HAS PLENTY INFLUENCE @DailyCaller. It’s likely a choice.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), arguably America’s foremost hate group, had maligned me, a hard-right, Jewish individualist (daughter of a rabbi), who is frequently and mercilessly attacked by anti-Semites (a taste in the Comments to my column, at the Unz Review). So, at the same time that Tucker Carlson was doing magnificent exposes about the SPLC—his website, Daily Caller, was expunging my column because the SPLC demands it.

Intelligent, honest sorts will admit there is a contradiction here. The rest are, as Mencken would have said, part of the “commonwealth of morons”—mindless followers, who refuse to recognize  that the object of their worship (Tucker) might be in violation of his own principles.

UPDATE III (1/09/020):

An interesting postscript to the above debate. Correlation is not causation, but Tucker Carlson seems to have untangled himself from the syndicated column he wrote with Daily Caller editor, Neil Patel. More accurately, the Patel column appears sans Tucker.  Patel worked for Vice President Dick Cheney. Say no more.

UPDATED (12/22/019): Little Guy Shoulders Costs Of Crony Capitalism: Pollution, Red Tide, Ground-Water Contamination…

Business, Capitalism, Donald Trump, Economy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Free Markets, Globalism, IMMIGRATION, Labor

Paul Craig Roberts gets to the nub of American crony capitalism: profits are privatized; external costs are socialized. In other words, The Little Guy bears the brunt of the pillage, be it reckless commercial farming or rampant real-estate pillaging (“development”), fueled by endless immigration central-planning.

External or social costs are costs of producing a product that the producer does not incur but imposes on third parties or on the environment. For example, untreated sewage dumped into a stream imposes costs on people downstream. Runoff of chemical fertilizers from commercial farming produces dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and toxic algal blooms such as Red Tide that result in massive fish kills, make seafood unsafe, cause human ailments and adversely impact the tourist trade of beach areas. The result is lost incomes, ruined vacations, health expenses, and none of these costs are born by the commercial farmers.

Real estate development produces massive external costs. Scenic views from existing properties are blocked, thus reducing their values. Construction noise and congestion impose costs on existing residents and reduces the quality of their lives. Water runoff problems are often created. Infrastructure has to be provided, such as larger highways to provide evacuation from hurricane-impacted areas, usually financed by taxpayers. …

… the external costs of coal-fired power plants being built in India by the Indian conglomerate Tata with a loan from the International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank. The ground water in the area has been ruined and is no longer drinkable. Farmers are no longer able to grow crops on half of the area farmland. Heated wastewater that is dumped into the Gulf of Kutch is destroying fishing. The ecology and the livelihoods of the population are essentially destroyed. None of these costs are born by the private power companies.

Tired of being doormats for capitalists and the World Bank, the residents of the affected provinces rebelled. They have succeeded in getting their case before the US Supreme Court. It seems that the International Finance Corporation is so accustomed to financing projects that produce large external costs that it overlooked its obligation to examine the environmental impact of the projects it finances. This oversight resulted in Indian farmers and fishermen getting their case before the US Supreme Court. The International Finance Corporation’s lawyers argued that the World Bank lending agency had “absolute immunity.” The Supreme Court said no and remanded the case to the circuit court to rule on the damages.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this apparent victory for ordinary faraway little people in an American court against the World Bank, a principle instrument of American imperialism, is that the Trump administration appeared in court as a friend of the Indian farmers and fishermen. The US Solicitor General, represented by Jonathan Ellis, rejected the notion that international orgnizations have absolute immunity. The Establishment exists on its immunity. Here we see the ultimate reason that the ruling Establishment wants rid of Trump.

Already the senior staff of the International Finance Corporation have come to the realization that they have other responsibilities than just to shuffle money out the lending shute. If the Indian farmers and fishermen succeed in protecting themselves from ruination by external costs, perhaps Americans who suffer external costs will follow their lead.

[SEE: “US Supreme Court rules against World Bank’s claim of absolute immunity.”]

No wonder Paul Craig Roberts—he served in the Reagan administration—has been expunged from official Conservatism’s polite circles. All good people have been. Fortunately, we have the Unz Review.

RELATED are my pieces on homelessness and high-tech.

 

As I wrote in “Why The H-1B Visa Racket Should Be Abolished, Not Reformed“:

Barricaded in their obscenely lavish compounds—from the comfort of their monster mansions—these social engineers don’t experience the “environmental impacts of rapid urban expansion”; the destruction of verdant open spaces and farmland; the decrease in the quality of the water we drink and air we breathe, the increase in traffic and traffic accidents, air pollution, the cellblock-like housing erected to accommodate their imported I.T. workers and extended families, the delicate bouquet of amped up waste management and associated seepages. For locals, this lamentable state means an inability to afford homes in a market in which property prices have been artificially inflated.

* Image of the Tata Mundra power plant is courtesy of Joe Athialy

UPDATE (12/22/019): And now “Mysterious greenish-yellow liquid [is] gushing from walls on I-696.” Goo will probably contaminate drinking water.

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