Saturday Night Live made history by hiring Bowen Yang, the first ever Asian cast member in the sketch show‘s history (finally), for its 45th season. But further SNL history was made when Shane Gillis was hired and fired in record time for his past racist jokes.
To recap, Gillis was announced alongside Yang and Chloe Fineman as the show’s new cast members. But in less than a day, the internet dug up a bunch of racist “jokes” and remarks he made towards Chinese people during a 2018 episode of his podcast.
In response, the “comedian” issued an “apology” on Twitter trying to justify his comments as something that “requires risks’ in his pursuit of, uh, comedy.
Unsurprisingly, the folks at SNL weren’t particularly convinced with Gillis’ “apology” and promptly sacked him, unceremoniously making him the show’s *checks notes* “first SNL hire to get fired in less than a week due to racism and didn’t even get to appear on the show.“
You’d think he would’ve learned something about how racism is bad and offensive after getting fired but rather than issue out the clichéd “I’m sorry, this isn’t who I am, I was young etc” apology on Twitter, he decided to go in the other direction and double down on everything while totally showing no bitterness towards SNL.
If you look up “unrepentant bonehead” in the dictionary, you probably wouldn’t find a definition but that’s what Shane Gillis is essentially.
First of all, a job on SNL can be taken away and it was.
And secondly, calling Chinese people “chinks” isn’t “comedy,” it’s just racism plain and simple. The “I’m a comedian! It’s what I do!” defence isn’t an excuse to say things like that, and the lack of remorse in his non-apology shows that he simply doesn’t understand why his comments prompted such a response and why he was sacked from SNL.
Maybe this will help make him understand: racism = bad, racism ≠ comedy.
But hey, at least Shane Gillis will forever be known as “that guy who was almost on SNL” and you can be guaranteed he’ll make sure no one forgets it when he’s doing his “risky” stand-up at random bars every weekend.