Shane Gillis's ESPYs performance sparks debate over his Trump and Pence jokes, with hosts arguing he misread a diverse audience while others defend his neutrality. The discussion critiques gender dynamics in comedy, noting unfair scrutiny of female performers versus the privileged status of black comedians like Dave Chappelle. Ultimately, the segment suggests that politicizing humor destroys authentic comedy, leaving artists like Gillis struggling to balance boundary-pushing authenticity with broader societal expectations. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Working The Room00:08:30
The biggest superstars in sports were in attendance at the Espy Awards last night, hosted by comedian Shane Gillis, who got a mixed reaction from the crowd.
Take a look.
Donald Trump wants to stage a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
The last time he staged a fight in DC, Mike Pence almost died.
You don't have to do that.
It was fine.
I didn't write it.
Actually, there was supposed to be an Epstein joke here, but as it got deleted.
A bookie is what Bill Belichick reads to his girlfriend before bedtime.
They do.
They read The Very Horny Caterpillar.
The little engine that could but needed a pill first.
Look at these hacks.
They don't think it's funny.
Did you see her face?
Whoopie, I think the other females might have thought it was funny.
Engine that could, but needed a pill first.
She just sent the crowd.
Y'all have no sense of humor.
Yeah, y'all just prudes.
Yeah, I got a new show for y'all.
Got a damn good show.
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Get you automatically in the win.
Hey, man, when you push the supplements, only pick one.
Once you start picking more to me, you like a pill butcher.
I mean, we got a lot of great stuff, but look like a pill push.
Like a like a, I ain't gonna say.
But anyway, Shane Gillis is probably one of the, yeah, more than like, no, he is like one of the top comedians right now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right?
And for them, for her to have this face, you know why she has that face?
Because she's pushing an agenda, a narrative.
He's a white male and he's straight.
Exactly.
And she's trying to attack him.
For what?
Because deep down, she is a racist.
Anybody that looks remotely conservative or Republican, or straight or white, they're going to attack you.
Yeah.
She's a comedian.
Yeah.
Look at Whoopi.
You know, hosting an award show is a tough game.
It really is.
Yeah.
They definitely not calling you.
And so I'll ask you, you think he read that room correctly?
No.
No, no, no.
He didn't basically win.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Read that room correctly.
That's impossible to read that room because you've got people from all walks of life.
That's not his audience.
There might be some fans of his in the audience, but overall, that's not his author.
That's going to be a tough one.
Did he read the room?
Does that make any sense?
What do you mean?
You think he's going to come up with jokes for that particular occasion?
No, he's going to be who he is.
He's not going to change who he is.
I think those jokes were neutral politically.
Yeah, so yeah, I think he read the room appropriately.
And I thought it was funny.
And there's a lot of jokes that they didn't put in there.
This dude was funny.
You do an award show.
They're there to hear their name called.
They are not there to laugh, number one.
And the first, I'll amend that.
Yeah.
The first five minutes is for you, whoever the host is.
The first five minutes of any award show is for you to get to know the audience.
And the rest of that time, people want to know, did I win?
Yeah, that's what they want to know.
And, you know, you watch all the shows, they're like this.
But this, this, but you know, stand-up comedy, I don't do it anymore.
I mean, I don't know how much you're doing still, but I put my creativity into my plays now because it's one of the hardest things that you do.
I did it for 30 years.
It's so hard.
It's like a high wire acting.
And I always say, it's like, I'm on the stage naked.
Everybody else has clothes.
That's how it feels.
Wow.
Yeah, women just have this warped view of the world.
I mean, everybody's looking at you, but do you feel naked?
I guess she's talking metaphorically, but pretty much saying she feels like she's being graped on stage.
Yeah.
But I wonder.
I sometimes wonder if it is received different in the room because it did.
See, I didn't see those clips.
It looked like the audience didn't love it, but I saw online, he seemed like he was getting a ton of praise.
So I wonder if he was performing more for the audience at home.
And I'll say this: I think Shane Gillis is very funny, but I watch him like I watch horror movies like this because I'm like, what is he going to say?
Is it going to make me deeply uncomfortable or am I going to laugh hysterically?
Because he is known for pushing the line.
Like he's gotten himself in trouble before.
But I think we say it all the time.
Comedians have to be able to go there to keep comedy authentic and especially moments when you need it more.
In this political climate, it's so easy to just go over the line.
I know.
I mean, back in the day, you used to have to go up to the line.
But now, just anything, you're already over the line.
And this is how these women see his act at that show.
They feel like he went over the line.
I don't think he went over the line, but I don't think they're doing a fair critique because it's one perspective.
You're women.
Women have a totally different sense of humor when it comes to comedy.
Yeah, when you look at female comedians, who the audience is going to be?
Females.
You look at male comedians.
Who's the audience going to be?
It's going to be primarily men.
Yeah, but there's women, you know, it's like 50-50, depending on the comedian.
But if women, when you go see a woman comedian, that's all women in that audience.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't think they're giving them a fair critique.
Yeah.
We are the first line of defense against tyranny.
Yeah.
And all of this, you can't squelch the comedians.
Don't do it.
It's a mistake because they will go after you.
But one thing he did that I didn't like, and that was he said, I didn't write that joke.
Never do that.
Johnny Carson was on the air for, I don't know, 100 years.
Never once did he say the writer wrote that bad joke.
I think that was his joke.
That was his joke.
That's just a tag to that joke to get an extra laugh.
Yeah.
You call yourself a comedian.
Yeah.
You think he actually didn't write that joke?
Yeah.
You're a total airhead.
If I say a joke and when I'm on stage and it doesn't hit, I got something to back it up.
Yeah.
To tag it.
If it hits hard, I got this to tag it to make it hit even harder.
If a joke doesn't hit, every comedian, if you're seasoned, you're going to have something back up in case the audience doesn't laugh.
And it almost always works.
And when you hear him, when a joke, when you tell a joke and it's silence, you just say, man, I ain't write that joke.
Yeah.
And if people start laughing, people start laughing.
Yeah.
That I just bombed with.
And if you watch.
That's bad form.
I watched the whole clip and couldn't figure out like, you know, like it's hit and miss.
It's a little like you're looking between your eyes.
He uses that line.
Like, I didn't write it.
That was a bad joke.
That's a mistake.
What I realized is overall, first of all, if you're going to push the envelope, be brilliant and own the stage.
Like a Dave Chappelle can deliver things that I feel dirty laughing at.
Like he is, he is so, but he's in charge.
Like he's literally in charge.
I think Shane Gillis is on the level of Dave Chappelle.
Yeah, there's a lot of people on Dave Chappelle's level, but they give him more love because he's black.
Yeah, huh?
And for them to say, when he says, oh, I didn't write that joke, that's bad form.
That's not, y'all don't, y'all are not comedians.
You don't, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
It's a science to comedy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What I felt about Shane and every time I watch him is I can feel his nerves.
He has ticks that say like, hell yeah, hell yeah, hell yeah, over and over.
It's like I'm in a speech.
That's part of his act.
That's his style.
That's who he is.
Well, the problem is, though, still, if he then maybe redirected, because there were moments where you could give some genuine shout-outs, like where you call out some of the amazing greats in that room without a joke following everyone.
He had to be starstruck.
I was starstruck looking at, yeah, who was there.
Call out a couple, you know, quiet people.
Well, you have to know how to work the room.
I don't know if he's he was struggling with how to do that.
A lot of people.
Shane Gillis doesn't know how to work the room.
He don't do Shane Gillis don't know how to do crowd work.
Are you kidding me?
People are good.
Maybe I couldn't do it first and favorite.
Maybe I missed it because I thought some of it was funny.
Everything Is Politicized00:02:32
Epstein joke.
He said, you know, I guess it got deleted.
Probably deleted itself, right?
Probably never existed, actually.
Let's move on as a country and ignore that.
I thought that was funny.
And he actually has to fund Aaron Rod's story in order to get that job.
I think everybody knows about it.
Everyone knows that story.
A lot of the evidence against Epstein, I'm sure it's gone.
It's deleted.
Right.
But the Epstein story.
Never make that assumption.
The audio listeners.
You can't read what you read.
No, but Shane Gillis is kind of part of.
I don't like using these terms, like the manosphere-like comedy.
Like he's in a crowd.
A lot of MAGA guys follow him.
Manosphere.
I think it is, but I hate Manosphere.
That's a term you lefties came up with.
The Manosphere.
Now you act like y'all don't even know what that means.
People are so disingenuous.
They're not genuine at all.
Yeah.
They're white guys.
The people who follow him definitely knew that joke, and they're definitely mad about Epstein.
Okay.
Everybody's mad about Estonia.
Manosphere.
The Manosphere.
Is that only white men?
No, but it is straight.
There you go.
There you go.
They hate white men.
I'm telling you.
He's straight men humor.
Straight guys.
Yeah.
You know, straight guys were always funny.
Was.
No, y'all just don't want to laugh anymore because y'all so offended now.
Yeah, everything's political.
Everything's been politicized.
These jokes are not even political.
Yeah, it was down the middle.
Straight woman and I. Not all of them.
Yeah.
The best one.
Yeah, when I was a kid, they were always funny.
They were always funny.
But, you know, she probably thinks she's funny.
You go back to the past, you say they're always funny.
I guarantee you can't even show those jokes on TV.
I bet half of those shows was removed from Netflix.
Yeah, you can't even tell those same jokes.
Yeah.
Because of women like you.
Yeah.
People like y'all.
Let me see what this fool got to say.
White guys have changed.
Do we talk about John Rickles?
She's talking about Don Rickles and George.
Yeah.
I'm talking about George Carlin.
You know, these are straight white guys.
And, you know, I guess when you know how to do the material, you can make it work.
Yeah.
You can make it work without it being offensive and terrible.
You cannot.
Everything is a comedian.
Yeah, everything's offensive today.
You can't even.
Like, look at that old movie, Coming to America with Eddie Murphy and Arsenal Hall.