Spare a thought for the cultural wing of the progressive commentariat. Still reeling from revelations that comedian Jack Dee believes closing people’s Paypal accounts for wrongthink is a step too far, this week they were forced to watch one of the greatest British cultural figures, the face of the Life of Brian and other counter-cultural classics of the 70s and 80s, betray the cause of progress by joining the evil empire that is GB News.
This cognitive dissonance at watching your heroes disagree with your sacred values is painful to be sure but, fortunately, the progressive monoculture that dominates all creative arts in Britain has some experience of coping with such setbacks. A case in point was the revelation that JK Rowling, a darling of the progressive Left for decades, has consistently refused to bend the intellectual knee to the holy mantra of “transwomen are women”. What is worse, even thousands of rape threats and attacks on her and her friends, were, inexplicably, unsuccesful in enticing Rowling back to the side of kindness and compassion.
Undeterred, however, the “right side of history” dealt with this incongruous problem with its usual panache. “JK Rowling is a transphobe”. Problem solved.
This, I’m afraid, is the fate that awaits John Cleese as well. He will, of course, be imminently discovered to be a Nazi. There is plenty of historical evidence, after all:
Furthermore, his transphobia has been in plain sight since the 70s.
Once his bigotry is there for all to see, he will of course immediately be designated as “not funny”. My good friend Rosie Holt, a wokie who usually avoids siding with the particularly demented elements of her own team, got the dig in early:
I have plenty of areas of agreement with the Left, not least over the Home Secretary’s now-retracted mooting of the moronic idea of reclassifying cannabis as a Class A drug, but it is this aspect of progressive thinking that I find so utterly repellent. For reasons I cannot understand, portions of the Left believe that theirs are the only views that have merit and that the only reason someone might disagree with them is being a Bad Person.
They are simply incapable of considering that people have different genetic, psychological and emotional predispositions or that their “lived experience” might have led them to conclusions that differ from their own. To say nothing, of course, of the fact that they are completely unable to see that the Christian Right, against which their former heroes like Cleese, Carlin and Hicks pushed so hard, has now been replaced by an equally dogmatic Left which finds itself in the grips of its own religion.
It is quite impossible for them to recognise, let alone accept, that in seeking to break down the cultural taboos of their childhoods they have erected an equally restrictive set of faith-based Commandments which they enforce with the same astounding hypocrisy and viciousness.
It is the violation of one such Commandment in particular that added extra venom to the utterly deranged reaction to Cleese siding with the “enemy”. You see, Mr Cleese is a rather naive individual who, in his advanced age, appears to be suffering from the misapprehension that we still live in a country where we are allowed to point out the meticulous, purposeful cultural self-destruction of the BBC.
Unaware that he was trodding gleefully into the middle of a giant minefield, Mr Cleese explained that:
“The BBC have not come to me and said, ‘would you like to have some one-hour shows?’ And if they did, I would say, ‘Not on your nelly.’ Because I wouldn’t get five minutes into the first show before I’d been cancelled or censored”.
Oh dear, oh dear. To utter such obvious truths in public won’t do, Mr Cleese. Off you go to join your fellow Nazi bigot transphobes.
Monty Python's 'Life of Brian' was well ahead of it's time. John Cleese knows exactly what minefield he has entered and he will happily sent off as many mines as possible just to piss the WOKE off.