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Prior to hosting the Golden Globes, comedian Nikki Glaser mused about the risk of being “canceled” for her jokes, having apparently not gotten the memo that cancel culture is over and free speech is once again a thing.
But even free speech benefits from foresight, sometimes called “reading the room.” And the room at the Beverly Hills Hilton Sunday wasn’t entirely on board with Glaser’s glib treatment of Sean “Diddy” Combs, the rapper currently awaiting trial for charges of sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution.
There were audible gasps during the awards ceremony when Glaser referred to a film as “more sexually charged than Diddy’s credit card,” after which she said, “I’m sorry — I’m upset too. The afterparty is not going to be as good this year, but we have to move on.”
The Combs case is hardly the stuff of jokes for any gathering — it involves allegations of rape, sexual abuse and sexual exploitation, with some cases involving children as young as 9. But the jokes seemed particularly ill-advised given the contradictions: Hollywood has been so passionate about #MeToo and yet, until Combs’ indictment, his drug- and alcohol-soaked parties were seen by many as a hot ticket.
It’s not just that it’s “too soon” to joke about Diddy, who denies all the charges in the 14-page indictment. It’s that, like 9/11 and the Holocaust, there won’t ever be a time at which it’s OK to make jokes about this subject. (Glaser didn’t get that memo, either, given her shoutout to actor Adrien Brody, who she called “a two-time Holocaust survivor.”)
On one hand, it’s par for the course for an entertainer known for being “sex positive” — which is another way of saying she frequently says things most Americans wouldn’t — to cross the line of propriety so brazenly. It’s been reported that Glaser tested jokes in advance in order to “keep the monologue in the (most) perfect place it can be.” Maybe that’s one reason she didn’t finish a skit she started wearing a mitre like the pope wears, while in a gown leaving little to the imagination.
Still, it’s hard to imagine why Glaser — or anyone — would think it was a good idea to make light of the Combs case in this way. If “no laughing matter” applies to anything in the era after the downfall of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, it applies here. Perhaps the goal was simply to make headlines by being outrageous, and it’s certainly the season for that.
The Golden Globes kick off the awards season, the highlights of which are the Grammys (this year, Feb. 2) and Oscars (March 2). In conjunction with the halftime show of the Super Bowl (Feb. 9), you might call it open season on conservatives, since some entertainers at these events seem to compete with each other for who can overrun the prevailing standards of decency the most, in what they say, what they wear and how they perform. Every year, the bar seems to get lower.
Toward the end of her opening monologue at the Golden Globes, Glaser circled back to #MeToo problem without mentioning it by name. She said that in five years, someone would be looking at clips of the show on YouTube and see someone and say, “That was before they caught that guy!”
“It could be a woman — I think 100% of the time it’s a man — but it could be a woman. It won’t be. It never is. Kind of like ‘best director.’”
Funny, yes. And also, deeply and tragically not.
The limits of free speech redux
Does the right to free speech mean you can publicly ridicule your boss? That’s one question raised by the resignation of a political cartoonist for The Washington Post who was upset when an editor wouldn’t publish a cartoon that showed Jeff Bezos and other tech titans kneeling before President-elect Donald Trump.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, wrote on Substack that “There will be people who say, ‘Hey, you work for a company and that company has the right to expect employees to adhere to what’s good for the company.’ That’s true except we’re talking about news organizations that have public obligations and who are obliged to nurture a free press in a democracy. Owners of such press organizations are responsible for safeguarding that free press — and trying to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting will only result in undermining that free press.”
Her editor, David Shipley, said in a statement that the cartoon wasn’t accepted because the Post had already published a column making the same point, and had another in the pipeline. “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. ... The only bias was against repetition,” Shipley said.
The controversy follows the resignation of three members of the Post’s editorial board who were upset that the newspaper did not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
Was the cartoon right?
Although Telnaes’s sketch did not identify the men pictured as supplicants before Trump, on Substack, she confirmed that one was Bezos, and that the others were Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of The Los Angeles Times. (Mickey Mouse was also shown lying prostrate before Trump in the drawing.)
In fortuitous timing for Telnaes, Zuckerberg this week released a video in which he said that the 2024 election was a “cultural tipping point” for free speech, and that there had been “too many mistakes and too much censorship” on social media platforms — exactly what social conservatives have been howling about for years. He also announced Monday that Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a Trump supporter and friend, would be joining Meta’s board, and that Facebook would end third-party factchecking in favor of a system similar to X’s “Community Notes.”
While some on social media applauded Zuckerberg’s statement, others took the opportunity to mock him, portraying him as a forlorn outsider trying to get in the good graces of Trump and Elon Musk. Facebook has seen its popularity decline over the past decade, developing a reputation as the social media platform for grandparents, which has made it, and its founder, an easy target for scorn. But social conservatives should think twice before joining in. Late to the free speech party is better than never coming at all.
Besides, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who met in college, are, by all appearances, happily married and devoted parents to three daughters, and they seem to be surprisingly well-grounded people. I’d have no problem adding the couple to my dream dinner party invitation list, although I’m more on X than Facebook these days.
Great reads you might have missed
Jay Evensen on why it’s not true that Americans don’t respect their elders: “We honor our elders so much we keep electing them as our most important and powerful leaders. Voters just replaced the oldest president in history with someone who is 78. At the same time, they elected the third oldest Congress on record. It’s unclear whether this is a good idea.”
https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/01/06/old-people-rule-washington/
Scott Raines on why the antidote for ‘brain rot’ is reading great literature: “The master novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote that ‘Don Quixote’ was ‘the saddest book ever written’ because ‘it is a story of disillusionment.’ But for us today, this disillusionment becomes valuable as we see many modern Don Quixotes seek to make a living by offering their bodies, their minds and perhaps their souls for meaningless internet content.”
https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/01/04/brain-rot-books-pope-francis/
Jacob Hess on why so many celebrities are suddenly turning to faith: “Celebrities like this convert because ‘they’re convinced something is true,’” said conservative commentator Michael Knowles. ‘Sometimes in society there can be social advantages that go along with certain positions, like becoming a Democrat,’ he acknowledged. ... ‘There are not really social benefits to becoming Catholic.’”
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2025/01/05/celebrities-committing-to-christ/
Finally
I’ll leave you with this reminder, inspired by a gift bag my daughter received over the holidays: No matter how good you are at spotting errors, everyone needs an editor.
Thank you for reading Right to the Point, where we believe the more eyes on something, the better.