Photo Credit: Steve Harvey/Instagram
Steve Harvey is no fan of cancel culture and understandably so. For those who remember his stand up comedy days, he was anything but appropriate on stage… and people loved him for it. With that being said, he says he can’t make those jokes anymore and because of it, he has no intentions of doing another comedy special unless it were the last thing he did in Hollywood.
While promoting his new ABC courtroom comedy series, Judge Steve Harvey, he said “We’re in the cancel culture now. Nobody can say anything he wants to — Chris Rock can’t, Kevin Hart can’t, Cedric the Entertainer can’t, D.L. Hughley can’t. I can go down the list. The only person that can say what they want to say on stage is Dave Chappelle because he’s not sponsor-driven. He’s subscription.”
He went on to say, “If I had tried to continue as a stand-up [comedian], there’s no way I could maintain it because political correctness has killed comedy, has killed it..Every joke now, it hurts somebody’s feelings. What people don’t understand about comedians is that a joke has to be about something. It has to be about somebody. We can’t write jokes about puppies all the time. The joke can’t be about bushes all the time. Some of these jokes have to be about people — because that’s the most interesting topic. So if I come back, I have to wait until I’m done [with my TV career]. And I’m not done. I’d have to call it This Is It or something like that.”
Not long ago Katt Williams said that a comedian’s job is to make their audience laugh and if the audience doesn’t like what you’re saying, you need to change it. And tastes change. While he has a point, that’s negated by Dave Chappelle because in his instance, he’s still doing fine among his base. It’s the sponsors that have been kicking the a** of his competitors and attempting to kick his. But he’s done fine. As for whether he should do stand up again, Steve Harvey is a wildly successful man and no doubt hilarious. If he’s uncertain how to navigate today’s media lanscape on stage, that’s fine. We have plenty of his old work to be satisfied with.
