“Saturday Night Live’s” Newest Cast Member, Shane Gillis, Put Out A Non-Apology After Racist Comments Come Out
Welp, this guy managed to enjoy like, an afternoon of amazing news? Yesterday Saturday Night Live announced three new cast members for the upcoming season–among them was their first Asian cast member, Bowen Yang and a woman, Chloe Fineman. They had to round that shit off because too much diversity at once can be alarming to some Americans, and so they also hired another white dude, Shane Gillis.
Shane’s enjoyment was cut very short when a few hours after the announcement, a video clip of a podcast recording began circling. In the clip, Shane says some insanely racist things. Among them are highly specific racist comments against Asians–which sort of overshadowed the “first Asian cast member” thing to Hell. But hey, NBC tried it.
So let’s start with the comments Shane made. Last year. Yup, 2018. So, start there. Comedy writer Seth Simons is the one who whistle-blew on Shane, talking to Variety about the clips from Shane’s podcast with this friend, comedian Matt McCusker, called Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast.
Matt and Shane are having their minds blown about “Chinatown,” when Shane says it’s where “chinks” live before they make fun of Chinese accents. They also talk about Muslims, because everybody in the club is getting slurred!
Elsewhere in that episode, “Ep 98 Ka Pow,” Gillis and McCusker discuss the various religions’ views of heaven. Gillis proclaims “Muslim heaven” as “the best.”
“There’s only one way there, dude,” replies McCusker.
“You gotta spill blood, you gotta praise Allah by spilling blood,” says Gillis.
Here’s the clips:
today SNL announced the hiring of its first cast member of East Asian descent, and also this guy pic.twitter.com/0FAGJZJUkK
— Seth Simons (@sasimons) September 12, 2019
this, again, is from September 2018 pic.twitter.com/inYFT22zjl
— Seth Simons (@sasimons) September 12, 2019
They called it: “nice racism, good racism.” I mean… and it goes on.
In another episode called “Ep 144 – A.I. is Racist,” they continue to make fun of Asian accents by referring to the video game “Clash of Clans” as “Crash of Crans.” And in “Ep 146 – Live from Shane’s Parent’s Basement,” (where he’ll be going back to once SNL fires him) while discussing the Battle of Gettysburg, Shane somehow calls soldiers yelling on the battlefield “so gay,” and later says both “retard,” and “faggot.” And they also joke about “hot Southern boys” getting raped during the Civil War by comparing it to “having gay sex in jail.” He also called the women fighting in the Civil War disguised as men, “flat chested fucking bitch[es].”
His response? “I’m sowwy! Comedy was different in the past (year)!“:
— Shane Gillis (@Shanemgillis) September 13, 2019
What is the risk? What is the risk? What’s the joke even? That Asian people have an accent? Their food is terrible, ehl-oh-ehl? Again, this wasn’t 1978 or 1988 or 1998 or even 2008, it was 2018.
NBC has made no comment on this yet, but they will, I’m sure. I feel like they’re either going to fire him or just be like, “Oh, we’re sending him to sensitivity training”, or some shit like that. But sensitivity training (aka watching a 60-minute video and taking a BuzzFeed “Are You Racist?” quiz) might do Shane in, because his brain might explode when he sees the question, “What should you refer to Chinese people as?“, and “chink” isn’t an option.
Pic: Twitter