(NewsNation) —Dave Chappelle just won a Grammy Award for a comedy album that dealt with the backlash he faced over transphobic comments in a previous comedy special, raising the question: Is cancel culture canceled?
“As a comic, you have to have an awareness of what’s really going on. And the way you learn that is by performing it; it doesn’t always go well,” said actor and comedian Tom Arnold.
Arnold joined NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” to discuss how cancel culture in the comedy industry is changing, saying the pendulum appears to be swinging in the other direction of the political spectrum.
“Every time I hear about a comedian that’s doing something inappropriate, I read the headline, and then I’ll read the joke or listen to the joke, it’s always hilarious. And maybe it’s funny, it sometimes pushes the edge, but you want the best comics to do that. But I think it (the pendulum swing) is coming. I think people are tired of cancel culture over here and over there,” Arnold said.
Arnold says the very act of canceling someone in the public eye invites a closer look at the person doing so, often ending in the initial accuser being canceled.
“There is a business, there are networks that only talk about cancel culture, you know, they’re gonna cancel this person or that person,” Arnold said, adding, “When you start saying, ‘I’m the person who’s going to cancel people,’ God has a way of show of showing you, okay, this is what’s going to happen. And then you find out about those people, and they’re phony.”