Ellen DeGeneres is back, on a comedy tour talking about being canceled. Weird, I thought she was held accountable for preaching “kindness” when she was reportedly horrible to work for, but what do I know! Canceled so hard she can only get work with one of the biggest names in the industry!
DeGeneres started her new comedy tour, titled Ellen’s Last Stand…Up Tour, and while she is eventually going to film the set for Netflix, the topic of cancellation came up at a performance in Largo in Los Angeles. After her set, there was a Q&A where a lot of people were talking about DeGeneres becoming “persona non grata” for the second time—the first was the backlash when she came out in the ’90s.
The second is referring to the Buzzfeed report that revealed that The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the talk show where DeGeneres would interview celebrities and come out dancing, was an extremely toxic place to work—including racial micro-aggressions!
Do you think that DeGeneres understood why people were mad at her about the situation? You should know better at this point. When asked about the situation, DeGeneres said, according to a report from People, “The hate went on for a long time and I would try to avoid looking at the news. The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind. That was the headline.”
Don’t you worry, though, DeGeneres is now laughing about “what happened to [her]” in a situation that really was about her employees and their experience working on the show. “I’m making jokes about what happened to me, but it was devastating,” she said. “It took a long time for me to want to do anything again.” Okay!
We are obviously going by what was reported, but if she is looking at what happened with Ellen in this way, there is a disconnect between what happened and what DeGeneres seemingly put into her new routine.
Should that mean Ellen doesn’t do comedy anymore?
Look, given how many gross men do comedy regularly even after they have been accused of horrific things, I don’t think that Ellen DeGeneres should necessarily be on the outs forever. However, the issue here is that talking about how hard it is to be “canceled” isn’t the way to go about recognizing that maybe there’s a better way to address what was reported.
Who knows? Maybe DeGeneres’ Netflix special will recognize her privilege and show growth from what happened, but the way she’s portraying the whole thing as her being “kicked out of show business” for “being mean” doesn’t inspire confidence.
I think it is fine that DeGeneres is back, but it’s not great to watch her act like what happened with her show was a cancel culture run amok and not toxic behavior being called out.
(featured image: NBC)
