June 6, 2021 | 7:03pm ET
Katt Williams offered his take on the impact of cancel culture in a new interview.
Appearing on the June 4th episode of The Joe Budden Podcast, the comedian explained why being thoughtful about language can actually be a positive thing in the world of comedy.
“If you asked all of the people that didn’t make it to the NBA, if you asked them if we just lowered the goal down another foot,” he said, “they would all tell you they’d make it. Nobody likes the out of bounds, but the out of bounds gotta be there. Or you’ll run up in the stands, right? So some of these things are for the benefit of everything. Nobody likes the speed limit, but it’s necessary. Nobody likes the shoulder of the road, but it’s there for a reason.
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“My point is, [people] weren’t all that extremely funny back when they could say whatever they wanted to say,” Williams continued, eliciting laughs from the trio of hosts. “At the end of the day, there’s no cancel culture. Cancellation doesn’t have its own culture. That was people of color, that was us policing our own culture. That was people without a voice being trashed by people just because they had a bigger name than them…they could sweep them up under the rug like they didn’t matter.”
Williams went on to explain that, in his view, placing limits on what society deems offensive and hateful speech isn’t all that bad, particularly when it comes to making people laugh. He also questioned “what people we think got cancelled that we wish we had back.”
“I don’t even know…who are they?” he asked, before adding, “It’s done for the reasons it’s done for and it helped who it helped. If all that’s gonna happen is we have to be more sensitive in the way that we talk, isn’t that what we want anyway? I’m saying your job as a comedian is to please the most amount of people with your art…Look, if these are the confines that keep you from doing the craft God put you to, then it probably ain’t for you. That’s all.”
Watch Williams expound on his thoughts about cancel culture below.
I love Katt Williams answer to cancel culture pic.twitter.com/T27nH7RsyN
— Zach 🌍 (@NAACPYOUNGBOY) June 4, 2021