Saturday Night Live guest host Bill Burr has attracted criticism for opening the show with a tired monologue about Pride Month.
The King of Staten Island star, who guest-hosted Saturday Night Live over the weekend (October 10), started the night on a not-exactly-original note by moaning about cancel culture and punching down at queer people, the two tried-and-tested staples of uninspired straight white male comedy.
In the skit, Burr claimed to have never heard of Pride Month before, recalling: “I was in New York last year, shooting a movie… and I hadn’t been here in like 13 years.
“I immediately noticed how extra crowded the city was, so I walked up to this New York door guy and was like, ‘What’s with all these people here?’
“‘Don’t worry,’ he goes, ‘it’s June, it’s Pride Month.’
“I’m like, ‘What’s that? I’m 52, I’ve never heard of it’. He goes, ‘It’s gay Pride Month’, and I was just like, ‘Ohhh, it’s gay Pride Month! Tank tops, zero per cent body fat, two guys kissing, rainbow flags’.”
He continued: “The month of June is gay Pride Month… that’s a little long, don’t you think, for a group of people that were never enslaved?
“How did they get all of June? Black people were actually enslaved and they get February, they get 28 days of overcast weather.”
Bill Burr’s ‘casually homophobic’ SNL monologue impresses exactly no one.
Bill Burr’s Pride Month monologue evoked nervous titters from the socially-distanced audience, and it’s safe to say people online were absolutely not impressed with the comic.
One Twitter user wrote: “I have loved SNL for my entire life, but I’m just so incredibly disappointed by Bill Burr’s monologue.
“Questioning the value of Pride month is borderline homophobic coming from a straight white man. Comparing oppression between minorities is always bad. It’s not a competition.
“Also, considering how the LGBTQ+ community was robbed of Pride this year, one of the only true communal events we get, dissing Pride month is even more so in poor taste.”
Another added: “My hot take is I’d never even heard of Bill Burr before tonight, but since I now know he’s still doing casual homophobic jokes in 2020, I can see why I’ve never come across his stuff before.”
As one user put it, “Bill Burr makes comedy for contrarian white boys who think they’re making smart commentary on the world when they’re just homophobic.”
While Burr’s monologue was a hard fail, Saturday’s episode of SNL did feature a hilarious skit about JK Rowling’s views on transgender people.