Actor and comedian Andy Richter’s take on cancel culture can be summed up in three words: Bring it on.
“It’s about time. It’s about time we stop saying lots of the things that we say and it’s about time that we stopped not caring about things that we say that we don’t have to say, like words that we don’t have to use,” Conan O’Brien’s sidekick tells host Andy Levy on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal podcast. “For the most part, people that have gotten in trouble deserve to get in trouble. And the whole point of it is, five years ago they wouldn’t have gotten in trouble. So this is good.”
Richter tells a story about a one-sided conversation with a fellow parent in his fiancée’s daughter’s dance class that illustrates his point.
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“One of his things was, ‘Don’t you just think it’s impossible to do comedy anymore, what with this cancel culture?’ And it’s just like, no, not if you’re not lazy,” jokes Richter.
He shares how he put that into practice upon learning that the M-word is offensive to little people.
“That was just a comedy staple just spilling outta everybody’s mouth. And I never thought about it. I mean I was already like I had been on TV for years, and I found out, ‘Oh that word’s really hurtful to a lot of people and makes ’em feel like shit? Oh, well, that’s easy enough. I’m not gonna say that word anymore.”
Levy brings up Elon Musk taking over Twitter and his apparent crusade to bring free speech back to the site: “What couldn’t you say that you think you can say now that you think is funny? Give me an example. Do you wanna just type the N-word over and over again? Is that funny? Like, Dane Cook is a professional comedian. You’re telling me he couldn’t be funny on Twitter until Elon Musk bought the stupid site?”
The two Andys also discuss why Richter didn’t vote for Bernie Sanders, if he regrets that decision now, and why he’s OK being called Conan’s “sidekick.”
“I don’t need to be number one,” he says.
Plus! A deep dive into his affection for the Twitter porn bots that spam his account.
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