Woody Harrelson took a jab on the jab — and revealed that much of the left still views COVID vaccines not as a medical advancement but as a non secular virtue.
While hosting SNL last weekend, Harrelson launched into a meandering monologue where he talked about getting blazed in Central Park just before the pandemic and reading an outrageous movie script.
“So, the movie goes like this,” Harrelson said. “The most important drug cartels on this planet get together and buy up all of the media and all of the politicians and force all of the people on this planet to remain locked of their homes, and folks can only come out in the event that they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them again and again.”
He added, “I threw the script away. I mean, who was going to consider that crazy idea? Being forced to do drugs? I try this voluntarily all day long.”
Predictably, the blowback was swift, with nearly every ensuing news story proclaiming Harrelson was spreading anti-vax conspiracy theories. Outrage spread on Twitter and a Vanity Fair critic opined: “Taking the stage to drift conspiracy theories disguised as provocative humor is each intellectually dishonest and tedious.”
But perhaps the previous “Cheers” star had it coming. In any case, he made a joke about Our Lady of Pfizer.
And through Lent, of all seasons.
Everyone knows the one approved vax humor is a jazzy dance number with human syringes twirling around Stephen Colbert.
Harrelson — who was good as rubber-handed Roy Munson in “Kingpin” and most recently playing a hyperbolic version of himself in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” — can and ought to be judged on the standard of the joke.
Perhaps his crack doesn’t belong within the pantheon of yuk yuks, nevertheless it was not crazy or dangerous rhetoric. The one danger here is popping Big Pharma and COVID mandates into sacred cows.
In keeping with the commandments set forth by the sensitivity police, comedy should at all times punch up, never down.
I feel the multibillion-dollar corporations that provide COVID vaccines, and our government, whether Republican or Democrat, fit that bill.
But joking or questioning the official party line gets you called an antivaxxer or a conspiracy trafficker. Just ask Jon Stewart, who last yr presented a hilarious and very logical theory that the virus was indeed from the Wuhan lab. He was mocked and subject to a torrent of backlash from his once adoring progressive cheering section.
This time last yr, the powerful Hulu series “Dopesick” was an awards show darling. The show, based on the investigative book of the identical name, told the story of how Purdue pharma — in concert with the FDA and a few media — were in a position to make oxycontin a mainstay of the agricultural American weight loss program.
No, I’m not comparing opioids to the COVID vaccine, but slightly pointing to an odd hypocrisy.
We are able to reflect on how we let a drug company run roughshod over whole swathes of the country and rake in billions of dollars in the method, yet we’re not allowed to query certain pharma corporations, unions, government agencies or mandates during this unprecedented time in our nation’s history.
Why do these entities now deserve immunity from scrutiny?
How did we turn out to be so incurious and docile?
As more evidence emerges about mask mandates, the likely origins of COVID and the general effectiveness of COVID vaccines, it’s time to open the ground to commonsense dialogue. And yes, a couple of jokes.
The day of his SNL monologue, Harrelson clarified his position, calling for an end to the showbiz industry’s outdated COVID protocols in an interview with the Recent York Times. “It’s not fair to the crews. I don’t should wear the mask. Why should they? Why should they should be vaccinated? How’s that lower than the person,” he said. During Sunday’s SAG Awards, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher echoed an analogous sentiment for the industry, saying it’s time to finish its “bulls — t” mandates.
COVID exists. It’s something we’ve got to live with. And going forward with this slightly unsavory — and yes, in a small variety of cases, deadly — interloper, we’ve got to acknowledge certain truths about mitigation. But we will’t let ideology trump our desire to search out some consensus.
Harrelson has sparked not only a doobie, but a sound conversation — and even perhaps a change in his own industry.
Not bad for a stoner “redneck hippie.”
