O
n every street corner, there seems to be lurking a nosy Karen searching for something to offend her, and all over the internet virtue-signaling millennials trolling for their next prey to be burned at the stake of political correctness. In the crosshairs, you find the most vulnerable in this current era of insufferable outward piety and self-aggrandizement: the comic. The comic, whose job has forever been to make people laugh at human foibles and cast a cynical eye toward people and institutions of power, is fast becoming an endangered species … at least the funny ones, that is. To tell a good joke is to risk offending, and today, offending someone can be a capital offense. Enter Gilbert Gottfried – appearing at The Reilly Arts Center for a standup performance on Nov. 6 – who takes the ultimate risk every time he speaks into the microphone with his trademark voice that is at the same time shrill, gravelly and grating, yet rhythmic in its delivery. His act goes into the realm of blue, and long ago he quit trying
to tame it for the sake of insecure audiences. “George Carlin once said, ‘it’s the duty of every comedian to find out where the line is crossed and deliberately cross over it,’” said Gottfried, whose prolific career has taken him from stand-up stages to Saturday Night Live, to Comedy Central Celebrity Roast star, to voice actor perhaps known best for his roles as Iago in the movie “Aladdin” and as the Aflac duck of commercial fame. He once poked fun at Pam Anderson’s southerly private region during a roast of David Hasselhoff, saying that it “moved around like those inflatable men at the car lots,” but the only repercussion to that was Anderson whispering in his ear, “I hate you.” Other times, his “deliberate crossing of the line” cost him his job, and that doesn’t even include his firing at the hands of Donald Trump on “Celebrity Apprentice.” His jokes following the 2011 tsunami in Japan started a Twitter firestorm that eventually led to his firing from Aflac. “I didn’t know it at the time that Aflac did about 80 percent of their business in Japan,” said Gottfried, who claims he read
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d e i r f t t o G rt e b l i G n a i Comed fearless comedy brings his cala show to O N REESE
O BY CARLT
Photo courtesy of Dara Gottfried
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