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My good friend Laurence Fox is on X/Twitter having a laugh at the expense of ‘comedian’ and clapped-out polemicist Stewart Lee.
This is what Lozza wrote about Stewypoos on Twitter:
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
— Groucho Marx’.
These words accompany a reTweet of a clip of a podcast series made by the UK’s Channel 4 News network called ‘Ways To Change The World’, which is presented by the grotesque Krishnan Guru-Murthy.
The official title of this podcast is: ‘Comedian Stewart Lee on why he won’t tour Trump’s America’. Stewart Lee, the darling of the cancel culture class, spends the entirety of this ‘Ways To Change The World’ podcast making out that he might be hoist on his own petard of trying to censor what other people say and be locked up over something he said.
You couldn’t make it up.
Lee opens the podcast by asking for internet censorship! He wants internet service providers and social media companies to adhere to a “universally agreed standard of truth and of fact checking”.
How chillingly Orwellian.
And who funds these fact checks, Mr Lee? Bill Gates?
Fact checks often seem to involve mega-wealthy donors who, in effect, pay to mark their own homework.
One such example is the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St Petersburg, Florida, United States, which is the owner of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Network. It also operates PolitiFact.
Who funds the Poynter Institute? Why Bill Gates.
To really understand Stewart Lee and his relationship to censorship, we need to rewind to the days of Covid.
The NME wrote in 2022:
“Stewart Lee is the latest artist to remove his work from Spotify in protest of Covid misinformation being spread on Joe Rogan’s podcast.”
Toby Young commented on Twitter at the time:
‘Stewart Lee has taken his “work” off Spotify because it has refused to no-platform Joe Rogan. I remember when stand up comedians were in favour of free speech. Lee is like the anti-Lenny Bruce.
Regime enforcer Stewart Lee parades himself as anti-Establishment. The guy is the opposite of real comedians such as Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks and Peter Cook.
Lee seems anti-freedom, anti-bodily autonomy and pro-censorship.
You can hear Lee’s thoughts on those concepts in the Full Disclosure podcast he did with the hideous James O’Brien during Covid.
Grovelling on all fours to the official Covid “guidance”, Lee opines that “after the first night, doing a room full of people in masks felt oddly reassuring, actually, rather than weird. Everyone had gone through the process.”
Ooh!
An alternative comedian who saw that his audience all went through the government “process” and obeyed the Covid rules to attend a public venue.
Pathetic.
On the same James O’Brien interview, Lee talks about an “anti-vax leaning audience”.
Freedom, Bill Hicks? Bodily autonomy, Bill Hicks? Perish the thought.
The plastic rebel Stewart Lee does as he’s told.
To bring things bang up to date, in his new ‘Ways To Change The World’ podcast, Lee’s appetite for censorship is unquenchable.
Lee says:
“The best thing for Western democracy now would be to say: ‘You can’t use Google. You can’t have Twitter in your country.’”
Then Lee switches to talking about cancel culture and comes out with the line:
“You can be dropped from theatres and stuff.”
What? Like when Lee’s pal comedian Jerry Sadowitz was cancelled by The Pleasance theatre in Edinburgh in 2022. Lee went all coy about that event.
Father Ted writer Graham Linehan calls Lee a “regime comedian”.
Linehan was cancelled by many people in showbusiness over his trans comments. Lee said nothing to support Linehan. Linehan has pointed out that Lee has even had the chutzpah to make out that cancel culture does not exist.
In the ‘Ways To Change The World’ podcast, Lee singles out three special people for censure: Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais and Jordan Peterson.
No kidding.
Watch your mouth Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais and Jordan Peterson!
Are you trying to be funny, Mr Lee?
Stewart Lee is a like a pro bono version of Ofcom, running about telling people to watch what they say.
The chutzpah on this guy Stewart Lee is off the scale.
Lee whines that “Trump is degrading acceptable rhetoric”.
What is “acceptable rhetoric” in a country with the First Amendment?
Comic Abi Roberts also noted Lee’s hypocrisy. She Tweeted: “Where was new free speech advocate Stewart Lee during the Covid authoritarianism – and the trans BS – when many in the arts were pilloried for even questioning these cults. He’s also stayed quiet when people have been jailed for social media posts.”
Another Tweeter called Kenny McBride Tweeted:
“It’s really cowardly of Stewart Lee not to have any care whatsoever for comedians and others who have had their livelihoods taken away for speaking the truth in his own country. It’s easy to call The Orange Man a fascist. It’s much harder to stand up for Graham Linehan.”
And then we come to the clip that Laurence Fox has ReTweeted, where Lee makes out he might be a victim of cancel culture.
Lee says:
“I would not work in the States at the moment. I would worry about them going through my jokes and my ending up spending two days locked up without my heart medication.”
There is no specific threat to Lee at all.
It’s just a play the victim act.
If we do a Stewart Lee fact check, there are no facts to support Lee’s worries.
It’s just anti-Trump spin.
Stewart Lee will get arrested for a rubbish joke no one will hear in a Chicago comedy venue. As if.
The reverse is in fact much more likely. Remember Vice-President JD Vance pointing out that there are infringements on free speech in the UK?
Someone on Twitter quoted back one of Stewart Lee’s jokes to Stewart Lee: ‘“These days you get arrested and thrown in jail if you say you’re English, don’t you?” – Stewart Lee’.
My friend Grant who quoted Lee’s joke back at him juxtaposed Lee’s ‘joke’ with the headline last week: ‘Retire police officer arrested over “thought crime” tweet’, with the subheading ‘Pensioner held after Palestinian march post on social media, with “Brexity” books in his home scrutinised’.
Arrested over “Brexity” books?
Graham Linehan commented on the arrest on Twitter:
“Amazing. And Stewart Lee has the cheek to call America fascist.”
When people are arrested over free speech issues under his nose, “comedian” Stewart Lee seems not to notice. Yet he hothouses the idea that he is some sort of free speech martyr.
And what is this about “heart medication”, Mr Lee?
Since Mr Lee wants to talk about other people’s health by way of masks and vaccines, can we ask Mr Lee when he was diagnosed with a heart condition that needs heart medication?
Was it before or after the Covid vaccine rollout, Mr Lee?
Stewypoos says he is concerned at the absence of “due process” as people are removed from America.
“Due process”? Is this myopia of Mr Lee’s a medical condition?
Lee is vocal about censorship if he thinks it might work against him. But he doesn’t care about others facing censorship.
And he is vocal about due process in relation to deportations from America.
But he is not vocal about illegal immigrants who break due process to murder and maim Americans.
Why doesn’t Lee scream from the rooftops about illegal immigrants like José Antonio Ibarra, the 26-year-old Venezuelan man who broke due process, entered the United States illegally, and went on to kill Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student?
Because these are Lee’s principles, and if you don’t like them, well, he has others.
As if all the hypocrisy dripping throughout the interview were not enough, the height of it comes at the end when Lee targets the spouse of Robert F Kennedy, Cheryl Hines.
Hines played the character Cheryl David, the wife of Larry David, on the HBO series ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ from 2000 to 2024.
Lee says: “It must be weird for Larry David because the actress who plays Cheryl is [Robert F] Kennedy’s [spouse]. The man who is dismantling what little health knowledge there is in the infrastructure of American government.”
Kennedy is the health official who was of course censured by, drum roll, Lee’s darling fact checkers throughout the whole of Covid.
Kennedy wants transparency and accountability in the vaccine debate.
This, of course, is anathema to the King of Cancel Culture Stewart Lee.
People like Lee are always desperate to play the rebel.
But they have been helping to define and defend Establishment narratives for decades.
They use mockery and contempt to punch down on the little people and to ingratiate themselves with power for their own fame and fortune.
But something seems to have changed in recent years.
The smears uttered by this sort of Establishment ‘comedian’ about people being ‘far right’ and ‘racist’ seem to no longer have the power they once used to.
You know what I think bugs Lee? It’s that the sort of people he likes threw every nasty smear they had at Donald Trump in 2024.
But the facts didn’t need ‘fact checkers’. The facts spoke for themselves.
And just look at who had the last laugh.
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