Chelsea Handler Has A Pride Problem

Comedy is a spiritual art form. I mean that seriously.

When a joke lands and one person gets offended, something is being protected.

A wound. A status. A version of themselves they cannot afford to have touched. The offence is the alarm going off around the thing they are guarding.

C.S. Lewis worked out what that thing usually is. He called it the great sin.

Pride.

C.S. Lewis ranked pride above every other vice. He called it “the complete anti-God state of mind.”

Greed, lust, anger, drunkenness, he treated all of those as small by comparison.

Every other vice can still bring people together. You find warmth and jokes and friendship among lustful people and drunk people. Pride can do none of that.

Pride is competitive in its nature. It only feels like anything when it is beating someone else. So pride always ends in division.

Now hold that idea against comedy.

Comedy is a spiritual art form. I mean that seriously.

A great joke walks straight up to the ego and flicks it. It punctures the powerful and refuses to treat anyone as too sacred to touch.

It reminds us we are not God.

When a joke targets your pride, laughter is the ego agreeing to be small for a second.

It is grace, expressed as a reflex.

The prideful response is to reach for control.

When a joke gets too close, pride tries to take command of the room. It decides that it, and it alone, gets to rule what may be said and what may be laughed at.

Call it sensitivity if you like. It is a bid for dominion over other people.

It arrives in two costumes.

The first is the bully. The bully uses offence as a weapon.

Say the wrong thing and you will be named and made an example of. The point is fear. Beat enough people into silence and the room starts to talk and joke the way the bully prefers.

The second is the victim. The victim uses offence as a shield.

They demand a level of protection no one else in the room receives. They call it fairness. What they are actually asking for is to be treated as untouchable.

Both costumes are worn by the same vice. Both are an attempt to control how other people speak and think. Both are pride. And pride, as C.S. Lewis warned, is the most spiritually dangerous place a person can be.

Being offended is the absence of grace. And without grace, we are left with war and violence.

Chelsea Handler has gone on a press tour expressing how offended she was at Kevin Hart’s roast.

Her reaction was analysed perfectly by comedian Lewis Spears on his YouTube channel, and so I reached out and asked him to do a guest post about it on The Black Hoody.

I’m thrilled that he agreed.

Lewis is a very talented comedian on the come up, I love his YouTube channel. You can also subscribe to his Substack.

I hope you enjoy his take on Chelsea Handler at Kevin Hart’s roast as much as I did below.

Chelsea Handler has a problem.

The comedy environment has changed and she’s being left behind.

The Roast of Kevin Hart aired on Netflix this month. Chelsea Handler appeared as a roaster with some very strong material and an obvious disdain for her fellow roasters.

Where seemingly everyone else was there to have fun and show love (other than perhaps Kat Williams) Chelsea was and is still upset about some of the jokes that other comedians told and seemed to be there to take a moral stand against some of the other comics.

The two she singled out as going too far, as well as being “gross” and “lazy” were Shane Gillis and Tony Hinchcliffe.

With Gillis being called out for joking about fellow roaster Sheryl Underwoods husband who tragically died by suicide in 1990.

“It’s just everything we know: that they’re racist, that they’re bigots, that they’re sexist,” Handler said. “That they think they’re invincible.” - Chelsea Handler on Shane Gillis & Tony Hinchcliffe

“I found them making fun of Sheryl Underwood’s dead husband who committed suicide [gross],” Handler said. “If she says she’s fine with that, she’s fine with that. I wasn’t fine with that. I thought that was disgusting, too.”

She added, “There was so much disgustingness. I knew it was going to be such a gross vibe that I would be able to elevate it, no problem. … Kevin didn’t deserve that. He deserved an elevated roast.”

Embarrassingly for Chelsea, at the same time she was calling out Shane for making light of Sheryl Underwoods personal tragedy, Underwood herself appeared on Gillis’ podcast and explicitly thanked him for the jokes that Chelsea was floored by, saying that jokes about violent, terrible tragedies, if told with love and care can be a healing and cathartic experience.

“A lot of people felt bad for me because they were talking about my husband’s suicide. But those jokes were written so well that they made me laugh. I believe the line is the intention of the comedian and the construction of the joke.” - Cheryl Underwood to Netflix

As someone who has personally had their life touched by violent tragedy, humour really is one of the only things that can break through the terrible cloud of grief, horror and despair of having someone ripped away from the world before their time.

There is nothing more affirming than another person being comfortable enough with the pain you carry to take the piss out of it.

When done well and with love, an “inappropriate” joke can be incredibly validating and dare I say it, essential to the healing process.

There aren’t many things more exhausting than a third party so scared of your grief that they insist laughter and irreverence should not come near it.

Chelsea Handler is rightfully getting blasted online for these lame, language policing takes which only a few years ago likely would have been met with applause, pitchforks and a mob rallying behind her.

But I believe that comedy audiences have become wiser and care much more about a persons actions than their words.

No real comedy fan who understands the art form is watching The Roast of Kevin Hart and surprised to hear off colour jokes and boundary pushing insults.

They might however, be surprised to hear about the intimate dinner Chelsea Handler attended at Jeffrey Epstein’s house with Prince Andrew and Woody Allen.

Chelsea Handler went to dinner at Jeffrey Epstein’s house in 2010. Look it up, there’s articles. It wasn’t like a big party, there were like seven people there. It was like Prince Andrew and Woody Allen were there.” - Shane Gillis introducing Handler

The Glass House

It’s hard to paint Shane Gillis, Tony Hinchcliffe and the Austin podcast crowd as a sinister Illuminati of problematic string-pullers whose work harms women when you’ve had dinner with Prince Andrew and Woody Allen at Epstein’s place.

Sure, the Austin crowd might say things you don’t like.

They might hold views you find regressive. But they haven’t trafficked children on an international level. (that we know of).

It seems clear to me that Chelsea’s reaction to her introduction and her attempts to reprimand Gillis for the best and most well received jokes that were not about her is an attempt to obfuscate and deflect from the very real dinner she had that calls into question her own character much more than a joke no matter how “problematic” it is.

At A Roast, You Roast Back

At a roast, if a joke cuts you, you respond with a better joke.

Sheryl Underwood ditched her teleprompter on the night and improvised her whole set in response. She crushed.

By all accounts she’s opened herself up to an entirely new audience who are discovering her for the first time and most importantly, buying tickets to see her.

Despite Handlers claims that Gillis and his fans are racist and sexist, a scroll through the comments on the podcast Shane and Sheryl did together makes it clear that Underwood is being embraced by an enthusiastic audience of comedy fans excited to have discovered someone new to become a fan of and support.

Handler, by comparison looks bitter and resentful. A wealthy white woman trying to prove she is an ally by tearing down her peers who, instead of responding in kind are busy supporting their fellow comics.

In response to her comments, Gillis issued the following statement to Variety:

“This is a big moment for Chelsea. I am glad she’s capitalising. Good for her. We’re all rooting for her. Anyway, come see me July 17th at the football stadium in Philly.”

— Lewis Spears