{"id":151,"date":"2011-01-17T07:15:34","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T07:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2011\/01\/ricky-gervais-the-golden-globes-and-the-cruel-art-of-comedy.html"},"modified":"2011-01-17T07:15:34","modified_gmt":"2011-01-17T07:15:34","slug":"ricky-gervais-the-golden-globes-and-the-cruel-art-of-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2011\/01\/ricky-gervais-the-golden-globes-and-the-cruel-art-of-comedy.html","title":{"rendered":"Ricky Gervais, the Golden Globes and the cruel art of comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ricky Gervais gives a nasty spin to Golden Globes.<\/b><\/a> Not that the British comedian\/actor didn’t warn them. The producers got what they paid for. Still, he may have drawn more blood than laughs from his audience — and the laughs that he got weren’t the feel-good kind.<\/p>\n

One anonymous comment posted at Hollywood Reporter<\/a> said it best: <\/p>\n

\n

Part of it was truly humour, and some people do take
\nthemselves far too seriously…. but I have to say, that if I could, I’d tell
\nGervais–and all of you out there, that anyone professing to be dishing out
\nhumour, needs to use his or her heart once in a while. There’s humour, and then
\nthere’s mean, shallow attacks. It’s not funny if you are genuinely causing
\nsomeone to be hurt. <\/i><\/p>\n

What I do know, from long experience, is that when anyone, comic or ordinary
\nperson, deliberately sets out to cause emotional injury to a person just to get
\na larf, it’s wrong. It stops being comedy (and) is just plain bullying and
\nemotional abuse. <\/i><\/p>\n

I don’t give a damn if the man wants to trumpet his atheist attitude as an
\nexcuse for not caring. Yet, I’m agnostic, and I make fun of Christians
\nsometimes…but never in front of my Christian friends, because I care about
\nthem, and don’t want to mindlessly hurt them. <\/i><\/p>\n

You can choose to be funny and human, or a mindless vicious animal.<\/i><\/p>\n

On the plus side, It was nice to see Colin Firth honored<\/a> for his strong performance in “The King’s Speech,”<\/i> a film in which he gave a great performance. As I wrote on Friday<\/a>, Firth  also manages to keep the whole award business<\/u> in perspective. <\/p>\n

And, speaking of perspective, it was nice to see Michael Douglas on the red carpet<\/a>. He was looking good and, thank God, is reportedly cancer free. He told his interviewer that he intends to “smell the roses” <\/i>more.<\/p>\n

BTW, if you’re interested, you can check the complete list of award recipients here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ricky Gervais gives a nasty spin to Golden Globes. Not that the British comedian\/actor didn’t warn them. The producers got what they paid for. Still, he may have drawn more blood than laughs from his audience — and the laughs that he got weren’t the feel-good kind. One anonymous comment posted at Hollywood Reporter said…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,12,5,1,2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-christianity","category-current-events","category-media","category-movies","category-television"],"yoast_head":"\nRicky Gervais, the Golden Globes and the cruel art of comedy - Catholics Media and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2011\/01\/ricky-gervais-the-golden-globes-and-the-cruel-art-of-comedy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ricky Gervais, the Golden Globes and the cruel art of comedy - Catholics Media and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ricky Gervais gives a nasty spin to Golden Globes. Not that the British comedian\/actor didn’t warn them. The producers got what they paid for. Still, he may have drawn more blood than laughs from his audience — and the laughs that he got weren’t the feel-good kind. One anonymous comment posted at Hollywood Reporter said…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2011\/01\/ricky-gervais-the-golden-globes-and-the-cruel-art-of-comedy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Catholics Media and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-17T07:15:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John W. 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Kennedy","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d80\/d801bc09698c0995d9ae402b4b55ab61x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d80\/d801bc09698c0995d9ae402b4b55ab61x96.jpg","caption":"John W. Kennedy"},"description":"John W. Kennedy is the founder and Dir. of Development of The Creative Universe Entertainment\u2122, a media consultation and development company focusing on the creation, development and support of high-quality mainstream entertainment that upholds positive timeless values, including trust in God. Current projects include \"Bryant Park\" (an uplifting romantic-comedy) and \"Photo Finish\" (an award-winning sci-fi TV pilot). He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media & Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations & Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. He can be reached for writing, producing and consulting services at 516-640-1182.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/author\/jkennedy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}