Netflix Review: Karl Puschmann vs Ricky Gervais vs Dave Chappelle

Ricky Gervais’ new comedy special Armageddon is an explosive dud – Karl Puschmann

I’m sorry to report the latest victim of the culture war is Ricky Gervais. It has consumed him. And it has ruined him.

In his new comedy special Armageddon, which is streaming now on Netflix, Gervais once again wades into the trenches gung-ho with all guns blazing. But his fire is erratic and his aim wild. He rallies against the disabled, trans folk, environmentalists, millennials, the obese, the starving, and, of course, the nebulous being known as the woke.

I don’t like Karl Puschmann’s reviews much.

He is one of the few remaining writers still terrified of the woke cancel culture mob and his denunciation of comedy that challenges woke dogma is tiresome.

You get the feeling he has everything checked by the Feminist Comedy Guild to ensure no jokes are funny.

You wonder how much longer he’s going to stay at the Herald because after the total rejection of alienating identity politics, you’d expect the mainstream media to start flushing their more toxic participants in the woke culture war virtue signalling because it’s so boring and derided now.

Gervais and Chappelle have been comedians bold enough to mock the extremes of wokeness and as such their shows are always hated upon by those reviewers still being held hostage by woke social media backlash.

The good news about Gervais’ new show Armageddon is that it is very funny, the bad news is that it is no where as funny as his previous show, Supernatural.

In Armageddon, he spends too much time lecturing on why comedy can be funny and offensive and not enough time on being funny, but that doesn’t rob Armageddon of its power.  Gervais like Chappelle have been cancelled by puritan woke censors who claim their jokes against the Trans community amount to a hate crime.

This attempt to discredit the intellectual power and social commentary gold that both comedians present is driven by a belief that good satire should ‘never punch down’, but the problem with that argument is that the puritan woke censors  and their identity politics dogma IS the dominant cultural now, so critiquing the middle class woke’s virtue signalling is EXACTLY the job of comedy.

The joke from Supernatural …

They are ladies — look at their pronouns! What about this person isn’t a lady?’ “

“Well, his penis.’

‘Her penis, you fucking bigot!’

…perfectly sums up the crazy militancy and intellectual brittleness of the Woke’s demands over Trans ideology that has plagued that debate to the point where people don’t want anything to do with the toxicity and cancellation malice it inspires.

For comedians to mock that power and laugh at it is the most important thing they can do right now and that’s why the woke and their pet reviewers hate those comedians pushing that boundary now.

Chappelle’s latest Netflix special, The Dreamer, is another example of how a comedian at the peak of their abilities can still force debate. His jokes are still cracking and he demands creative space to speak his comedy.

He details the slap of Chris Rock and his own attack by a Queer activist, and reminisces about how fortunate his 25 years in comedy has been.

They are both very funny shows and proof positive that the woke have lost the culture war.

The glum middle class activists furious that jokes are made about their faith makes the comedy even funnier and a reminder that their time in cultural power is waning.

Surely Karl Puschmann will be part of the first wave of redundancies at NZME this year?

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