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Sarah Silverman 2019 makes Bernie Sanders look alt-right. A cursory scroll through her Twitter feed reveals she is all but dedicating her life to be a champion for social justice.
But, the 48-year-old was not always so kum-ba-ya. Before the emergence of Cancel Culture and a world where one tweet could ruin a career, comedians especially were more fast and loose with their content. Silverman was no different.
In a recent appearance on “The Bill Simmons Podcast, Silverman revealed that she was recently fired from a movie over a photo of her in blackface that was taken on the set of The Sarah Silverman Show in 2007. In one way or the other, the photo was brought to the attention of one of the unidentified movie’s producers, and that was it.
“I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part. Then, at 11 p.m. the night before, they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode.
“I didn’t fight it,” she continued. “They hired someone else who is wonderful but who has never stuck their neck out. It was so disheartening. It just made me real, real sad because I really kind of devoted my life to making it right.”
This did not age perfectly.
Sarah Silverman in one word. #blackface pic.twitter.com/Wn16dh3zWk
— Ika Ferrer Gotić (@IkaFerrerGotic) August 12, 2019
Silverman wore blackface in the sketch as a mechanism to see if it was more difficult to be black or Jewish. The sketch was initially praised as comedic gold and Silverman even claims it helped to launch her career.
However, she previously told GQ that she deeply regrets it:
“It was like, I’m playing a character, and I know this is wrong, so I can say it. I’m clearly liberal. That was such liberal-bubble stuff, where I actually thought it was dealing with racism by using racism.”
“I don’t get joy in that anymore. It makes me feel yucky. All I can say is that I’m not that person anymore.”
Silverman told Bill Simmons that “cancel culture” has resulted in the emanation of “righteousness porn.”
“It’s like, if you’re not on board, if you say the wrong thing, if you had a tweet once, everyone is, like, throwing the first stone,” she continued. “It’s so odd. It’s a perversion. It’s really, ‘Look how righteous I am and now I’m going to press refresh all day long to see how many likes I get in my righteousness.’”
Can’t stop scrolling up and looking at how egregious that blackface is. My oh my if anyone did that today they would be publicly flogged in the (social media) streets.
[h/t Page Six]