Once you have conquered the worlds of British comedy and Hollywood like Ricky Gervais has, there’s only one obvious route to go down – it’s time to do battle with those defending learning disability charities. And in the past week, it’s game on! David versus Goliath, and by goodness those dastardly campaigners are going to get it in the neck...
Taking to Twitter with gusto in the past month, Gervais been singled out for his repeated use of the word ‘mong’, which according to his clarification he believes to simply mean ‘idiot’ nowadays.
This has apparently surprised the parents and other carers of those with learning disabilities, whose experiences differ somewhat from that of a childless multimillionaire who – despite the fantastic success which he constantly reminds everyone of – evidently keeps his ear almost obsessively to the ground to ascertain (and consequently be able to define for us) the meaning behind the use of any insult in modern day Britain.
Individuals such as (highly envious) ‘comedian’ Richard Herring – not as famous as Gervais at the moment so therefore not nearly so amazing – have said that he should stop using the word as, for one thing, it helps perpetuate a stereotype. (For years Herring has used his shows to help raise funds for cerebral palsy charity
Scope, which you might think makes him relatively much more qualified to speak about this issue. However, that would be to ignore how much of a genius Gervais is.)
Plus, given the experience of others who still hear it repeatedly used in the most negative sense, why not just use the word ‘idiot’ instead, which nowadays isn’t loaded? Seems a simple solution, doesn’t it? But marvellous minds such as Gervais’s can find better ways of navigating the problem, so let’s forget the easy route. That’d just be boring, what with everyone simply being left a bit happier off, with time to concentrate on other pressing matters. No, the laugh-maestro has a more cunning plan!
Other more cowardly types than our self-anointed hero might have thought: “I don’t find it offensive myself, but there do seem to be a great deal of sensible people who have taken issue with the word, so perhaps best to lay off.
“That’d certainly be better than rousing many of my 400,000-odd Twitter followers into a frothing fury of self-righteousness. Imagine, some of them might then gang up to bully my opponents in a disgusting manner using the word mong alongside blatantly disablist language while I wash my hands of their subsequent actions (apart from subsequently declaring I have the best fans in the world). How ironic would that be?”
But no, the brave crusader Gervais no doubt already anticipated all this and took a higher path than the weaker-minded might choose. He decided that if there’s a battle to be fought, it’s against those purporting to stand up for disabled rights right
here and
now. Simply tackling the rich and powerful would simply be too easy for this virtuoso of the verbal putdown (not least since he has quite a few of them on speed dial nowadays).
Nope, Gervais has brilliantly perceived how the fight for the right for comedians to be offensive has been appropriated by those who think that humour shall automatically arise from finding the weakest members of society and then pointing and sneering at them. Get a grip, those who are this week taking a stand against him – of
course he realises that attempting to normalise mong as an insult will lead to an increase in its use against those very members of society who it apparently doesn’t specifically refer to anymore. Forget any collateral damage, the man has bigger fish to fry! (Gee, you people and your petty concerns.)
This is meta-Gervais, the one who started by being a prick – in character - on
The 11 O’Clock Show, and who – having noted the current economic protests – is again subverting his own ‘real-life’ persona to align himself to those 1% of ridiculously prosperous idiots who feel such a grand sense of self-entitlement that they’ve almost wrecked the world’s economy and moral compass as a result. What better way to illustrate the ridiculous amount of clout that is conferred on the rich and powerful than by changing
the very meaning of a word, just because one person with 400,000+ Twitter followers has deigned it to be so? Checkmate!
It’s an Andy Kaufman manoeuvre, one unsurpassed in terms of how much of a complete twerp Gervais is willing to make himself look, all for the benefit of the ultimate punchline. Why else would he
pull this sort of face and say: “Please retweet this to every mong you know and tell them to shut the f*** up”? Or Tweet about the “humourless PC brigade” as though he’s left his keyboard to Jim Davidson while nipping out to the toilet? Or most hilariously of all write: “Dear fans don't give the haters any attention. Those people aren't really offended by the things I say - they are offended by my success.” (Ho ho, my sides…)
Yep, at some point – probably once PM David Cameron jokingly calls Sir Ricky a mong during the royal garden party to celebrate his knighthood – our hero of the hour is going to reveal all, exposing the terminal absurdity of human existence once and for all, while simultaneously providing a moment of true gut-busting hilarity to alleviate the utter desperateness of the normal Joe’s hopeless situation. As well as effecting global change, it’ll be even zanier and more acutely observed than that wacky dance he did in
The Office. What a guy! What a brave, brave guy
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Originally Posted by WELLY 
