The One Video That Should Shame Woke Hollywood (But Won’t)
Comedian Ryan Long strikes again, shredding La La Land for its cozy China ties
There’s a reason corporate comedy is almost indistinguishable from a Democratic Super PAC.
Satire stings.
At its best, political humor leaves a mark on the culture at large. Just ask Sarah Palin, whose national emergence took a hit from Tina Fey’s spot-on impression during the 2008 presidential campaign.
In short, satire is no laughing matter in the 21st century. And liberals act accordingly, protecting favored politicians while doubling down on those with an “R” before their names.
It’s why liberal forces, from The New York Times to Facebook, are trying to kneecap The Babylon Bee, one of the Right’s most effective humor platforms. It also explains why no streamers will develop a right-of-center talk show to take on the Colberts and Kimmels of the world.
Every few months a new late night show enters the arena, each as uniformly liberal as the last. A right-leaning should could clean up (as Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” is doing in a similar format), but they’d rather leave money on the proverbial table.
Which brings us to Ryan Long.
The apolitical comic skewers the woke elite on a regular basis, both with his cutting comedy videos and his essential “Boyscast” show.
Long smacks targets all but ignored by elite comedians. You won’t find Jimmy Kimmel skewering woke hypocrisies, but Long and his comedy pals do so with gusto. His “When Wokes and Racists Actually Agree on Everything” clip unofficially put him on the comedy map stateside.
He regularly produces videos that go viral for all the right reasons. And, along the way, Big Tech tries to silence him for telling jokes he’s not supposed to tell.
His latest video, though, takes direct aim at Hollywood hypocrisy. That’s a sizable target, but Long offers a hyper-focused rebuke that should make industry suits shudder.
Long isn’t mocking Hollywood’s hunger for reboots, remakes and sequels. Or how the glitterati promote Climate Change one moment, then ride their massive yachts the next.
Instead, his latest video takes down liberal Hollywood for kissing up to China in between nonstop virtue signaling.
Long plays an editor who slices and dices films for the Chinese market. If that means erasing a same-sex buss or reference to Taiwan, so be it. Hollywood activism ends where Chinese cash begins.
One could argue Hollywood’s Chinese hypocrisy is low-hanging fruit. So why aren’t any mainstream comedians pounding the industry on that basis?
Long doesn’t hesitate to do just that, and with a satirist’s eye for dishonesty.
Mainstream media outlets occasionally poke Hollywood for bending to China’s whims, but these random reports lack urgency. No entertainment reporter, to this site’s knowledge, has directly questioned activist stars like Mark Ruffalo or Scarlett Johansson for their silence on China’s human rights abuses. Nor will they do the same to Disney’s ex-CEO, Bob Iger, or new leader, Bob Chapek.
The media covered “F9” star John Cena’s embarrassing apology video to China, a meal culpa for calling Taiwan a country. Reporters didn’t follow up by connecting the faux woke dots.
It’s not difficult – how could a progressive industry like Hollywood align with a country running literal concentration camps?
It’s an inconvenient question no star wants to answer, and few reporters are willing to ask it.
That leaves it up to new media comics like Long to do the heavy lifting, making us laugh and think in the process.