Bill Burr was greeted by a tough room after mocking the #MeToo Movement during an interview with Conan O’Brien. He began by reminiscing about the good old days when his father threw a glass of milk in his brother’s face for talking back to their mother then left the mess for her to clean up.
“The roles were defined back then,” he explained. “Now the guy has to throw the milk. He has to clean it up while telling his wife she’s brave for just sitting there.”
The audience audibly gasped at the politically incorrect joke but the fearless comedian was undeterred.
“Women are so overrated,” he insisted. “We went from not listening to them to now it’s just ridiculous. Like that believe women. Like all of them? How bout eighty five percent. I’ll give you eighty seven percent. All right? But that last thirteen percent that keys your car, lights your shit on fire and puts a family pet in a pot of stew.”
Burr likely didn’t win over a lot of women by comparing some of them to Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction. He went on to criticize the movie Monster for sympathetically portraying Charlize Theron’s character, a prostitute who goes a killing spree targeting men after she’s sexually assaulted.
“Do they ever take responsibility for their actions?” he asked. “Even when they’re murdering people, it’s somehow our fault.”
Punchline
The message wasn’t one of misogyny but rather equality. Burr says he’s opposed to frontier justice on social media, instead he believes in a crazy little thing called due process. He finally won over the crowd after pointing out they were looking at him like he’d just joined ISIS. However, their woos were too little too late. Conan assured him that they would digitally add woos in post.
Burr called his wife, Nia Hill, a saint for putting up with him but in the same breath said she knew who she was marrying.
“If I could just fix my fucking temper, my wife she’s have nothing on me,” he insisted. “I work my ass off and make a great living. I like doing the dishes. I’m a great dad. All she has on me is my overall vibe.”
Conan sarcastically reiterated, “All she has on you is your overall personality and vibe. The essence of who you are is the only thing.”
As seen on TV
Judging by his appearance on the HBO series Crashing, Burr won’t be apologizing to anyone offended. The episode stars Burr and Artie Lange in a Q&A with Joy Behar, who asks the controversial comedians where’s the line.
“I don’t think there is a line,” he replies. “I mean, it’s an art form.”
He later finds the line when the naive protagonist, Pete Holmes, uploads a video of Burr telling an abortion joke at a comedy club — you know, the intended audience. The out of context clip is immediately jumped on by the women’s website Jezebel. Burr takes the resulting social media boycott in stride. He insists that the contrived controversy will blow over the second the Kardashians are back in the news. Words to live by.
