Now it can be told...by the sniveling cowards who complied. 

As part of the vibe shift since Trump's election, all sorts of celebrities are opening up about how they gave in to pressure to maintain the elite narrative that Joe Biden was fine, and Kamala Harris was a joyful warrior who was running against "weird" Hitlerian candidates who were determined to execute dissenters and set up concentration camps. 

Not that anybody has put it that way, of course, but you get the idea. Cultural figures, especially comedians, are musing these days about the peer pressure that forced them to pretend that the Democrats were demigods and the Republicans demons, even if they were a bit skeptical at times. 

Jim Gaffigan, who has been a vociferous and occasionally nasty critic of Trump over the years, now expresses regret that he offended so many people along the way. I think that some of that regret may be that he lost fans, but I also believe that he was genuinely being self-reflective. After all, it's not like he has been Kathy Griffin-ed, nor should he have been. He was intemperate but not violently disgusting, and his commentary on Twitter was pretty ordinary for the platform. 

In other words, he was wrong, nasty, and over the top, but that is kinda what Twitter encourages. I cringed at his outbursts, but wasn't enraged. Pretty normal anti-Trump stuff. 

Interesting trend of comedians getting 'sudden courage' whilst having revisionist history about their own actions the last 4 years so they can avoid accountability
Lenny Bruce would have been ashamed https://t.co/Cw0OdTxypr

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) January 8, 2025

What is striking is not the regret being expressed by comics but their admission that so many kept silent due to peer pressure. Liberal figures in entertainment are typically liberal, and conservatives or even silent moderates stand out like a sore thumb, but what has happened over the past few years is something different that liberals being outspokenly liberal. 

A thread on brave comedy in the moment:https://t.co/HosaJu4Bus

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) January 8, 2025

Comedy used to be countercultural and prided itself on being the province of the brave truth-teller. This was always a flex--at the very least, there was a lot of groupthink. But the hero worship of Lenny Bruce and the outrageousness of George Carlin or Norm Macdonald were seen as the height of the comic arts. Eddie Murphey and especially Richard Pryor were not known for shying away from controversy. One of the funniest SNL skits ever was Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase exchanging racial slurs. 

Gaffigan is by no means the worst of the bunch (and he is among the funnier comics out there), and he was no Robert DrefeNiro, so his about face is not that interesting to me even as an example of hypocrisy. Rather, his admission that the code of silence on Democrat flaws and the expectation that he would be a loyal soldier for the establishment is what stands out. 

Most of these celebrities are not co-conspirators with the people running the show--they are, in general, too stupid and disposable for that to be the case. They are, instead, like the old Pravda newsreaders: they say what they are told, or keep silent when it is convenient to do so. That is how the game has been played. 

The vibe shift is part of the Trump Effect: his victory has opened the floodgates for people who were queasy about their role in the play to say what they were thinking. I think this is true of Mark Zuckerberg, who I actually believe was kowtowing to the Establishment to keep his cushy spot in the liberal ecosystem. 

Even Justine Bateman, who has come out swinging after Trump's victory, is implicitly admitting that the social pressure to conform changed her behavior during the Trump years. She has been screamingly funny and openly contemptuous of the social pressure of late, but she also held back before Trump's victory because the alternative was career suicide. 

Decompressing from walking on eggshells for the past four years.

— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) November 8, 2024

I don't blame her. Her career was on the line and she never participated in the hoaxes. She, as she said, "walked on eggshells." Most of us have done that throughout the years on some issue or another. How many pushed back on diversity trainings in corporations when their job was on the line? I don't blame people for gritting their teeth to keep food on the table

But many of the people in the industry were ready to join the cancel mobs, and those people I blame. They were Capos, and the Capos kept the rest in line. 

They deserve all the scorn we can heap on them.