I didn’t find Bill Burr’s SNL monologue funny, and Twitter lost its shit

Skylar Baker-Jordan
7 min readOct 13, 2020
Photo: SNL/LA Times

I had never heard of Bill Burr before this weekend, when the stand-up comic and actor hosted Saturday Night Live. I don’t think that is particularly important information, but many of the people I outraged enough to call me a “bitch,” a “cunt,” or “limp wristed” seemed to think it is So, hands up, I don’t know who Bill Burr is beyond what I saw on SNL.

Why were these people so angry they felt compelled to call me names? Well, I committed the heinous crime of tweeting that I did not like Burr’s monologue:

I’m an opinion writer and gay man on the internet, so I’m used to people sharing their disdain for my views and for me more personally. But the deluge of anger and hate I received following that tweet was unexpected and of such a volume that I feel compelled to explain exactly why Burr’s monologue was unfunny to me, because it is clear that many people did not see the same problems I saw.

First, let’s clear something up. I never called for Burr to be “cancelled.” In fact, one time I did slightly chuckle at Burr’s monologue was when he blasted cancel culture, poking fun at those trying to cancel the long-dead John Wayne.

Bill Burr, however, is not dead. He is very much alive. That still does not mean I want him cancelled. I acknowledged that people like him and think he is funny. Based on that monologue, I am simply not one of them. Saying so is an opinion, not a cancellation. In fact, I was very careful not to say “Bill Burr is misogynistic,” because I don’t know him. As I copped to earlier, I’d never heard of him before this. For all I know, he just had a bad set. I criticised the monologue, not the man. I try not to judge people from my first encounter.

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Skylar Baker-Jordan

Skylar Baker-Jordan has been writing about UK and US politics and culture for more than a decade. His work has appeared at The Independent, Salon, and elsewhere