Comedians Apologize…For Jokes? 

As Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal famously said, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Someone should tell that to modern day comedians.

Too many apologize for their past jokes, often years after uttering them. For some, it’s Damage Control 101. The “wrong” joke, no matter how long ago it was spoken, could be a cancel-worthy affair.

Take Jimmy Fallon groveling for forgiveness during a 2020 Tonight Show episode over a 20-year-old blackface sketch. The apology came during the height of the BLM movement.

In other cases, it’s pure virtue signaling, since no one actually remembered the bad joke in question.

The latter may explain Sarah Silverman’s recent mea culpa. The far-Left comic previously got pinched by Cancel Culture when a 2007-era blackface gag cost her a movie role.

She took a rare shot at Cancel Culture while sharing that story.

“You have to ask yourself, would I want this person to be changed or do I secretly want them to stay what I deem as wrong so I can point to them as f***ed up and myself as right?”

More recently, Silverman apologized for using the n-word in previous comedy routines.

“I felt like the temperature of the world around me at the time was, ‘We are all liberal so we can say the n-word. We aren’t racist, so we can say this derogatory stuff’ … I was playing a character that was arrogant and ignorant, so I thought it was OK. Looking back, my intentions were always good, but they were f***ing ignorant.”

She’s far from alone.

Tina Fey once blasted the woke mob for policing humor. The “30 Rock” alum said she makes it a policy not to explain her jokes.

Post-George Floyd, a very different Fey yanked four “30 Rock” episodes from syndication for featuring various blackface jokes. Said episodes cannot be found on streaming or DVD platforms, according to the BBC.

Fey apologized for the “pain they have caused.” What pain? The subject came up during the BLM protests. How many people cared before…or after? Context is everything, particularly in comedy, and the episodes weren’t designed to attack or belittle black people.

Standup comedian John Mulaney isn’t known for his political musings. Yet he still circled back to apologize for a riff about the 2020 presidential election. He dared suggest it didn’t matter if an elderly Joe Biden or a slightly less elderly Donald Trump won.

“Outrage” ensued, and he backpedaled on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

“I should have said I very much want one to win over the other, and there will be improvements if one wins. I deserved backlash. I flat-out just forgot to do it… I never was like, ‘Hey, don’t you mean that one guy is worse than the other?’ And I forgot to make the joke good.”

Taylor Swift is arguably the most famous celebrity in the world, meaning she’s heard her fair share of insults, jokes and more. It’s not pretty, but it comes with the territory.

Comedienne Nikki Glaser still felt the need to apologize to Tay Tay after an old crack she made about the pop superstar resurfaced in the Swift documentary “Miss Americana.”

“She’s too skinny; it bothers me…all of her model friends, and it’s just like, c’mon!'”

Glaser called it “projection” due to her own eating disorder issues. Has she apologized to others she’s hammered with her humor since then? It’s even more ironic because her biggest career boost came when she killed it at Netflix’s “The Roast of Tom Brady” last year.

The Apology Tour isn’t reserved for stand-up comedians. The key forces behind 2007’s “Superbad” — co-star and co-writer Seth Rogen, and star Jonah Hill — have apologized for the movie’s raunchy humor.

Rogen apologized for capturing how real teenagers talk in the hit comedy.

“There are probably some jokes in ‘Superbad’ that are bordering on blatantly homophobic at times. They’re all in the voice of high school kids, who do speak like that, but I think we’d also be silly not to acknowledge that we also were, to some degree, glamorizing that type of language in a lot of ways.”

Hill piled on, blasting his own early comedies as portraits of “toxic masculinity.”

“I love those films, but I also think that if you look back at those films, a lot of what they’re showing is major bro comedy, and bro masculinity.”

He said he wanted his newer films to educate viewers about the “problematic behavior” highlighted in these box office hits.

Not every comic performer feels this way. Monty Python alum John Cleese isn’t eager to apologize for his past gags, and he occasionally does so with tongue firmly in cheek to make his point.

Podcasting giant Adam Carolla is even more firm in his “no apology” mantra.

The “Mr. Birchum” star defended his position in 2015 during a HuffPo conversation.

“Go find a politician or somebody who’s in charge and poke a popsicle stick up their butt…I’m a comedian. I’m done apologizing, I really am…And by the way, everyone who apologizes is faking it. They’re only doing it because they’re gonna get canned.”

He later started his book, “Everything Reminds Me of Something: Advice, Answers … but No Apologies“ with this promise.

“I’m not going to apologize. S****y times call for s****y language.”

And, bless his heart, 98-year-old Mel Brooks has yet to apologize for “The Producers” and its pro-Hitler ditty, “Springtime for Hitler.”

Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at HollywoodInToto.com.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.