Upon the election of Donald Trump, Elon Musk made comedy legal once again, freeing us of all the woke comedy that was preventing us from enjoying a cage match on the White House lawn. But simply changing the laws hasn’t made an immediate impact. Sure, there’s a new Jackass movie on the way, the first since the dark ages of 2022, a new Scary Movie starring Doofy, a spin-off of The Office called The Paper, one of the highest rated seasons of South Park in years, and a Best Picture-winner that uses the R-word as a punchline, something that Widow’s Bay and I Love Boosters also felt compelled to do as well. Nevertheless, Rainn Wilson bent Fox News’ eager and sympathetic ear to say political correctness is keeping us from a show about a funny workplace led by a hapless boss.
Despite the show’s continued success as a juggernaut on streaming, where Peacock released re-edited, supersized versions of a show that NBC would never in a thousand years want to make today, Wilson says, “I do feel like you couldn’t make The Office today. I think that would be too hard to be as politically incorrect as the show was […] We milked that for a lot of great, really inappropriate stuff. But even with the fact that painting that character as just an idiot, I don’t think you could get away with it today.”
Appearing in what looks like a Project Veritas gotcha video, Wilson continues, “I think there has been a bias in the media, towards more, what we call, liberal policies.” Wilson uses this as a jumping-off point into the controversies surrounding Maine Democratic senatorial candidate Graham Platner, who survived having a Nazi tattoo and several abuse allegations to win his recent primary. The takeaway from that, we guess, is that the media is in the tank for Democratic Socialists and not that voters no longer find Nazis a dealbreaker.
More to the point: NBC would love another hit show like The Office. NBC would love one so much that it just created a spin-off called The Paper. Meanwhile, versions of The Office premiered in Mexico and South Africa this year. And, speaking of milking, few ensembles have milked a sitcom quite like the cast of The Office. Between the podcasts, commercials, and Cameo videos, Oscar, Kevin, and Angela have done just fine at finding people still willing to tolerate Michael Scott’s dangerously anti-woke behavior for their enjoyment. Nevertheless, members of the cast continue to repeat this old chestnut as if it were written in stone. The president is Donald Trump, they fired Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes, and the Wayans brothers had the biggest movie in the world last week. We no longer live in a “they couldn’t make that anymore because of woke” world. We simply live in one where it’s cheaper to make a reality show or a podcast than a sitcom.
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