Leary: ‘We have never censored’ performers
The charity comedy night where Wanda Sykes was booed for anti-Trump jibes was billed as a night of “post-election levity,” but host Denis Leary said no one was advised to steer clear of politics.
“For 22 years we have never censored any performer at Comics Come Home. Each comedian is free to speak their mind. This has resulted in the longest running stand up charity event in America,” Leary said in a statement yesterday about the Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care.
Sykes, 52, flipped off the crowd as she left the stage at TD Garden Saturday night after she was booed for calling Presidentelect Donald Trump “a racist, sexist, homophobic president.”
“Even this past weekend, 6 of the 8 comics received big laughs and rapturous applause,” Worcesterborn actor and comic Leary said in his statement. “Boston audiences are the best in the country and their support of The Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care has been absolutely exceptional. We look forward to Comics Come Home 23 next November.”
The booing came after Sykes, a black lesbian, said, “I am certain this is not the first time we’ve elected a racist, sexist, homophobic president.”
Sykes also called Trump an “orange-hair orangutan.” When she ended her set, she gave the booers a raised middle finger.
“(Expletive) you, you, you, you, you. ... All of you,” she said.
Sykes yesterday declined to be interviewed. Her attorney said she’ll issue a statement on social media.
Danvers native and comic Nick DiPaolo, who voted for Trump and followed Sykes onstage, told the Herald, “She just kept digging a deeper hole for herself. It was making my blood boil. There’s a segment — and they were there last night — who don’t agree with what she was saying. It was a little too soon to take such a stance.
“You have to be funny first,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s just preaching. Last night, she just took the wrong angle.”
DiPaolo, who has worked with Sykes and likes her, said he opened with, “I’m a straight white guy and I’m ecstatic about how the election went.” But he acknowledged tossing an ethnic slur himself in the increasingly heated event, when a woman approached the stage and tried to engage him, and he called her a “Peabody Jew.”