Thursday, April 16, 2015

Maniac Comedian Admits She Made Up a Wage-Gap Story,

Katherine Timpf has the story:
Comedian Sarah Silverman admitted that a story she told about wage discrimination (in which she even went so far as to call out a specific employer by name) was a lie — and then said people who might consider her lie a reason to question the movement she was supporting were “maniacs.”

In an April 6 wage-discrimination-activism video for Levo League, Silverman accused New York Comedy Club owner Al Martin of having paid her less than a male comic for doing the same work:

“I was out with my friend Todd Barry and we were doing sets around town together, and I was pretty well-known already, and we both did back-to-back 15-minute sets at this club, the New York Comedy Club, and he paid me 10 bucks . . . and we were outside talking and Todd somehow brought up that he, you know, mentioned that he got 60 bucks,” she said.

“So I went back inside and I asked the owner Al Martin and I said, ‘Al, why did you pay me $10 and you paid Todd Barry $60?’ And he, it was so perfect,” Silverman continued, laughing. “He goes, ‘Oh, did you want a $60 spot?’ It was symbolic, I didn’t need $60, but, you know it was pretty s****y.” Wow! “Pretty s****y” indeed! Just one problem: That didn’t actually happen.

As Martin explained to PJ Media on Tuesday, Barry’s set was a booked job, while Silverman’s was just a last-minute guest spot (read: expected to be unpaid regardless of gender) that he let her have as a favor — and the $10 was cab fare he gave her just to be extra nice.

In other words: He definitely didn’t pay her less for the same job, because the set she did that night wasn’t even a job at all.

In a statement to Salon, Silverman admitted that she had made the whole thing up and apologized to Martin: “My regret is that I mentioned Al by name — it should have been a nameless, faceless anecdote and he has always been lovely to me,” she said..
-RW

(ht Jay Stephenson)

3 comments:

  1. never let the truth get in the way of your bias, i guess.

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  2. Check out the comments on this story in Salon. Even the readers of Salon get that the wage gap is BS. That's encouraging. http://www.salon.com/2015/04/14/exclusive_sarah_silverman_apologizes_for_wage_gap_anecdote_feel_free_to_aim_your_vitriol_at_me_but_leave_this_issue_of_working_women_out_of_it_k/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hopefully she gets sued and becomes his slave for the remainder of her miserable feminist life.

    ReplyDelete