One of the right-wing tabloid rags, which I won’t name let alone link to, is apparently reporting that Michael Palin has said that a lot of what was created in Monty Python would not be tolerated today. The rag complains that characters like Gumby could not be tolerated today due to cancel culture, and seems to claim that Palin agrees with them. I find that very ironic, I must say. Of course, social attitudes have come a long way since Monty Python’s Flying Circus first aired, and things like overt discrimination and the stereotyping of minorities are frowned on a lot more. However, surely that is to be welcomed because it shows that society is becoming much more tolerant and understanding of previously unrepresented and mocked people. Perhaps a character like Mr. Gumby, a stereotype of a person with learning difficulties if ever there was one, would indeed be frowned upon today, but that is because we have much more understanding of learning difficulties, and know they are nothing to be laughed at.

What I find perverse, though, is the way the tabloid rag in question tried to use this story to feed it’s right-wing agenda: to them, this was yet another example of contemporary ‘woke’ cancel culture trying to prevent people from laughing. The irony is, such right-wing idiocy was the very thing Python set out to mock in the first place. The political right seems to want to claim classic comedy like Python as it’s own, moaning that it wouldn’t be permitted any more, when in fact it was inherently progressive and leftist: Python was all about making fun of things like class, tradition and religion, things which the rag in question vehemently defends. Thus the political right is trying to usurp Python, claiming it for itself, twisting it so that it seems to fit their reactionary, intolerant agenda, but that is completely misrepresenting what Python was all about.

While it is true that some of what we saw in python is a little dated and might rightly be frowned upon if it was produced these days, that does not mean it was in any way right wing. It should not be hijacked by the very people Monty Python took the piss out of, to boost their reactionary agenda.