Armando Iannucci is a bit of a mystery to me. With shows like The Day Today and The Thick of It, he created some of the most astute political satire of the 1990s and 2000s. And yet put him in front of a microphone now and the man will display all the political insight of a draught excluder.
Iannucci regularly pops up in the media to promote his new projects and dispense milquetoast Guardianista opinions. Trump? He’s so mad he’s beyond satire! Brexit? What a mess, eh? Now, inevitably, he’s weighed in on wokeness – and spectacularly misunderstood what it actually is.
On Newsnight last night, Iannucci was asked about wokeness and whether it led comedy writers like him to self-censor. Naturally, he pretended that this wasn’t really a thing. ‘People aren’t self-censoring themselves because they’re afraid of offending people’, he said, before burbling something about everyone ‘retreating into our positions’.
Then he performed the half-cocked judo move beloved of centrist dads when asked about left-wing identity politics.
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