By Katherine Timpf
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
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.
“This is also HARDLY an example of the wage gap and can
only do that very true reality a terrible disservice if I were trying to make
it one,” she said. “When I was interviewed by Levo, they asked me ‘Do you
remember a time you were paid less for the same job’ and this story, being just
that, popped into my head.”
Notice that the only thing she explicitly said she regrets
is not trying harder to not get caught. In fact, she didn’t even acknowledge
that she did a “disservice” to the movement by telling a false story — only
that it would be a disservice “if [she] were trying” to make the story an
example of the wage gap when it wasn’t one. (For the record, specifically
citing something as an example of the wage gap seems like a pretty clear
instance of trying to make it an example of the wage gap.)
Silverman ended her statement by saying that people who
might see an advocate having lied about a movement as a reason to question that
movement’s message — something I’d consider a normal response — were “maniacs.”
“To the maniacs who want to use this as a chit against
women’s issues, I ask that you please don’t,” she said. “Because that would be
super s****y.”
I guess calling people “maniacs” for criticizing a cause
could be one way to show you support it, but I can think of some better ones —
like, you know, not going out and doing something that undermines it.
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