The Five Defends Chris Rock’s 9/11 Jokes: We’re Not the ‘Comedy Police’

Last week, Fox News The Five surprised viewers by defending Bill Maher’s right to free speech against UC Berkeley students who want him to be disinvited the speak at next month’s commencement ceremony. And today, they did it again, this time refusing to condemn jokes made by Chris Rock about the Boston Marathon bombing and 9/11 on Saturday Night Live.

Rock took some heat on social media as well as from some other Fox News hosts for wringing comedy out of those tragedies. But when given the chance to weigh in Monday, the hosts of The Five unanimously defended Rock’s freedom to joke with impunity.

“At no point during that did he make light of any of the victims and I think jokes about such event are necessary to heal and move on,” Greg Gutfeld said. He praised Rock for being “honest” about America’s reaction to those events and said, “We should never become comedy police.”

The rest of the show’s hosts mostly agreed with Gutfeld, including Eric Bolling, who was in the World Trade Center on the morning of the attacks. “If anyone’s sensitive about it, I am,” he said. “But his intent didn’t seem to be to belittle or hurt anyone, his intent was to be funny and frankly he was funny.”

But while everyone could agree that Rock deserves a “break” for his monologue, Gutfeld said he found it harder to laugh at a sketch about ISIS presenting their brand to Shark Tank that aired later in the show. “You have to ignore the fact that there are people being raped and murdered this week,” he said, “and that’s a little hard for a lot of people to do.”

Watch video below, via Fox News:

And watch Rock’s full monologue below, via NBC:

[Photo via screengrab]

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