Tom Brady’s Roast Was Dirty – and Just What the Athlete Needed

Kirsten Fleming

Entertainment

By Kirsten Fleming

“The Roast of Tom Brady” was more like a raging inferno.

Aired on Netflix on Sunday, the show was filthy and vulgar. It was inappropriate and offensive. It was uncomfortable.

I really loved it.

Kevin Hart came out of the gate like a Lawrence Taylor jumped with a microphone – not breaking legs, but pulverizing egos. The comedian didn’t even bother with the niceties or foreplay. He immediately criticized Brady for his support of the now-disgraced FTX, joking about why the roast was taking place at the Los Angeles Forum and not the nearby Crypto.com Arena.

“We didn’t want to remind Tom’s fans how much money he owes them,” Hart said. “He fucked those people.”

What followed was more than three hours of relentless, close-range gunfire aimed at the seven-time Super Bowl winner and everyone in his world.

There were white jokes, black jokes, gay jokes, Jewish jokes. Jabs on CTE, eating disorders and Brady’s former Patriots teammate Aaron Hernandez killing people (including himself). Everything and everyone was on the menu – including Brady’s failed marriage to Gisele Bündchen, his rumored hair transplant, his friend Rob Gronkowski’s IQ and former coach Bill Belichick’s unemployment.

Brady only threw one flag: When “Roastmaster General” Jeff Ross roughed up Patriots owner Robert Kraft after he was arrested at a massage parlor for soliciting prostitution, the former quarterback told him : “Don’t say that shit again. »

However, the rest was a struggle.

It was also a catharsis.

The roast — which featured comedians Nikki Glaser and Tony Hinchcliffe as well as Brady’s former teammates Julian Edelman, Gronk and Drew Bledsoe — felt like a waste of decades of political correctness.

Comedian Andrew Schulz lashed out at the former gridiron warriors in attendance: “This scene has seen more head trauma than a Kennedy on the campaign trail. »

In a culture that genuflects to fame and touts a false “be nice” credo, this was refreshing., overnight for thick skin.

Jerry Seinfeld recently pointed out that critics from the left, afraid of offending people, have ruined television and movies, which is true.

We used to laugh at each other. We were better friends because of it.

Today, award shows have become so innocuous and boring that even a harmless crack about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia made Will Smith think he was right to slap Oscars host Chris Rock in 2022.

But Brady — who at times borders on cyborg-level perfection — has taken some brutal blows to the chin, like Glaser’s over his breakup with his ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynihan, the mother of his eldest son.

“Tom, you’re the best that played too long, retired, then came back, then retired,” Glaser said. “I get it, it’s hard to walk away from something that’s not your pregnant girlfriend.”

Humor at our expense can be a miracle balm for personal pain.

This point was well made by comedian Marlon Wayans in the New York Times last weekend, as he championed offbeat, cutting humor as a way to cope with death and pain..

“It’s a different way of looking at something tragic,” Wayans said.. “I think the world has forgotten how to laugh. We prepare people to be sensitive. But I find that when I’m at a comedy club, people like to laugh. They like to laugh at these dark things… People want to laugh again.

If the reaction, both in the public and online, meant anything, Wayans was right.

When someone can laugh at themselves, it has a humanizing and disarming effect.

This is something that people like Will Smith and the criminally humorless Prince Harry and Meghan Markle should consider. Three hours of pranking one of them might be enough of the image makeover they all need.