Yeah, but what if we don't want him either?

Will Rob Schneider's star ever stop rising? Yes. Sometime around The Hot Chick. I didn't see it, but he plays a guy who swaps bodies with a woman and comedy ensues. It was made in 2002, so I'm sure it's a smart, insightful examination of gender and its role in culture.

I'm kidding, I'm sure it was neither of these things.
Also, I suspect comedy is a generous description as well.

Evidently the state wanted him to be able
to back up his claims about his vitamins.
With evidence. Can you believe it? 

Doesn't matter, the thing to bear in mind here is that since the early two thousands, Schneider has been increasingly vocal about his beliefs, and those beliefs became increasingly...what's the word? Right-wing nutter? He endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the last election and when that didn't work out went all Trumpy. Basically his wikipedia bio is a slow spiral into conspiracy theories and getting booed off stages at comedy clubs. He went anti-vax, transphobic, and finally packed up his vitamin business and moved to Arizona: the Florida of the west. Oh, also, he had a vitamin business. 

It's the one where Matt Berry's character
dumps and then punches a trans woman for
being trans. It's as cringe as it sounds.

Anyway, fast forward to now and across the ocean where noted victim of trans people existing, Graham Lineham, has declared that he shall move to the colonies and join embittered conservative forces with the Richmeister on a new sitcom. In Arizona, the center of television production. Lineham, whom you might remember as the creator of britcoms Father Ted, The IT Crowd, and Black Books, disappointingly came out as a transphobe after a transphobic episode of the IT Crowd was called out as being transphobic. Which it super is.

"Stop. Don't. Come back."

-Britain

Lineham's beef with his home kingdom is that he feels that he is being denied his freedom of speech. Specifically his freedom to say terrible things about marginalized groups without being criticized. Which isn't so much freedom as it is freedom to be tone-deaf. And hate-filled. Oh, and not funny. Which is a shame, because those three British sitcoms I mentioned above are--barring that galling IT Crowd episode--great. Like, really great. It's heartbreaking that Lineham turned out to be such a heel. 

Pictured: Graham Lineman, seen
here being oppressed by people not
finding his humor terribly funny.

Like he has every right to be. A heel that is. This is America--or Britain--and the freedom of expression is a cherished right. Just as it's the BBC's cherished right to not hire hate-filled transphobes who, rather than grow up and expand their worldview, have decided to lean into a lazy, punch-down line of humor that the rest of us agreed was best left in the past. So like in many ways the thing he's complaining about is exactly the thing that's driving him from his sceptered isle into the far too warm embrace of Arizona.

There, like a Katamari Damacy of irrational hatred, he, Schneider, and another "woke is killing comedy" doofus called Andrew Doyle, will be teaming up for sitcom that will, I'm sure, attract tens of fans. I wish them all the failure in the world.

This, but instead of rolling up household items, they're
rolling up comedians of a certain age who mistakenly blame
their declining careers on everyone else going woke.