Beijing TV station calls for boycott of comedian Guo Degang
Beijing TV station calls for a boycott of comedian after he takes a swipe at the station's deceased boss following pay dispute
Comedians delight in offending. What makes them different from louts is their willingness to make fun of themselves. Sanctimony, in their eyes, is the only true blasphemy.
But dancing on the grave of an enemy is hard to do gracefully, as performer Guo Degang has no doubt recently realised.
Guo is locked in a boycott battle with state television authorities after he posted a poem ostensibly about karma, and a picture of the Chinese characters for double happiness, on his blog on November 20, the day after the director of Beijing Television (BTV), Wang Xiaodong, died.
He did not name Wang but the timing and the veiled references in his verses made clear the person he was talking about.
The network responded by calling for a television boycott of the star, but the campaign has so far gained little traction.
Guo, 40, is a leading figure in or cross-talk, a traditional Chinese art form rooted in wordplay and often performed by a duo in front of a live audience. He emerged in the mid-1990s, but his career began to bloom about a decade ago when he started to appear on television, BTV in particular.
